Putting on your face could cause ugly health problems
Chemicals in cosmetics linked to cancer, birth defects
When Tracey Naly shops for beauty products, she reads the label to make sure it doesn’t contain alcohol because it dries her skin.
Naly’s friend, Katie Fordham, admits that she doesn’t really check the ingredients in her makeup, perfumes and shampoos at all.
If it’s a reputable brand, “I trust the company,” said Fordham, as the two toted bags from their shopping trip in downtown Seattle.
Scientists say that some of the chemicals found in commonly used health and beauty products can, in sufficient quantity, cause cancer, birth defects or disrupt hormone function.
Ingredients called dibutyl phthalates — a chemical used to soften plastics and found in nail polish and countless other consumer items — have been linked to development problems in the male genitals of humans and rats.
“The government is supposed to protect the people from these sorts of things,” said Jimm Harrison, co-owner of Spirit of Beauty Nutritional Skin Care, a Bellevue-based company that strives to make safer, environmentally friendly products.
“Women for the most part thought that someone was minding the store in terms of the ingredients in cosmetics,” said Janet Nudelman, a policy director at the non-profit Breast Cancer Fund in San Francisco.
“The cosmetics industry in the United States regulates itself,” Nudelman said.”That’s not the case in other countries.”
The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for overseeing the safety of cosmetics, soaps, deodorants, shampoos, fragrances and other personal-care products.
Unlike the medicines regulated by the agency, these items aren’t reviewed by the FDA before they’re sold to consumers.
If a product causes health problems once it’s on the market, the FDA can ask for safety information from the manufacturer to prove it’s OK.
Industry officials say the system works well and that there’s no cause for alarm.
“The proof is in the marketplace,” said John Bailey, former director of the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors.
“FDA gets very few consumer complaints about cosmetic products.”
Manufacturers must make sure the chemicals are safe, and if the products are used as instructed, they should not cause ill effects — even after years of use, said Bailey, now the vice president of science with the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association, a national trade group.
People are exposed to the chemicals when they are absorbed by the skin, inhaled as fumes or ingested, when applied as lipstick, for example.
Shoppers more interested in whether an item will give their hair bounce or extra shine can be stymied by dozens of tongue-twisting ingredients.
And seemingly more-straightforward labels calling items are “natural,” “organic” or “hypoallergenic” can be misleading.
That’s because the FDA hasn’t established official definitions for these terms.
“So companies can use them on cosmetic labels to mean anything or nothing at all,” according to the FDA’s Web site.
Critics note that consumers use dozens of personal-care products daily and argue that potentially hazardous chemicals shouldn’t be used in the first place.
The European Union has banned more than 1,000 ingredients considered unsafe for use in cosmetics.
Some big-name nail polish companies recently agreed to phase out the dibutyl phthalates.
The chemical has been banned from use in personal-care products sold in the EU, but it is legal here.
Bailey said the nail polishes are safe: “In the (United States), the use of phthalates was well below any level of concern.
The phasing out is a marketing decision, not a safety decision.”
There also are concerns about the increased use of nanotechnology — compounds thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair.
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