Sham-Poo Protests

Protesters Dressed as Giant Shampoo Bottles Picket Trade Show Entrance

In March 2010, the Organic Consumer's Association held a protest outside of the largest annual gathering of the natural and organic products industry, the Natural Products Expo West. Members of the OCA picketed the entrance to the Expo using creative visual props including five-foot tall shampoo bottles to mock mislabeled "organic" products while distributing flyers that said things like "Expo panic, these brands are not organic" to educate trade show participants about the lack of regulation in the organic personal care marketplace.

 

Stop buying soaps, hand-wipes and cleaning agents whose vendors lure you with the label "antibacterial".

Mineral Oil & Baby Oil

It is produced as a byproduct of the distillation of gasoline from crude oil. Mineral oil is leftover liquid, and because it is abundant, it is very inexpensive. In fact, it is more expensive to dispose of mineral oil, than to purchase it.Mineral Oil is a liquid mixture of hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum, its production is quite toxic, involving sulfuric acid, adsorbents, solvents, and alkalis.

It only takes a drop of synthetic fragrance to transform mineral oil into baby oil. Did you know that baby oil is actually mineral oil that is enhanced with fragrance? Mineral oil is the main ingredient in many baby care items as well. Vaseline (petroleum jelly), baby wash liquid soap, and baby lotions all contain mineral oil as a key ingredient. As mentioned above, manufacturers can buy it very inexpensively and it will not spoil.The problem is that mineral oil is foreign to the human body and has many harmful effects, especially in infants. Some of the effects of mineral oil may be a little surprising.

Mineral oil acts as a thin layer on the skin. It is difficult to absorb and clogs the pores, which slows the skin’s ability to eliminate toxins. Remember, the skin is the body’s largest organ and plays an important role in maintaining overall health! Once the oil is absorbed, it is broken down by the liver and passes through the intestinal tract, it will absorb all of the fat-soluble vitamins found there. It is essentially stealing important vitamins from the body, which the body will not be able to replace. This can eventually lead to nutritional deficiencies. Studies have also shown forms of pneumonia caused by mineral oil decreasing lung function, known as lipoid pneumonia. Because of these dangers, the medical community has condemned the use of mineral oil taken orally or as an ingredient in medications.

Researchers from the Innsbruck Medical University say that mineral paraffin's appear to be the largest contaminant of our bodies, “widely amounting 1g per person reaching 10g in extreme cases.” They also found mineral oil in breast milk and fat tissue in new moms, and since mineral oil is frequently used to protect nipples between breast-feedings, babies ingest this petrochemical from the very first days of their lives.

 

Is It Real Coconut?

by Lucie

Herbs, minerals, fats, oils, wax – these are all ingredients used in beauty products. The label says, ’24-hour organic moisturiser’ – it sounds fine.  A quick check of the ingredients shows ‘coconut’, followed by ‘DEA (diethanolamine)’. You love coconut, so that’s great – right?

Wrong. 89% of the 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products have not been evaluated for safety. I’m sorry to say that this ‘coconut’ has nothing to do with the original, natural coconut. It has been synthetically processed.
Look out for the names DEA (diethanolamine), MEA (monoethanolamine), and TEA (triethanolamine).

According to the Cosmetics database, these substances are often used in cosmetics to adjust the pH. TEA causes allergic reactions including eye problems, dry hair and skin, and could be toxic if absorbed over a long period.

These chemicals are already restricted in Europe because of known carcinogenic effects. Dr Samuel Epstein (Professor of Environmental Health at the University of Illinois) says that repeated skin applications  of DEA-based detergents resulted in a major increase in the incidence of liver and kidney cancer.

What to look for

It’s all about how the ingredients are processed, and where they have come from.

Look for:
* Organic, raw coconut oil
* Coco glucoside – a non-ionic surfactant (foaming agent), synthesised from coconut and glucose
* Certified organic cocos nucifera (coconut) fruit oil
* Certified organic logos, to ensure you have non-chemically processed products.

 

Revlon & Other Breast Cancer Awareness Products

Bad Reaction To A Beauty Product?

If you experience an adverse reaction to a product, call your local doctor or seek medical care right away. Then report your experience to the FDA as soon as possible.

Mail: Write to the Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Office of Colors and Cosmetics, 200 C Street, S.W., Washington, DC, 20204.

Phone: Or call the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in your state; to obtain the telephone number of the coordinator in your area, call 800-270-8869.

Online: To reach the FDA via online, log on to their website: www.fda.gov.

The FDA- and most reputable cosmetics companies- are highly responsive to consumer complaints. If the FDA receives a cluster of complaints concerning one product or a type of product, it will investigate, so taking the time to make a complaint can make a difference.

 

The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010

For the first time in 70 years, Congress is ready to close the gaping holes in the outdated federal law that allows chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, learning disabilities and other illnesses in the products we use on our bodies every day.

On July 21, Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (H.R.5786), which gives the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to ensure that personal care products are free of harmful ingredients.

This legislation will affect every American—everyone who puts on moisturizer or uses shampoo or deodorant. More and more people are concerned about unsafe chemicals in our everyday lives, and getting these toxics out of the stuff we rub on our bodies every day is just common sense. It will also help the cosmetics industry by fostering the development of the safer products American consumers are demanding.

Good for Consumers, Businesses and Innovation

When there's cancer-causing chemicals in baby shampoo, hormone disruptors in fragrance and lead in lipstick, you know the regulatory system is broken. That's what you get when you have an entire industry that's practically self-regulated.

Existing law – the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 – cedes decisions about ingredient safety to the cosmetics industry. Under the current law, the FDA can't require cosmetics companies to conduct safety assessments, and can’t even require product recalls. In a recent example, the FDA could not recall skin whitening creams that were found to contain illegal levels of toxic mercury.

This legislation will be good for consumers, but it will also level the playing field for businesses that are making the safest products. New advancements in science have exposed the health risks of repeated exposures to low-dose hazardous chemicals – while also enabling green chemists to develop safer, non-toxic formulas. The cosmetics industry as a whole has not kept pace with safety innovations due to a weak regulatory system that encourages ignorance about chemical hazards and allows companies to hide the true toxicity of products.

What's in the Legislation?

According to our understanding of the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, provisions of the legislation would:

• Phase out ingredients linked to cancer, birth defects and developmental harm;
• Create a health-based safety standard that includes protections for children, the elderly, workers and other vulnerable populations;
• Close labeling loopholes by requiring full ingredient disclosure on product labels and company web sites, including the constituent ingredients of fragrance and salon products;
• Give workers access to information about unsafe chemicals in personal care products;
• Require data-sharing to avoid duplicative testing and encourage the development of alternatives to animal testing;
• Provide adequate funding to the FDA Office of Cosmetics and Colors so it has the resources it needs to provide effective oversight of the cosmetics industry; and
• Level the playing field so small businesses can compete fairly.

What You Can Do

Ask your U.S. Representative to support the Safe Cosmetics Act. Congress needs to know that this issue is important to constituents!

Learn more about this issue and get your friends and family involved: Watch the short film, The Story of Cosmetics, and share it with people in your life.

More Information

Press release: Toxic Chemicals in Cosmetics: New Legislation to Prevent Exposure (July 21, 2010)

Cosmetics manufacturers: What does this bill mean for your business?

Library of Congress: Bill text for H.R.5786

Contact for legislative offices: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , Director of Program and Policy, Breast Cancer Fund, 415-346-8223 x24

The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010: What it Means for Cosmetics Companies By shifting away from the toxic chemistry and polluting technologies of the past, American companies will lead the way in a global marketplace where consumers are demanding the next generation of safer, non-toxic products.

Changing Safety For Cosmetics And Beauty Products

Concerns over possible carcinogens and other toxic ingredients in cosmetics has prompted calls from both Congress and the industry for tighter regulation of the chemicals used in those and other personal care products.

In Congress, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) introduced a bill on Tuesday calling for cosmetics makers to register with the federal government and for larger cosmetics firms to pay user fees to enforce the regulation.

The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 also would require all ingredients in a cosmetic product to be listed on the label, and would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services two years to develop a list of prohibited or restricted ingredients.

Under the bill, cosmetics manufacturers would be required to notify the federal government of consumer reports of adverse health effects from their products, and to use alternatives to animal testing.

Schakowsky said during a teleconference Wednesday that she introduced her bill -- which was co-sponsored by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) -- because "Americans need to know that their cosmetics and personal care products don't contain chemicals that could harm them."

She noted that cosmetics manufacturers aren't currently required to list all their ingredients on the package, "and when investigators have gone looking, they have turned up toxic chemicals: A recent Chicago Tribune investigation sent skin lightening creams to a lab for testing and found dangerous levels of mercury -- a banned substance -- in some of the products."

Schakowsky said that current cosmetics laws are "woefully out of date, and Americans are at risk of being unknowingly exposed to harmful chemicals."

For its part, the Personal Care Products Council, a lobbying group for cosmetics manufacturers, released its own plan for regulation last week. It would require all cosmetics manufacturing facilities to register with the FDA, to disclose all product ingredients to the FDA, and to report any serious adverse events to the agency.

The industry plan also would require the FDA to "establish safe levels of trace constituents in cosmetic ingredients and products."

The agency also would be required to review the safety of any ingredients used in cosmetics and other personal care products, and establish "good manufacturing practice" requirements.

The council detailed its proposal in a letter to Congressional leaders, urging them to pass the legislation needed to enforce the proposed rules.

Council president and CEO Lezlee Westine said in a statement that although cosmetic products "remain among the safest in the marketplace ... Nonetheless, we believe it is time to develop a more contemporary approach that includes a greater federal regulatory role ... Our consumers deserve multiple layers of protection and transparency."

Schakowsky said she was glad the council saw a need for increased oversight, "particularly given the fact that, at the moment, they have virtual free rein to put dangerous chemicals into their products with very little federal intervention."

But, she said, she doesn't want the council's letter to overshadow her bill.

"This legislation requires real FDA oversight and relies on independent scientific analysis by the FDA of the manufacturers' claims about which ingredients are safe," she said. "And, most importantly, that safety standard would ban entirely the use of dangerous chemicals in cosmetics -- something the cosmetics industry opposes."

Better regulation of cosmetics also is the focus of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which on Thursday released a video urging consumers to lobby for safer cosmetic products.

The campaign, founded by a coalition of groups including Clean Water Action, the Breast Cancer Fund, and Friends of the Earth, noted in a press release that endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and other toxic chemicals are found in many personal care products, including lipstick and baby shampoo.

The New York Times gets it wrong in an otherwise nice article about organic labeling of health and beauty products:

"Synthetic ingredients used in cosmetics are generally considered safe. The Food and Drug Administration requires that cosmetics makers make sure that their products are safe."

Actually, it's probably true that most people consider cosmetic ingredients – synthetic or otherwise – to be safe, but that's likely because they're also assuming that FDA requires safety testing – and they don't. In fact, they can't. And the only thing FDA could do, which is set a safety standard, so at least all the self-policing companies have something similar to shoot for in their non-required, private tests, they refused to do in September.

Find out more about the "generally considered safe" ingredients, and a selection of organic beauty products within our directory, all you need to do is signup!

 

Annie Leonard does it again. This time she tells us about all those products in the cosmetics aisle that we use so many of every day (12 for women, 6 for men, on average). If you're familiar with her wildly successful Story of Stuff, you know what you'll get in this 8-minute video: the startling facts, delivered in a way that makes sense to all of us. So if you've ever read a label in the cosmetics aisle and, brow furrowed, wondered whether anyone out there (like the government, perhaps) is making sure all those ingredients are good for you, this short video is for you. Cause, by the way, they're not. Check it out:

 

 

Toxic Tooth Paste - Shir Fresh

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease. The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks.

Agency officials said they found toothpaste containing a small amount of diethylene glycol, a sweet, syrupy poison, at a Dollar Plus retail store in Miami, sold under the brand name ShiR Fresh Mint Fluoride Paste. The F.D.A. also identified nine other brands of Chinese toothpaste that contain diethylene glycol, some with concentrations of 3 percent to 4 percent. Previously, only a few brands had been identified by health officials around the world as containing diethylene glycol and all of them listed the chemical on the label.

But diethylene glycol was not listed on the label of the toothpaste found in the Miami store. Its presence was detected only because the F.D.A. began testing imported Chinese toothpaste last month. That precaution was prompted by the discovery in Latin America of tens of thousands of tubes of tainted toothpaste made in China.

Chinese regulators said Thursday that their investigation of toothpaste manufacturers there had found they had done nothing wrong. Chinese officials also said that while small amounts of diethylene glycol could be safely used in toothpaste, new controls would be imposed on its use in toothpaste. The F.D.A. said diethylene glycol in any amount was not suitable for use in toothpaste.

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