Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
Nicole Deopere: February 19, 2012
In 2003, the European Union banned the use of 1,100 known, suspected or probable carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins. In response to the passage of this legislation a Campaign for Safe Cosmetics was launched in the United States in 2004 by a coalition of environmental, health, worker and justice organizations. One of the main goals of the campaign was to build a consciousness of what goes into our products also comes out. That means creating awareness that the chemicals put into our products are coming out and affecting the workers who make them, our communities, and ourselves including babies in utero.
The campaign kicked off with a project called the Compact for Safe Cosmetics. The compact was a pledge that cosmetics companies signed to commit to making safer products and providing more transparency to consumers about the ingredients that go into their products. Between 2004 and 2011, the Compact for Safe Cosmetics was signed by more than 1,500 companies from around the world. 322 of those companies were considered champions who met the goals of the compact. 111 of those companies received innovator status, which means that they made notable progress towards meeting the goals of the compact. Without any significant legislation, the compact succeeded in guiding the cosmetics industry into adopting safer, more transparent business practices.
Presently, the Campaign has refocused its resources by launching the Safe Cosmetics Business Network. The network is an alliance of businesses that work towards educating others in the industry, consumers, and policy makers. It demands a shift in the industry to greener, cleaner and healthier products. The business network members commit to working towards the following goals:
- Stimulate the innovation of safe, non-toxic personal-care products
- Protect consumers, workers and the environment from exposure to chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive harm and other adverse health impacts; and
- Ensure everyone in the U.S. has access to safe personal-care products regardless of geography and income
The network is free to join, is not a certification, but is a way to continue the conversation about safe cosmetics, share resources, and collectively support each other in the mission to create a safe cosmetics market. To date 325 businesses have joined. If you are the owner of a personal-care products company and are interested in joining, you can visit the networks webpage at:
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), one of the cofounders of the campaign created a Skindeep datatbase to track the progress of the companies that signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics as well as non-participating companies. The EWG is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) company dedicated to protecting public health by creating information resources with research and lobbying for national policy reform. Skindeep is an online database that serves as a safety guide for cosmetics and personal-care products. It combines ingredient lists from products with information from over 50 standard toxicity and regulatory databases. It also provides safety ratings for tens of thousands of personal-care products. You can check out your own products by visiting: http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/
Today, the Campaign’s coalition has grown into an alliance of more than 170 nonprofit, health, environmental, environmental justice, worker’s, women’s, student’s, consumer’s and faith organizations, with the Breast Cancer Fund acting as national coordinator. For a full history of campaign victories please visit the following link: http://safecosmetics.org/article.php?id=343
“Adults in the United States use an average of 10 personal-care products a day. That translates to exposures of more than 126 chemicals, not counting the untold number of chemicals used in any ‘fragrance’ listed on a label, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.” (Nena Baker, Huffington Post, 2010) The last time legislation was passed to regulate this industry was in 1938 with the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Under this act though, the FDA cannot require cosmetics and personal-care companies to substantiate product safety and performance claims. They do not even have to register their operations or products. This may have worked in 1938, but during the 1950s a new philosophy of “better living through chemistry” was promoted as a way to improve quality of life. Maybe that sounded like a good idea back then when there was not a lot of research into the effects of chemicals, but nowadays it is a different story. Now there is mounting scientific evidence that some of these chemicals can cause health issues such as learning disabilities, cancer, asthma and even damaged sperm, which indicate the presence of neurotoxins, carcinogens and reproductive toxins. Currently the industry is self-regulated by an Industry Safety Committee that companies have the option to comply with. If they do not want to, well not big whoop! Furthermore less than 20 percent of ingredients have been assessed for safety by the industry’s safety panel and companies do not have to include all their ingredients on their labels. The biggest problem is that there are no laws in place to get rid of toxic chemicals in our cosmetics or personal-care products.
A change came in 2005, when California passed the first piece of legislation to ban harmful chemicals from being used in personal-care products. The California Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005 mandates that cosmetics companies that sell their products in California must disclose any information about chemicals in their products that are identified as being a carcinogen, or a cause of birth defects. It further authorized the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration to regulate products that are used in salons.
Following at the national level, in July of 2010, Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The purpose of this bill was to amend title VI of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to ensure safe use of cosmetics. This bill would have given the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate cosmetics and personal-care products, and make sure that they are free of toxic ingredients. Currently the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors does not have the statutory power or resources to fund safety assessments of products. To quote Senator Markey, “This important bill closes a gaping hole in our federal laws that allows potentially dangerous chemicals to remain in the cosmetic products we use every day.” Sadly, this important piece of legislation became stuck in committee. In June of 2011, it was reintroduced as H.R. 2359 in the 112th Congress with some revisions that make it friendlier to small businesses. If passed, the legislation will:
- Restrict or phase out chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and developmental harm
- Create a health based safety standard for cosmetics that includes protections for children, the elderly, workers, and other vulnerable populations
- Close labeling loopholes by requiring full ingredient disclosure on product label and company websites, including the constituent ingredients of fragrances and salon products
- Require data-sharing to avoid duplicative testing and encourage alternatives to animal testing
- Provide the FDA Office of Cosmetics and Colors the resources it needs to ensure effective oversight of the cosmetics industry, including recall authority for cosmetics
Major protest to this bill is coming from people who claim that it will hurt small businesses. This argument however does not hold up when you consider that the majority of the companies that signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics were small businesses. Furthermore, “consumer demand for safer alternatives has made it the fastest growing sector of the cosmetics market, even during the economic downturn.” (Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, 2011) To help get this bill passed, you can ask your U.S. Representative to co-sponsor the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011. If you do not know who your representative is, please visit the following site, type in your zip code and it should pull up information about your representative:
Some more recent accomplishments of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics have been, in 2011 Johnson and Johnson announced that they are going to reformulate their flagship baby shampoo to remove a chemical that releases formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Also, L’Oreal and Johnson and Johnson have both phased our or have policies against the use of the toxic pesticide triclosan in their products. It is important to know that changes like these are taking place, but in the meantime, some easy and practical things that you can do to safeguard yourself are reading ingredient labels and avoiding undisclosed proprietary ingredients, such as “fragrance.” To check out the safety rating on your personal-care products, you can visit the Environmental Working Groups Skindeep database website at www.ewg.org/skindeep . You can also endorse the campaign at www.safecosmetics.org .
Resources
Being Clean and Pretty Has Toxic Costs by Nena Baker, Investigative Journalist and Author of “The Body Toxic.” Posted July 26, 2010 in the Huffington Post Online at:
Campaign for Safe Cosmetics Homepage: http://safecosmetics.org
EWG’s Skindeep Database: http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/
History and Victories of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics:
- http://safecosmetics.org/article.php?id=343
- Network for Safe Cosmetics: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5500/p/salsa/web/common/ public/signup?signup_page_KEY=1972
NOW.org. The 2011 National Conference Resolutions.
- http://www.now.org/organization/conference/resolutions/2011.html#national
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