Safe Cosmetics Campaign
Washington State Working Group Organizations:
- Breast Cancer Fund
- Community Coalition for Environmental Justice
- Citizens for a Healthy Bay
- Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition
- King County Hazardous Waste Management Program
- People For Puget Sound
- Verbena
- Washington Toxics Coalition
- Washington State Nurses Association
Work Group Leaders
Pam Tazioli, Breast Cancer Fund, pamela@breastcancerfund.org
Heather Trim, People For Puget Sound, htrim@pugetsound.org
or contact Margaret Shield, Coalition Coordinator at mshield@toxicfreelegacy.org or (206) 632-1545 ext 123.
National Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
Resources from our November 2006 Forums
Upcoming Events:
Toxics Book Tour:
Cosmetics and Children's Products
featuring Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry - an expose about toxic chemicals in cosmetics by Stacy Malkan.
November 2007 events in
Aberdeen, Bellingham, Port Townsend & Seattle.
Safe Cosmetics Information
- The Problem: Toxic Chemicals in Our Personal Care Products
- Of Particular Concern: Phthalates
- Finding Safer Personal Care Products
- What We’re Doing in Washington State
- What Can You Do?
- Background Info: Toxics in Cosmetics
- Resources from Safe Cosmetics Forums held in November 2006
- Resources & Fact Sheets
- Newsroom
The Problem: Toxic Chemicals in Our Personal Care Products
An average consumer uses as many as 25 different cosmetic and personal care products containing more than 200 different chemicals each day, according to industry estimates.
Even if you don’t use make-up, you probably still use cosmetics. Legally, the term refers to any products you apply to your body that are not drugs. Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, hand soap, sunscreen, lip balm, and hand lotion are all cosmetics.
Yet almost 90% of the 10,500 ingredients used in our personal care products have never been evaluated for safety. These chemicals make their way into our bodies through our skin or from inhalation, producing exposures at potentially harmful levels.
Chemicals in cosmetics that pose health risks include:
- carcinogens and suspected carcinogens: acrylamide, formaldehyde, coal-tar colors, diethanolamine (or cocamide DEA)
- endocrine disruptors: phthalates, parabens, and nonoxynol
- neurotoxins: metals, especially lead and mercury
Of Particular Concern: Phthalates
Phthalates are a family of plasticizer chemicals used as additives in cosmetics, fragrances, plastic toys, automotive products, PVC products, and many other consumer items.
- Commonly used phthalates in cosmetics are DEP, DBP, and DEHP.
- Nail polishes frequently contain phthalates (usually DBP) to make them “non-chip”.
- Fragrances often contain DEP
- Phthalates are rarely identified in ingredient lists as they are often listed under the catch-all of “fragrances”. See tips on reading labels to avoid phthalates on our Pollution in People web site.
Phthalates are endocrine disruptor chemicals. Phthalates can impair reproduction and development, alter liver and kidney function, damage the heart and lungs, and affect blood clotting. Boys are especially vulnerable to the effects of phthalates as they impair development of male reproductive organs.
Learn more about potential links between dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and breast cancer - Cosmetics Ingredient Raises Risk for Breast Cancer and Birth Defects
Recent studies of adults and children in the U.S. have found widespread exposure to phthalates. Phthalates are found in our blood and in breast milk. Phthalates are not bioaccumulative, but because we are constantly re-exposed to sources of phthalates, levels in our bodies may remain fairly constant.
In our Pollution in People study, we found phthalates in the bodies of all 10 Washington residents that we tested: see the phthalates summary
Phthalates are also found everywhere in our environment, including in our waterways and in wildlife. They are a major concern in the Duwamish River watershed, where researchers have found phthalates in the river mud and ongoing high levels of phthalates flowing into the basin. <learn more about the Duwamish River>
What We’re Doing in Washington State:
The Safe Cosmetics Campaign of Washington State is raising awareness about the problem of toxic chemicals in our personal care products. We’re advocating for better regulation and for better industry practices to protect consumers.
Our current activities include:
- supporting legislation at the state-level to ensure that only the safest chemicals are used in cosmetics and personal care products
- holding community meetings and educational forums to raise awareness about the problem of unregulated, harmful ingredients in our cosmetics and personal care products
- working with the national Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to encourage Washington cosmetic companies to sign the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, a pledge to make safer products <learn more about The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics>
- organizing consumer actions to let companies and our government know that we want safer products
- Contact your state legislator to ask them to get toxics out of children's products, including baby lotions and shampoos. Take Action>
- Join one of the organizations on our Working Group and get involved with their Safe Cosmetics activities.
- Read the label and check the SkinDeep database before buying personal care products and avoid potentially harmful ingredients.
- Support companies that have pledged to use non-toxic ingredients - see Finding Safer Cosmetics.
Background: Toxics in Cosmetics
Health concerns associated with cosmetics and personal care products
- One of every 100 personal care products on the market contains ingredients certified by government authorities as known or probable human carcinogens.
- Other ingredients are known or suspected reproductive toxins.
- Many of these chemicals have found their way into our bodies, our breast milk and our children, and diseases linked to synthetic chemicals - including breast cancer, testicular cancer and reproductive problems - are on the rise.
- This is absolutely unnecessary. Cosmetics companies are smart and innovative enough to make products that do not jeopardize our health. In fact, many are already required to make safer products in Europe—showing that they can make the same safer products available for all of us.
Aren't there laws to make sure that ingredients in cosmetics are safe?
- Major loopholes in federal and state law allow the $35 billion per year cosmetics industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing and no monitoring of health effects.
- According to the Food & Drug Administration (the federal agency that regulates the cosmetics industry) the FDA is only able to “...regulate cosmetics after products are released to the marketplace. Neither cosmetic products nor cosmetic ingredients are reviewed or approved by FDA before they are sold to the public. FDA cannot require companies to do safety testing of their cosmetic products before marketing."
- Manufacturers are not required to list all the ingredients in cosmetics because they can identify chemicals as fragrances or as trade secrets.
- Without adequate regulation, many companies are routinely marketing products with ingredients that are poorly studied, not studied at all, or known to pose serious health risks.
- The safety or danger of specific ingredients is often controversial and it can take years to remove ingredients from products, even after the risk is documented.
Safe Cosmetics Fact Sheet pdf file (1 page, 468 KB)
Resources from the National Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
Safe Cosmetics Campaign Fact Sheet (2 MB pdf file)
Cosmetics Fact Sheet: Avoiding Bodily Harm (Washington Toxics Coalition)
Finding Safer Personal Care Products
Not Too Pretty (EWG report on phthalates in cosmetics)
