Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey and two colleagues last week filed a bill designed to get harmful chemicals out of personal care products.
The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 would tighten up standards for ingredient safety, which, in their current form, are shamefully weak. That problem was highlighted last spring when an investigation by reporters from the Chicago Tribune tested 50 brands of skin lightening cream and found that six contained dangerous—not to mention illegal—levels of the toxic chemical mercury.
Under the existing law, which is more than 70 years old, manufacturers are not required to fully disclose their products’ ingredients (often, labels include vague terms like “fragrance”). That shortcoming is made all the more dangerous given the use of potentially harmful ingredients in common, everyday products, from lipsticks that contain lead to baby shampoos made with formaldehyde.
The proposed law would require companies to conduct safety testing of the ingredients they use, and include a full, detailed list of ingredients on their labels and websites. Perhaps more important, it would also phase out ingredients linked to health problems such birth defects, cancer and developmental problems.
In addition, it calls for the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services to conduct random testing for contaminants in cosmetics. It would also require companies to report adverse health effects from their products to the Food and Drug Administration, and would grant the FDA the authority to issue recalls for products that don’t meet safety standards.
In an announcement of the bill from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, Maryann Donovan, a researcher with the University of Pittsburgh’s Cancer Institute, said, “The cosmetics industry says the amounts of potentially toxic chemicals in their products are so small that they carry no risk, but we know that for some chemicals small doses can have big effects. We need to better understand the short- and long-term health effects resulting from small doses of toxic chemicals, repeated daily exposures, exposures during fetal or infant development, and exposures to mixtures of chemicals in personal care products.”
Markey’s co-sponsors are U.S. Reps. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, and Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin. “From lipstick to lotion, our medicine cabinets are filled with cosmetics that may contain potentially dangerous chemicals,” Markey said in the announcement, “This important bill closes a gaping hole in our federal laws that allows potentially dangerous chemicals to remain in the cosmetic products we use every day.”
The Personal Care Product Council responded with its own statement, saying the industry group shares the lawmakers’ desire to improve product safety and government oversight, but slamming the specifics of the bill.
“We are concerned that the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 as written is not based on credible and established scientific principles, would put an enormous if not impossible burden on FDA, and would create a mammoth new regulatory structure for cosmetics, parts of which would far exceed that of any other FDA-regulated product category including food or drugs,” the group said.
More information on the bill can be found at www.safecosmetics.org. In addition, the Environmental Working Group has a comprehensive, detailed data base that lists the ingredients in thousands of personal care products, as well as any related health concerns, at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.
