 The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a coalition of public health, educational, religious, labor, womens, environmental and consumer groups with a goal to protect the health of consumers and workers by requiring the health and beauty industry to phase out the use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other health problems and replace them with safer alternatives.
Founding campaign members include: Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, The Breast Cancer Fund, Commonweal, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, National Black Environmental Justice Network, National Environmental Trust, and Women's Voices for the Earth.
History
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics consumer campaign began in 2002 with the release of a report, Not Too Pretty: Phthalates, Beauty Products and the FDA.
For the report, environmental and public health groups contracted with a laboratory to test 72 name-brand, off-the-shelf beauty products for the presence of phthalates, a family of industrial chemicals linked to permanent birth defects in the male reproductive system.
The lab found phthalates in nearly three quarters of the products tested, though the chemicals were not listed on any of the labels. A second report, Pretty Nasty, documented similar product test results in Europe.
In October 2005, the Environmental Working Group released Skin Deep: A Safety Assessment of Ingredients in Personal Care Products. This computer investigation into the health and safety assessments on more than 10,000 personal care products found major gaps in the regulatory safety net for these products. Also available is an online rating system that ranks products on their potential health risks and the absence of basic safety evaluations. The core of the analysis compares ingredients in 7,500 personal care products against government, industry, and academic lists of known and suspected chemical health hazards.
Actions
In February 2003, the European Union passed a new amendment to their Cosmetics Directive that prohibits the use of known or suspected carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins (a.k.a. CMRs) from cosmetics. This amendment went into force in September 2004.
In spring 2004, members of The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and more than 50 other organizations signed a letter asking cosmetics companies and personal care product companies to sign the Compact for Safe Cosmetics (Compact for the Global Production of Safer Health and Beauty Products), a pledge to remove toxic chemicals and replace them with safer alternatives in every market they serve.
On February 8, 2007, representatives of The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and environmentalist David Steinman held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. regarding the presence of the carcinogenic petrochemical 1,4-dioxane in children's and adult's bath and beauty products. Held with participation from the Environmental Working Group, the conference highlighted a range of products including name-brand baby shampoos and bubble baths that were found in lab tests to have the carcinogenic petrochemical in significant amounts, although it was never included in product labeling. The press conference also called for official FDA oversight of the cosmetics and personal care products industry, which is currently subject only to suggestions from the FDA.
Environmental Working Group
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an activist environmental organization. It specializes in environmental investigations in the areas of toxins, agricultural subsidies, public lands, and corporate accountability. They are a non-profit organization. Their funding is from "private foundations, individuals and select corporations." One of its funders is the Florence and John Schumann Foundation, headed by Bill Moyers. EWG was founded in 1993 by Ken Cook and Richard Wiles, and is headquartered in Washington DC in the United States.
A sister organization, the EWG Action Fund, is the lobbying arm of the organization.
Issue Areas and Projects
EWG works on three main policy or issue areas: toxic chemicals and human health; farming and agricultural subsidies; and public lands and natural resources. 52% of EWG's resources go to toxic chemicals and human health.
Toxic chemicals and human health
The organization has created a cosmetics safety database, a series of studies testing for the presence of chemicals in people's bodies (also known as body burden), and a national database of tap water testing results from public water utilities.
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