toxic cosmetics
Author Exposes the ‘Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry’
By Emily Darrell, 11-02-07
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The label on your shampoo may read “pure and natural” and your face wash may claim to be “gentle”, but according to at least one activist group, some of the products that make such claims are actually full of toxic chemicals—chemicals linked to cancer, infertility, birth defects and chronic disease. Cosmetic companies in the United States operate with virtually no federal safety regulation, a practice that the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics hopes to change.
At the University of Montana’s Urey Lecture Hall on Thursday night, Stacy Malkan spoke about her new book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry. The book details Malkan’s work with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which was founded in 2002 and for the last five years, has been working to get toxic chemicals taken out of personal care products. One of the campaign’s strongest arguments is that the European Union has banned cosmetics companies from using more than 1,100 chemicals in their products, while the U.S. government has banned only 10. If the products can be made safer (and often very without much cost or effort), the campaign asks, why shouldn’t they be?
One of the campaign’s founding organizations is Women’s Voices for the Earth (WVE), a Missoula-based women’s social and environmental activist group. Malkan’s talk was introduced by WVE’s executive director, Dori Gilels.
“It is a story you’ll find both surprising and appalling,” Gilels said of Not Just a Pretty Face.
Malkan read a few passages of her book before turning over the discussion to members of a panel that included a UM toxicology professor and a non-toxic makeup manufacturer. Malkan said the crowd in Missoula, the sixth stop on her book tour, was the largest she’d seen yet.
She read a few passages from her book’s first chapter, “Indecent Exposure”, which concerned the reactions of women who had taken part in a series of government bio-monitoring tests. The women’s bodies, and the bodies of their husbands and children, were tested for a wide range of toxic chemicals. Every person tested thus far has tested positive for dozens of potentially harmful chemicals.
Malkan read: “The tests revealed that Charlotte’s body contained dioxin, PCB’s, mercury, lead, cosmetic chemicals, lawn chemicals—manufactured by companies such as Dow, Shell, Union Carbide, Exxon and Monsanto. “I felt violated,” Charlotte reported. She was especially upset about the pesticides. “I never used them in my house. They’d never been on my lawn. I bought organic whenever I could...How could Dow put Dursban into me when I never said they could?”
Cosmetics are polluting the bodies of men, children and babies, too, Malkan said. Pollutants are used in men’s products, pollutants from cosmetics and other sources make their way into breast milk, and transmitted to fetuses in the womb.
“Babies are being born pre-polluted,” Malkan said.
Malkan said that despite much of the resistance she and the campaign have experienced from members of the multi-national cosmetic conglomerates—resistance that includes not returning numerous phone calls and letters, outright refusal to change their products, and stubborn insistence that their products are safe—she remains hopeful.
According to Malkan more than 600 companies—all smaller companies—have signed the campaign’s Compact for Safe Cosmetics, an agreement that binds companies to meet or exceed the EU standard for safety.
Also, in the spring of 2007, the campaign successfully convinced the nail polish giant OPI to remove toxic chemicals from its polishes.
“It’s a huge victory,” Malkan said, “especially for women who work in salons.”
The company, Malkan said, has not suffered from the reformulation. “No one went out of business, prices didn’t go up. Business just went on as usual.”
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