Believe it or not, the U.S. does not require the $35 billion cosmetics industry to test any of the chemicals used in its products for harmful health effects. It’s frightening to think that some of these chemicals that are in common cosmetics and personal care products are known or suspected carcinogens and reproductive toxins
What can we do about the safety of the ingredients we use daily in our cosmetics and personal care products?
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a coalition of public health, educational, faith, labor, women's, environmental, and consumer groups. The mission of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is to protect the health of consumers and workers by requiring the cosmetics industry to phase out the use of chemicals that are known or suspected to cause cancer, genetic mutation, or reproductive harm.
Founding organizational members of the Campaign include: Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, The Breast Cancer Fund, Commonweal, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Health Care Without Harm, National Black Environmental Justice Network, National Environmental Trust, and Women's Voices for the Earth.
At the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website, a petition is available for consumers to sign, addressed to companies that make cosmetics and personal care products, demanding that these industries stop using chemicals known or suspected of causing cancer, birth defects, allergic reactions, and other health effects.
Read more from the EWG about cosmetics and personal care products and their ingredients at http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/findings/index.php
Do a "home survey" of your own cosmetic and personal care products. Look up the ingredients at the Environmental Working Group's on-line study http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/index.php
Over 200 companies have signed the "Compact for Safe Cosmetics", agreeing to formulate the products they manufacture domestically and/or globally to use only ingredients that are not known or suspected of causing cancer, mutation, or birth defects: http://www.safecosmetics.org/companies/signers.cfm
Look up the names of the companies whose products you buy on the webpage above. If a name of a company is on the list, write that company thanking them for their pledge and letting them know you will continue to buy their products.
If the company is NOT on the list, or if you find an ingredient that is potentially harmful to human health in one of the products you use, write that company and ask them why that ingredient is in their product and/or why they have not signed the pledge.
www.safecosmetics.org
|
