Apparently, Looks Might Kill

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Looking toward the long term, the compact also asks each company to study other potentially toxic chemicals in its personal care products. This provision is modeled on another, more far-reaching European initiative called REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals), which has not yet passed into law. REACH is based on the precautionary principle -- that is, products should be proven harmless before they are turned loose in the world. This ethos stands in stark contrast to the after-the-fact Band-Aid approach frequently favored by the U.S. government (think Vioxx).

The Bush administration, in concert with chemical industry interests, is lobbying hard against REACH, arguing that it will stifle innovation and impose excessive costs on industry. Nonetheless, CSC and other consumer advocates are pushing back toward not only the immediate goal of safer cosmetics, but also the larger fight to reform U.S. chemicals policy.

The old way to think about chemicals, Brody recently told Common Ground (Dec. 2004), was: ' 'How much of one chemical will give a 50-year-old male worker cancer?' And as long as we all were exposed to less than that amount, we were supposed to be safe.' Instead, Brody says, we should aim for an environmental health policy that places at its center motherhood and the right of children to be born without chemical contamination, whether from the food we eat, the air we breathe, or the products we use.

'What we need to be aiming for is how do we create a society that encourages the birth of healthy children,' Brody told Common Ground. 'Women of childbearing age -- not just pregnant women -- are the canaries in the mine. A world that's safe for young women will also be safe for men and frogs and coral.'

Anjula Razdan is a senior editor of Utne.

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