Environmental Impact

An Unregulated Market

The cosmetics industry is perhaps one of the most unregulated industries that currently exists—many ingredients in cosmetic products are not tested for safety at all. In fact, The Environmental Working Group revealed in 2004 that 89 percent of 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products had not been evaluated for safety by the FDA. This means that companies can market ingredients that are known to pose potentially serious health risks.

Problematic Ingredients

Health risks posed by cosmetics can include anything from allergic reactions to cancer, and the lack of safety standards allows manufacturers to use some very harmful ingredients, such as Thimerosal, a preservative that contains neurotoxic mercury, and paraben preservatives, which have been found in breast tumor samples.

Cosmetics with sunscreen protection like benzophenone (benzophenone-3), homosalate and octyl-methoxycinnamate (octinoxate) have shown estrogenic activity in lab tests, while padimate-O and parsol 1789 have the potential to damage DNA when illuminated with sunlight. Beware of lead too: The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, an advocacy group, recently revealed that randomly selected, store-bought lipsticks contained lead at levels that exceed the FDA's regulations for lead in food.

Other harmful ingredients found in moisturizers include carcinogenic coal tar, used in artificial dyes such as FD&C Blue 1 and FD&C Green 3, and fragrance, which is usually a conglomeration of chemicals. Because they're protected as "trade secrets," companies aren't required to disclose every chemical used in fragrances, but they often include hormone-disrupting phthalates; the neurotoxin toluene; volatile organic compounds methyl ethyl ketone and methyl isobutyl ketone; the probable carcinogens benzyl chloride and methylene chloride; and other allergenic petrochemicals.

Meaningless Labels

It's not common to find any of these labels attached to your favorite cosmetics: fragrance-free, unscented, hypoallergenic, non-comedogenic, cruelty-free and organic. The labels sound reassuring, but too often these labels have little, if any, meaning.

Packaging

Most cosmetics are sold in plastic containers, a product made from nonrenewable fossil fuels. All too often, these containers aren't recycled and go straight to landfills. Even when manufacturers claim that packaging is recyclable because it's made from a recyclable plastic resin, such as #1 polyethylene terephthalate (PET), recycling programs won't accept the containers due to their shape or the fact that the type of plastic resin isn't indicated anywhere on the packaging.

And despite claims to the contrary, animals are commonly used to determine levels of skin irritancy, eye tissue damage and toxicity caused by ingredients used in personal care products.

Resources:

EcoCert: www.ecocert.com

BDIH: www.kontrollierte-naturkosmetik.de

USDA National Organic Program: www.ams.usda.gov/nop

Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics: www.leapingbunny.org

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics: www.safecosmetics.org

The Consumer's Union Guide to Environmental Labels: www.eco-labels.org

Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database: www.cosmeticsdatabase.com