Cough. Cough. Coughcoughocough.
Look at what now exists? The Safe Cosmetics Alliance. It sounds a lot like the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, right? Except it’s not. It’s an industry-funded campaign that appears to me to be designed to confuse you.
“The cosmetics industry is committed to maintaining its high safety standards (1) by advocating that laws keep pace with science and technology (2). We support new regulations to help strengthen FDA oversight (3), increase transparency (4), and enhance consumer confidence (5).” [Numbers ours.]
Let’s fact check it, yeah?
(1) This is a good time to refresh everyone’s memory about safety testing and the cosmetics industry. Yes, they do test their products’ ingredients for safety. Most large companies have large teams of scientists who do just that, and we believe, as we’ve said in the book, that according to whatever criteria they are using for “safe” that indeed, their products pass the test. “Safe” is a vague word, though. It’s safe because it doesn’t give me a rash? It’s safe now and we just really HOPE it’s safe to use daily for decades? It’s safe because we don’t know that it’s for sure unsafe? It’s safe because we are certain it’s benign to the human body and to nature?
If this said “The cosmetics industry is committed to ensuring that personal care products are free of reproductive toxicants, carcinogens, hormone disruptors and neurotoxins,” I’d feel a lot better about that. Precise language, clear promises, good stuff. But it doesn’t.
(2) As we all know, cosmetics regulations haven’t really changed since 1938, when they were written. Since then, the industry has exploded in size, revenue, ingredients used and certainly technology. So I’m not totally sure what they’re saying here, but it strikes me as completely ludicrous (personal opinion).
(3) As the laws are currently written, the FDA does not have the manpower, legal authority or budget to regulate the cosmetics industry and we have to assume that’s exactly how the Personal Care Products Council wants it, since they spend time and money lobbying against regulation, and have launched impressive, persuasive campaigns throughout history any time anyone has tried. (See our regulation chapter in the book for a refresher on this.) That said, the industry’s counter-take on the Safe Cosmetics Act has been that they agree that it’s time for the laws to change. As you can well imagine, however, the difference between what the Act thinks the laws should say, and what the PCPC (the industry trade group representing the industry) thinks it should say, is gigantic.
(4) The most transparent thing about a beauty product is its ingredient label, with the very important exception of its fragrance—which is in almost all products, including things like blush and eye shadow. Fragrance is at the top of our personal “no exceptions” list, and we think it should at the top of yours too. But hey—if the companies want to go totally transparent and offer up exactly what safety testing they’re doing, for instance, I would love to see that, and I bet you would too. We’d also love to see minutes from their meetings and for them to return journalists’ calls.
(5) This part sounds true! They want you to have faith in their products so that you will buy them. Unfortunately, they’re not meeting any of the criteria that would make us feel better. How about you?
