This holiday, shop safer

When we say cosmetics, we mean personal care and beauty products. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration defines cosmetics as: “Articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body…for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance.” https://www.fda.gov/industry/regulated-products/cosmetics-overview

Examples of cosmetics products include skin moisturizers, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail polishes, eye and facial makeup preparations, shampoos, permanent waves, hair colors, toothpastes, and deodorants, as well as any material intended for use as a component of a cosmetic product.

Hair care, skin & body care, makeup, personal hygiene, nail care

By safe cosmetics, we mean non-toxic, i.e., not poisonous. Non-toxic beauty and personal care products are generally safe to eat, breathe, and absorb into your body. They don’t contain chemicals harmful to human health or the environment. There’s no way to guarantee any substance as truly ‘safe’ – water is non-toxic and yet is not safe to consume in very vast quantities in a short time frame, for example. However, when we say safe, we mean not linked to serious health effects like cancer, developmental or reproductive harm, neurological harm, endocrine disruption, organ-system toxicity, allergies or irritation, or environmental harm.

It is important to understand that not all naturally derived chemicals are “safe” and that not all synthetic ingredients are toxic. Arsenic and lead are naturally occurring and yet poisonous while we know much more about the safety of certain synthetic ingredients than about many botanicals which have not yet been tested sufficiently. Currently the word “natural” has no legal meaning on personal product labels and the word “organic” only has meaning when it refers to an FDA certified food or agricultural product.

The U.S. federal government’s agency that regulates the safety of personal care products is the Food & Drug Administration, which regulates cosmetics under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA).

Most of us assume beauty and personal care products are tested for safety before they are sold. Reality could not be farther from the truth. Companies can and do legally sell cosmetics with chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and reproductive harm, and a shocking number of dangerous chemicals hide in personal care products and cosmetics under the word “fragrance” on product labels.

The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (FFDCA) includes 112 pages of standards for food and drugs, but just two pages for cosmetic safety. The cosmetics title of the FFDCA, which has not been amended significantly since it was enacted more than 80 years ago, provides the FDA with virtually no power to regulate the safety of an estimated $100 billion domestic cosmetic industry.

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