Apparently, Looks Might Kill

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Additionally, thanks to a major loophole in the federal law regarding chemicals, only chemicals developed after 1976 require health and safety testing (and minimally at that), which allows the cosmetics industry to put untold amounts of chemicals that have been linked to cancer and reproductive harm (and found lodged in human breast and fat tissue, as well as breast milk) into our shampoos, shaving creams, and hair sprays. As a result, says Brody, we have adequate safety and health data for only about 10 to 12 percent of the chemicals we're exposed to daily.

A heartening trend in Europe, however, is giving consumer activists like Brody some hope. The European Union (EU) recently passed a law banning the use of suspected CMRs -- carcinogens, reproductive toxins, and mutagens -- in any cosmetics or personal care products sold in the 25 EU member countries. Not wanting to miss out on the lucrative European market, all of the major multinational cosmetics companies have since reformulated their products. Sounds good, right? Wrong. Astonishingly, instead of making the safer formulations available globally, these companies are still peddling the old lotions, nail polishes, and lipsticks that are loaded with CMRs here in the United States and elsewhere. After all, our government doesn't require the safer formulas, and the chemicals industry is only too happy to maintain the status quo.

'The American Chemistry Council is balking at anybody looking for safer ingredients because it means they'll have less business,' says Jeanne Rizzo, executive director of the Breast Cancer Fund, another founding member of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.

Hoping to piggyback on the new EU law, CSC has mailed a compact to 250 cosmetics companies asking them to make their reformulated products available globally. As of press time, CSC had some success with smaller, organic companies, but none of the large or conventional cosmetics companies had signed on. (For a complete list of the cosmetics companies that have pledged to reformulate globally, see www.safecosmetics.org.)

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