Safe cosmetics is an oxymoron, somewhat like healthy smoking. Unfortunately, much like the tobacco industry, cosmetics makers keep consumers in the dark about what is actually in their products. And much like tobacco, cosmetics, too, can be dangerous to your health – and yet, you, the consumer, are kept uninformed and misinformed!

Today, the cosmetics industry is where the tobacco industry was before 1965 when Congress passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act requiring a warning label. Rich like the tobacco industry, the cosmetics industry, otherwise known as personal care, is a $50 billion industry with strong ties inside the beltway.

Synthetic chemicals and metals can be found in the products in your medicine cabinet, shower stall, and purse. There are about 168 chemicals found in the 12 personal care products that women typically use each day.1 Do you really know what you are using on your body?

After all, the list of ingredients, in tiny print on the packaging, is merely what is “intended,” not actually what goes to market. The words “fragrance” or “and other ingredients” in the cosmetics vernacular means “trade secret”: it could mean virtually anything. In fact, that is where you’ll find phthalates hiding (in Europe, 2 phthalates, DEHP and DBP have already been banned). If a manufacturer were to actually list its products’ true known ingredients, their identity would perplex all but those with advanced degrees in chemistry or pharmacology.

As if this legal omission were not bad enough, the US government's product watchdog, the Food and Drug Administration, has no control over this industry. It neither reviews nor regulates what goes into cosmetics. Personal care is the least regulated category in the marketplace and the fifth largest. The US government has only banned or restricted 10 chemicals from cosmetics compared to its European Union counterpart, Colipa, which prohibits over 1100 ingredients. In fact, all 15 countries of the EU are subject to the Cosmetic Directive, which bans animal testing as well as any chemical known or suspected of being harmful.

The FDA’s own Web site explains its limitations:

“FDA's legal authority over cosmetics is different from other products regulated by the agency.... Cosmetic products and ingredients are not subject to FDA premarket approval authority, with the exception of color additives.” For more information see, http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/ProductandIngredientSafety/ProductInformation/ucm137224.htm.

In laypersons terms, this means, it is up to the manufacture to test its own products. Few do. In 30 years, the personal care industry’s own safety panel has tested only 11% of the products on the market for safety and banned only 9 ingredients as toxic, http://www.cir-safety.org/staff_files/unsafe.pdf.

That's now changing in California.

As of June 15, 2009, the California Safe Cosmetic Act of 2005 went into effect, please keep in mind that $600,000 was spend to kill the bill by lobbiests. It requires a manufacturer, packer, and/or distributor of cosmetics to provide a list (by October of 2009) of all cosmetic products sold in California that contain any ingredients known or suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. Consumers can find this information within a few months on the California Public Health database  provided the required companies list their harmful products. If the companies comply, we, as consumers, will be able to make more educated buying decisions regarding our purchase of cosmetic products in this state.

It's about time. It takes a mere 29 seconds for 0 to 100% - depending on the size of the molecule -- of a product to be absorbed after being applied topically (from detergent soaps with DEHP and DBP, to pain relief patches). This constant absorption day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year is also called a body’s burden. Our skin is our largest organ. When a skin care product is used, it is absorbed and can be eliminated or stored someplace in our body. The question then becomes how much is too much?

In 2005, tests were conducted on newborn babies whose umbilical cord blood was found to have a plethora of toxins from PCN-66 (found in dye production), to gamma PHC (insecticides in agriculture), to Anthracene (used to make preservatives). These toxins were found in their mother's body even when the mother had never been around a farm, pesticides or a chemical/manufacturing plant. (For the Body Burden report, see http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/contentindex.php.) Just as frightening were the results of the 2005 report conducted by the Oakland Tribune that discovered a five year old who had 90% more dibutyl phthalate than other children/girls her age. This product is found in nail polish, which the child had been playing with for many months.2

It is unclear how each of these and other toxins are ingested –- by food, drink, and or topically. Some chemicals (such as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate – SLS or SLES and 1,4-dioxane) can be created as of result of chemical reactions when ingredients are combined into one product, such as shampoo and bubble bath. In the cosmetic industry, this is called an “unintended by-product.” Other harmful chemicals may be listed as ingredients, such as talc (powders), petroleum-based ingredients, Mineral Oil (make up remover, lipsticks and lotions), Formaldehyde (nail polish, shampoo, soaps, skin creams), Flouoracarbons, DEA, SEA, Titanium Dioxide, propylene glycol (suntan lotions, lipsticks, etc.). (See, http://www.hallgold.com/toxic-chemical-ingredients-directory.htm and http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-12-formaldehyde_N.htm.) According to a report issued in 2006 by the California Policy Research Center, in each state, there are enough cosmetic chemical compounds sold each day to fill two tanker trucks.3

You connect the dots .....

If a woman applies a lipstick for example, L’Oreal True Red which contains .65 mg  of lead - 5 times a day, 3 days a week for 7 years, her body may contain a significant amount of lead--which, in turn, can suppress her immune system and damage cells.  Do you know the lethal dose of lead? What about the long- term effects of ingesting or inhaling lead over a long period of time?

If the government or the manufacturer of the raw material or the product does, they aren’t telling. And they aren’t required to do so!

What we do know is that in 2007, L’Oreal raised $225,000 for the Komen Foundation to be used for breast cancer research.  How much money does it take to clear a company’s conscious? The profit cycle is a very lucrative aspect of business. Want an example? Consider Eli Lilly, which makes both a controversial milk producing hormone with links to breast cancer as well as a metastatic breast cancer drug, Gemza. This link may help explain the issue around the “genetically-engineered hormone” manufactured by Monsanto Co., which was recently purchased by Eli Lilly. Then there is Zeneca/ICI, who manufactures the best selling breast cancer drug, Tamoxifen, and is the largest sponsor of breast cancer awareness month. Zeneca/ICI also manufactures toxic vinyl chloride, which can be found in hair sprays and is also linked to breast cancer, see http://www.preventcancer.com/avoidable/breast_cancer/env_causes.htm. The fact that large companies can wrap themselves in the pink ribbon as crusaders and curers for breast cancer and make products that contribute to this disease is cause for alarm.

There are some practical measures at your disposal: Take a look, for instance, at the safe cosmetics database, or in a few months at the California Public Health database. Clean out your purse, your showers, and medicine cabinets. Toss the cosmetics found to be harmful in the skin deep database, and find others that are less toxic. Alternatively, opt for European products when you can. Finally, beware of marketing tools such as product labels that declare something to be “organic” and “natural.” 

Help to change laws that protect you and your family from harmful chemicals. Each one of us can be an activist and let our government, large manufacturing companies, and local stores know that there needs to be accountability; unsafe ingredients should be banned. Most global companies have formulations that exclude known or suspected toxins sold in Europe, therefore, there is no cost to reformulate. Why is the US getting the toxic products, perhaps they cost less to make? At the very least, send a message in support of removing lead from lipsticks.

Think true pink and stop the profit cycle. It starts and ends with you.

1. Malkan, S (2007). Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, pp. 2. Gabriola, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers.

2. Malkan, S (2007). Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, pp. 5. Gabriola, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers.

3. Malkan, S (2007). Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, pp. 26. Gabriola, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers.