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WITH ALL THE thought we put into what goes in our bodies, it's amazing how little most of us think about what goes on our bodies -- the lotions we rub into chapped skin, the deodorants we swipe under our arms, the lipsticks and blushes we use to brighten our faces. Unfortunately, says Charlotte Brody, executive director of Health Care Without Harm, even if we did investigate what's in the myriad personal care products and cosmetics at our local drugstores, we wouldn't turn up very much information.

'If you asked Utne readers and everybody else in this country 'What happens before these things go on the shelves of the stores?' most people would say that there must be some review process. Cosmetic companies must have to send their formulas and safety studies somewhere,' says Brody, whose organization is a founding member of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a coalition of U.S. health, environmental, and women's groups.

In fact, they don't. The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate the cosmetics industry, nor does any other governmental body. Instead, in a case of the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse, the job of regulating the thousands of chemicals that are used to preserve, dye, and emulsify most of the personal care products and cosmetics on the market -- the very same chemicals, by the way, that are used in industrial manufacturing to soften plastics, clean equipment, and stabilize pesticides -- falls to the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, the industry's voluntary oversight committee.