On days like today, it seems actually possible that we can make the world a safer and healthier place. Or at least, we’re going to have a lot of fun trying!
On that note, I invite you to watch and share Annie Leonard’s awesome new 7-minute film that reveals the toxic truth about the products we put on our bodies – and shows us what we can do about it. As Annie explains in The Story of Cosmetics, it’s not the choices we make at the store, but the choices made behind the scenes – by industry and the government – that will determine the health of our families and the planet.
And that brings me to the really good news. This week, we are also celebrating the introduction of the federal Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 — the first attempt in more than 70 years to overhaul cosmetics regulations to eliminate the use of cancer-causing chemicals and other harmful ingredients.
This legislation is a major step toward the day when baby shampoos don’t contain cancer-causing chemicals, and teenagers don’t have a dozen hormone-altering cosmetic chemicals in their bodies – and toward the day when we can walk into any store and buy non-toxic products that are safe for our health.
Sometimes, it feels like change is not possible. But then there are days like today – when mainstream media from Parents magazine to Pittsburgh Post Gazette run major stories about protecting our health from toxic chemicals; and we are launching a new film with the fabulous Annie Leonard (who was just featured on the front page of LA Times); and we are finally about to see the introduction of safe cosmetics legislation that has been in the works for almost a decade.
Please join us in celebrating today by doing two things right now:
Blog, Facebook, Tweet and tell all your friends about The Story of Cosmetics with Annie Leonard: www.storyofcosmetics.org
And take action to support the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website: www.safecosmetics.org.
Together, we can give the beauty industry a makeover and create a healthy, more beautiful future for us all!
Something doesn’t smell right, and not just in the Gulf. The horrifying destruction of life caused by the oil spill has everyone’s attention; what many people don’t realize is that the toxic effects of oil addiction are hitting much closer to home.
Humans have found many uses for oil, but one thing we can’t do with it is process it with our bodies to use as food or nourishment. So it’s not really a surprise, then, that synthetic chemicals made from oil byproducts don’t mesh so well with human health.
You may notice it in the funny, unpleasant feeling you get when standing in an enclosed space with somebody who is wearing too much perfume. If so, you’re not alone: adverse reactions to fragrance exposure are reported by a significant percentage of the population.
A new report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics illustrates why. The analysis of 17 top-selling fragrances – from Britney Spears’s Curious and Hannah Montana’s Secret Celebrity to Calvin Klein’s Eternity and Abercrombie & Fitch’s Fierce – reveals the products contain many secret petrochemicals not listed on labels and multiple toxins that can disrupt hormones or trigger allergic reactions such as asthma, headaches, wheezing, and skin rashes.
The majority of the chemicals in these products have not been assessed for safety by the cosmetics industry’s self-policing review panels.
The study comes on the heels of the recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel (see the must-read NYT piece), which sounded the alarm about the cancer risk of unregulated and unstudied chemicals used by millions of Americans in their daily lives. The panel recommended that pregnant women and couples planning to become pregnant avoid exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals due to cancer concerns.
Many of the fragrances contained these suspect ingredients: Halle by Halle Berry, Quicksilver (for men) and Glow by JLO each contained six different chemicals with the potential to act like estrogen in the body. Synthetic estrogens are a concern because of the science linking estrogen to higher risk of breast cancer.
One wonders if these celebrities even know what’s in their products. (Send these celebs a letter.) Average consumers are certainly in the dark, thanks to a loophole in federal law that allows companies to keep fragrance ingredients secret. The companies will argue that they’ve always kept fragrances secret. But, obviously, it’s a new day.
The oil spill is an ever-present reminder that it’s time to start doing things differently than we’ve been doing them. It’s time to rethink the petrochemicals we put on our bodies, too – and to require cosmetics companies to be honest about what’s in their products and to use the safest ingredients possible.
It’s time to shift every industry away from the toxic, polluting practices of the past, to kick the oil habit once and for all, and move the entire economy toward renewable energy, clean production, and green, safe chemistry.
I love to wear makeup, feel sexy and look my best—I just want to do it without rubbing cancer-causing chemicals on my body.
Does that make me a stick in the mud? Am I anti-beauty?
Cover Girl (by Procter & Gamble) seems to think so. The mega makeup brand has launched a new “Dare to be Beautiful” ad campaign, complete with $50,000 cash prize and a host of celebrities led by Drew Barrymore (see my Love Letter to Drew) who will “defend beauty’s honor” – apparently from environmentalists and feminists like me.
“Some people have tried to make beauty an ugly word. They say it’s cold, false, intimidating. We say: stand up to that! Stand up for beauty that makes you LAUGH, that makes you THINK, that makes you get out there and create some beauty of your own!” states the Cover Girl “Declaration Cloud.” (via Virginia’s beauty-schooled blog)
Instead, how about this: stand up for beauty that ISN’T TOXIC to our bodies and our souls; for beauty that is HONEST about what people really look like, and contains SAFE INGREDIENTS that won’t damage our health and our children.
Is that too much to ask of beauty?
Is it too much to ask Procter & Gamble to give it a rest with the patronizing ad campaigns, and take a look in the mirror? They might notice a few flaws that need fixing. For example:
Cover Girl makeup is a leading user of quaternium 15, a known allergen and skin sensitizer that can release formaldehyde (a carcinogen) into products.
Considering the mind-boggling volume of P&G products—and their plans to add a billion new customers in the developing world—cleaning up these problems would go a long way toward reducing the planet’s toxic load.
It would go a long way toward protecting our health and defending beauty in the world. So what do you say, Cover Girl? Let’s rock it with some non-toxic products!
UPDATE: In my last blog, I wrote about the Axe craze and the lame NYT story that failed to mention concerns about hazardous chemicals in male body sprays. Well, the state of California is certainly concerned. Last month, they slapped Axe’s parent company, Unilever, with a $1.3 million fine for polluting the air with volatile organic compounds.
The biggest ad in the Walgreens cosmetics aisle these days isn’t the airbrushed model hawking L’Oreal, but the huge cardboard archway with the Axe logo leading like a beacon to an aisle stuffed with flashy cans of body spray. This is where the boys come to be cool, to man up, to make the ladies swoon at their feet – or so the ads make them believe.
As the New York Times reported, male body products are all the rage among teenagers and even the pre-teen crowd. One mom counted 18 different products in the bathroom of her 13- and 14-year old boys – the body washes, exfoliators, body hydrators, body sprays, deodorant, shaving cream and hair products they think they can’t live without.
This is the beauty industry’s wet dream: to finally have the other 50% of adolescents churning with anxiety, desperate to own products that promise to make them attractive and acceptable (but always fall short). The marketing machine is selling such anxieties in a myriad of subtle ways – book tie-ins, gaming sites, endorsements from hip-hop stars and extreme athletes. A Kardashian sister was reportedly paid six figures to tweet about loving the smell of Axe. (In reality, most girls are holding their noses behind the guy’s back.)
The irony of this story, which the Times missed entirely, is that the ads promise virility and masculinity, yet the products may have the exact opposite effect on the bodies of developing boys. Most fragranced products contain diethyl phthalate, a chemical that has been linked to sperm damage and feminized genitals. Many of the products, from body spray to shampoo, also contain parabens, a chemical that acts like estrogen in the body.
In all, the 18 body-care products used by the above-mentioned teenagers contain roughly 200 synthetic chemicals that the boys are putting on their bodies each day before breakfast. This daily dose includes dozens of chemicals linked to cancer, skin problems, allergies and hormone disruption, according to an analysis of a typical suite of these products on the Skin Deep database.
How’s that for an ick factor?
By this point in the story, you may be shaking your head in disbelief. But the ugly truth is that companies are allowed to put nearly any chemical into beauty products in unlimited amounts, without conducting safety assessments and without listing all the chemicals on labels. Toxic products are often marketed as “pure,” “gentle,” “hypo-allergenic” and even “organic,” since there are no legal standards for these terms on personal care products.
The beauty industry is in desperate need of a safety makeover. The broken regulatory system keeps consumers in the dark about what they’re really buying and holds the industry back from innovating the next generation of non-toxic products. Why make safer products if they don’t have to? To help change the laws, join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at www.safecosmetics.org.
In the meantime, what’s the parent or girlfriend of an over-anxious body-spraying teenage boy to do? Showing him a Skin Deep analysis of his products, along with information about how phthalates may be impacting masculinity, may make a lasting impression. (Keep in mind that phthalates aren’t listed on product labels; avoid them by avoiding products with fragrance.)
Some honest feedback about what it’s like to smell them coming also wouldn’t hurt. As Stephenie Mullen, the mom quoted in the NYT story, wrote on her blog: “being in a car with my Axe covered boys (is) like going for a jog behind a mosquito truck.”
As it turns out, that image of the noxious spray cloud isn’t far off the mark from what’s happening in the bathroom each morning.
It’s that time of year again, when you can’t walk five steps without finding some new opportunity to spend money for breast cancer. We can “Kiss for the Cause” with Revlon lipstick, “shower for the cure” with Philosophy Pink Ribbon Gel, dust our cheeks with “Hint of a Cure” blush by Ramy, and “Kiss Goodbye to Breast Cancer” with Avon products.
Before I rush out for a pink-ribbon makeover, I have some questions for these companies: How much money are they actually contributing to breast cancer charities, and what is the money being used for? And most importantly, are they willing to stop using chemicals linked to cancer?
The big beauty companies don’t want such questions raining on their pink parade. After all, Revlon reaps a lot of good will and positive press from its pink-branded products and efforts to raise money for breast cancer charities through the Revlon 5K Run/Walk.
Yet ironically – outrageously – many Revlon products contain chemicals linked to cancer. In fact, Revlon’s Colorsilk brand is ranked as the most toxic brand of all in the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep database, with an average toxicity score of 8.6 (with 10 being the worst).
Pink ribbon giants Avon and Estee Lauder don’t fare much better; each company makes more than 100 products with a toxicity of score of 8 or above, according to Skin Deep, and many of the products contain chemicals linked to cancer. (You can check the score of your favorite products at www.cosmeticdatabase.org.)
This is unacceptable – to say the least! As leaders in the pink-ribbon parade, Revlon, Avon and Estee Lauder have a special responsibility to be champions for women’s health by refusing to buy carcinogens from the chemical companies. As major (and influential) customers of the chemical industry, these companies have the power to shift the market away from harmful chemicals, and toward safer, non-toxic alternatives.
Instead, what we get from these companies are lots of cute pink-ribbon products, with an undisclosed portion of proceeds going to breast cancer research, almost none of which is focused on environmental causes of the disease such as cancer-causing chemicals and pollution. They want us to “hope for the cure” and get our mammograms, rather than having a serious discussion about how to prevent breast cancer, because prevention requires changes to the status quo.
For more about the not-so-cute history of the pink ribbon (which was co-opted by a beauty magazine) and Breast Cancer Awareness Month (which was started by a pharmaceutical/chemical company), see chapter 6 of my book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.”
After these stories, trust me, you’ll never look at a pink ribbon in quite the same way again. So then what? The good news is, we have a lot of power too, because we get to decide which companies we support with our money and which products we put on our bodies. We can educate ourselves and our friends about what’s really going on, and take meaningful action for change. Here are four things you can do today:
Think Before you Pink: Share this website by Breast Cancer Action with friends and encourage them to ask critical questions about pink ribbon promotions. Another great resource on this topic is the book and film No Family History, by Sabrina McCormick.
Just say No to Toxic Beauty Products: Choose products that are free of carcinogens and other harmful chemicals by using the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database. Spend your money on companies with products consistently in the green zone (0-3 toxicity score).
Donate to Breast Cancer Prevention: Support The Breast Cancer Fund, the only national non-profit organization focused solely on prevention of the disease. Also check out BCF’s annual report, The State of the Evidence, a compilation of science about the environmental links to breast cancer.
Help Give the Beauty Industry a Makeover: The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is working to pass legislation that will require cosmetics companies to eliminate chemicals suspected of causing cancer, birth defects and other health problems. Visit our website and join our email list to get involved.
