Breaking: Parabens Banned in Denmark
Fantastic news coming out of Denmark. The country’s environment ministry announced today that it was banning two parabens in products for kids under 3, making it the first in Europe to ban those pesky hormone disruptors. Hey, it only applies to kids’ products, but it’s a HUGE start. I’m curious to see what will happen. Will companies start reformulating for Denmark only? Will they just replace parabens with another cheap synthetic preservative like phenoxyethanol, which is also on our black list in the book? Will the EU follow suit? Will the United States? (That last one was a joke. Kind of.)
You can read all about it in Danish or stay tuned for more news from us. And if you speak Danish, would you be a doll and email us at nomoredirtylooks at gmail dot com? Grazie!
Wow, that’s fantastic! I really hope it does get banned in the rest of the EU and I can’t wait!
Great news! We’ll see what happens next.
While we are waiting for a translation we can read the SCCS opinion on parabens.
http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/consumer_safety/docs/sccs_o_041.pdf
It doesn’t look like parabens will be banned in the EU any time soon given the current state of evidence on the issue. I am interested to find out what the Danish thinking is, but my guess is that they will be on their own on this one.
According to Google translate the article says:
“A new study from the Consumer Council shows that consumers are tired of having to decide whether a product contains hormone-disrupting substances or not. Consumers want politicians to take responsibility and to ban the substances.
Two out of three consumers do not know what substances they must avoid to reduce the risk of exposure to endocrine disruptors.
Therefore, 97 percent of consumers have labels on products with endocrine disrupters, and 80 percent want an outright ban on use of substances that are proven endocrine disruptors.
Politicians must prohibit hormone chemistry
Many also believe that it should be forbidden to use substances that are suspected of being endocrine disruptors.
Responsibility puts consumers from producers who need to be using hormone disrupters, and the politicians who should ban the substances.
It shows the Consumer Council’s new study of Danish attitudes to endocrine disruptors.
We can not wait for manufacturers
“Consumer response sends a clear signal that we are tired of constantly having to decide whether our children’s toys or our grooming products contain endocrine chemistry. We can no longer wait for the producers’good will. Politicians must draw the line, which is exactly what happened with the ban on bisphenol A in baby bottles and make sure that we get a general ban on substances that may be endocrine disruptors, “says Consumer Council chairman Camilla Hersom.
Cocktail Effect must be investigated
Many consumers in the survey also believe that politicians should spend more resources to investigate what substances may be endocrine disruptors. Either alone or in combination with other drugs – the so-called cocktail effect”
I’m so over company’s using us for guinea pig’s to be honest, WAY TO OFTEN am I reading and / or finding out the hard way that little to no research has been done on long term effects of most substances in our products today. Something doesn’t kill someone they release it, with more often than not the general public and consumers being the ones that have to give the feedback, “Oh I have cancer or hormone problems or this and that now, and what do the company’s instantly say? There is no proof it was us, well there is no proof it WASN’T EITHER, like I said we are guinea pig’s, this stuff should be STUDIED and STUDIED for decades to prove its safe extremely long term before its even THOUGHT about being released. The government has a responsibility to act on this but it takes a lot of people to get angry and demand it first (not sure why they don’t act out of pure health concerns, probably the corporations have paid them too much money to get it passed in the first place) this all needs to change.