By Rebecca Ephraim, Dragonfly Media. Posted April 6, 2005. From 'The Ugly Side of Pretty'.
In a massive undertaking, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) analyzed the health and safety reviews of 10,000 ingredients in personal care products. The EWG discovered that there is scant research available to document the safety or health risks of low-dose repeated exposures to chemical mixtures. But the absence of data should never be mistaken for proof of safety. The EWG points out that the more we study low-dose exposures, the more we understand that they can cause adverse effects ranging from the subtle and reversible, to effects that are more serious and permanent.
Based on that, the EWG has developed Skin Deep, a sophisticated online rating system that ranks brand-name products on their potential health risks and the absence of basic safety evaluations. To try out its usefulness, we ran a list of the personal care products that Shelley Carpenter uses. Six of the approximately 10 products she applies daily were recognized and scored. Among those was one product that may pose cancer risks and three products with ingredients that may contain impurities linked to breast cancer; another two, called "penetration enhancers," increase exposure to other products that are carcinogenic, six of the products contain ingredients that are unstudied or lack sufficient safety data and, despite Carpenter's efforts to avoid them, one product contains ingredients that are allergens. On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being of the highest health concern, Carpenter's score was a 6.7. What's yours?
Janet Nudelman, of the Safe Cosmetics Campaign, says she uses Skin Deep regularly to look up ingredients in personal care products to get a safety reading -- and make a purchase decision based on the results. "Consumers have real power they are not exercising," she said. "We need to let cosmetic companies know we're going to not buy their products unless they make a strong unwavering commitment to safety."