A Push for Safe Beauty Products Green Living Families.com

A Push for Safe Beauty Products

As I’ve warned before, your beauty products may be doing you harm. Right now, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t approve ingredients used in beauty products before they hit the shelves. Instead, that responsibility of safety falls on the beauty product companies. Still, there could be lead in your lipstick, lead acetate in your hair dye, and even formaldehyde and 1, 4-dioxane in you baby’s shampoo.

But, that may change soon. The Safe Cosmetics Act was introduced in 2011. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is hoping to convince the House of Representatives to support this bill, which would require the FDA’s approval of ingredients.

Lisa Archer, co-founder and former director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and current director for the environmental group Friends of the Earth wants to remind consumers that continued exposure to even small amounts of toxins can harm them. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics encourages consumers to visit their web site to find out just what is in the cosmetics they are using.

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So far, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics efforts have made an impact on one manufacturer. Johnson & Johnson pledged earlier this year to make “a global commitment to remove a number of commonly used ingredients from our baby and beauty consumer products” because the ingredients may be harmful. Still, the company believes all products currently on the market are safe. By 2015, Johnson & Johnson promises to have removed any potentially toxic chemicals from its cosmetics. The company also plans to have all toxic ingredients removed from baby products by the end of this year.

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is also targeting retailers as to who sells what they view as the safest cosmetics. Highest on the list (and probably not a big surprise) is Whole Food Market. In second place for most concerned over cosmetic safety was CVS. Who was on the bottom? Oddly enough, it was Macy’s, who seems to believe the companies are doing enough to ensure consumer safety.