Changes in the Beauty Industry

[seirish]

So who's policing the industry? Itself. The main testing/enforcement arm of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance ***ociation - a manufacturer's group - is the industry-funded Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel. And while the industry is hyper-intent on creating products that do no harm - imagine the backlash if people started breaking out in welts from eye shadow or hair gel - self-regulated industries have a long track record of coming to grief.

Until recently, the FDA hasn't been much help, as it has little sway over personal care products. But that's changing. The FDA recently told the cosmetics industry that it intends to enforce a law requiring companies to inform consumers if a personal care product lacks safety data. The result could be a warning label on cosmetics stating that their safety hasn't been determined. "The FDA is threatening to change the way the entire industry operates," says EWG spokesperson Lauren Sucher. "We think it's great."

The beauty biz is also feeling the heat abroad. In the fall of 2004, the European Union (EU) banned the sale of all cosmetics containing hundreds of chemicals known or strongly believed to cause cancer, mutations and birth defects (the Skin Deep report lists 450 ingredients). The FDA has banned only nine.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of health and environmental groups, has challenged American cosmetics companies to conform to the EU standards within three years. Already, 88 companies have signed the group's Compact for Safe Cosmetics. Not surprisingly, all of them are natural products firms, including Aubrey, Terressentials, Elixir Body Care and Garden of Eve. But in a positive move, some mega-companies - L'Oreal, Revlon and Unilever - have agreed to remove two of the most worrisome phthalates, which are particularly troubling chemicals banned by the EU. To learn which companies have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, visit www.safecosmetics.org.

Written by Carol Kahn from Vegetarian Times

[theresa]

Shana references a quote from EWG - here is the website as an FYI:
http://www.ewg.org

The website has some good info including a cosmetic safety database. While it is not all-inclusive of every brand, you can add brands/products to the database so that they might be reviewed in the future.