Most people assume the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates beauty and personal care products in the same way it does food and drugs to protect consumer health and safety. You might be surprised to hear that this could not be farther from the truth: Cosmetics are one of the least regulated consumer products on the market today.
While I’ll never really know what caused my breast cancer (I have no genetic link), the thought of potentially harmful ingredients being in the products that I used, makes me really angry. We shouldn’t have to wonder if the cosmetics or personal care products we used, caused our cancer.
California bill SB 574 would have been the first bill in the world to force companies to publicly disclose the fragrance and flavor chemicals in their beauty and personal care products. Though it did not pass in 2019, a new federal bill, the Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Act of 2019 introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, would require full fragrance and flavor ingredient disclosure on a company’s website and disclosure of a product’s toxic fragrance and flavor ingredients on the product label. One bill after another, we’re stopping at nothing to move the needle toward cosmetics safety, transparency, and full ingredient disclosure.
This is Lucy. Lucy represents thousands of little girls of color in the U.S. who are unjustly exposed to toxic chemicals, like formaldehyde, in their hair products. We know that black women are…
We tested 32 of the most popular beauty products from around the country to find out what exactly is hiding in these products. Grab a beauty product of yours, flip it around, and look at the label. Most likely you will see “fragrance” or “parfum.” Did you know that dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of chemicals can hide under that one little word on beauty, personal care products, and cleaning products? And that scent could lead to serious health consequences.
