About
About this site
Parapharmacy.org is an English-language reference site on the European parapharmacy category — what it is in each country, which EU and national rules apply, which ingredients are commonly encountered, and how the principal product categories are regulated.
Purpose
The parapharmacy category is documented primarily in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and German. English-language sources are scattered and often confined to industry or marketing literature. This site aims to provide a single, neutral, citable English reference for general readers, students, journalists, expatriates and importers who need to understand the field.
What you will find here
- Foundations — what parapharmacy is, country pages for France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium, and a short history of the category.
- Regulation — the principal EU instruments that govern parapharmacy products: cosmetics, medical devices, food supplements, health claims, and CE marking.
- Ingredients — reference entries on common cosmetic actives and other substances encountered in parapharmacy products.
- Categories — sunscreens, cleansers, moisturisers, retinoid skincare, oral rehydration, wound care, thermometers, compression stockings.
- Terminology — a glossary, multilingual translation tables and a guide to reading INCI ingredient lists.
- Sources — annotated links to regulatory and evidence databases.
What you will not find here
Parapharmacy.org does not provide medical, dosing or treatment advice; does not recommend products or brands; carries no affiliate links; and does not ask visitors for personal data. The site is text-only static HTML, designed to be readable on any device and durable across time. It uses Google Analytics to measure aggregate traffic — see Hosting and privacy below, and the methodology page for the full set of rules under which it is written.
Maintainer
The site is maintained on an independent basis and carries no sponsored content. Authorship is not personally attributed: entries are written with reference to primary sources and intended to stand on the strength of those sources rather than on the standing of an individual author. No advertiser, sponsor or other commercial party funds or directs the editorial line.
Corrections and contact
Corrections of fact, broken links, outdated regulatory citations and other improvements are welcome. A public contact address will be added on this page; in the interim, corrections may be sent through any external channel where the site is referenced (for example, replies to citations on social platforms). The correction policy is set out in detail on the methodology page.
Licensing
Text on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Code is under the MIT licence. Reuse is permitted with attribution; commercial reuse is permitted under the same terms. Where this site quotes or paraphrases material from a primary source under fair-use or fair-dealing principles, the source is linked.
Hosting and privacy
The site is delivered as static HTML. It loads one third-party script: Google Analytics 4 (the Google tag, googletagmanager.com), used to measure aggregate traffic — which pages are read and how visitors arrive. Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (such as _ga) and sends technical data about each visit, including the page address, referrer, browser and device characteristics and an IP-derived approximate location, to Google. The site does not use these data to identify individuals and runs no marketing pixels, social-media widgets, embedded videos or third-party fonts. No advertising is currently served on the site.
You can block or delete analytics cookies through your browser settings or a content blocker, or use Google's opt-out browser add-on; the site remains fully readable without them. Server logs kept by the hosting provider, where they exist, are minimal and are not used to build profiles.
Last reviewed: October 2026.