According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, over 500 companies have agreed to remove ingredients that are suspected to cause cancer, mutation or birth defects from their products. What about the products you are using? Are they manafactured by a company that cares about the health of their consumers or just about profits and the bottom line? Check out the list of companies to find out.
In January 2003, the EU amended the Cosmetics Directive (76/768/EEC) to ban the use of chemicals that are known or strongly suspected of causing cancer, mutation or birth defects. This amendment went into force in September 2004. No such regulation exists in the United States or the majority of other countries. The U.S. FDA website clearly states, "Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, cosmetics and their ingredients are not required to undergo approval before they are sold to the public. Generally, FDA regulates these products after they have been released to the marketplace. This means that manufacturers may use any ingredient or raw material, except for color additives and a few prohibited substances, to market a product without a government review or approval."
The FDA further suggests that consumers protect themselves by reading ingredients on the labels. This is a difficult task given the large number of ingredients. If the ingredients aren't tested for safety by experts, how would consumers really know what is safe or not by looking at the list of ingredients? Ruth Winter has written A Consumer's Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients. This is a valuable tool for conscious consumers. But how many people are going to carry a fat book around with them when they are shopping to know if the product they are buying are safe? There is a flaw in the system.
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