Reproductive Health Reality Check, Sarah Seltzer
Published March 12, 2009
Imagine a group of young teenage girls wandering the tempting aisles of their local Walgreen's or CVS, holding up lipstick tubes and nail-polish bottles for examination. It's a vintage American scene and hardly alarming, given our beauty-focused culture. But while these girls are deciding whether to take a risk with forest-green toenails, sparkly lips or purple eyelids, they may be unknowingly exposing themselves to harmful chemicals. In fact, they probably are.
Several years since the European Union took initial steps to seriously restrict the dangerous chemical content of cosmetics, America lags behind. Environmentalists and scientists argue that the FDA has neither the resources nor the inclination to police the billion-dollar behemoth that is the cosmetics industry.
And while chemicals are unsafe for all, the effect that toxic cosmetics can have on their youngest buyers - teens who may be less discriminating about the products they use - is particularly worrisome.
This past September, the Environmental Working Group studied a sample group of teen women. The results they found [1] were alarming (emphasis mine).
Environmental Working Group (EWG) detected 16 chemicals from 4 chemical families - phthalates, triclosan, parabens, and musks - in blood and urine samples from 20 teen girls aged 14-19. Studies link these chemicals to potential health effects including cancer and hormone disruption. These results ... indicate that young women are widely exposed to this common class of cosmetic preservatives, with 2 parabens, methylparaben and propylparaben, detected in every single girl tested.
As Mia Davis wrote in 2007 for RH Reality Check, [2] the first group of chemicals in the above list, phthalates, can be extremely damaging to the male reproductive system - and the damage can begin in utero. While phthalates do not accrue in the body and are most dangerous during pregnancy, says Stacy Malkan of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, "we are continually exposed to them. You're going to find them in most people."
Parabens [3], on the other hand, mimic the activity of estrogen and have been linked to female-specific disorders including breast cancer. While individual products may have low amounts of parabens, they are found in many products. When Malkan was researching her book on the cosmetic industry, Not Just a Pretty Face [4], she looked at all the products she used as a teenager. "There was makeup, face cream, skin lotion, hair products, perm, hair gel, and hair spray. A lot of them have the same chemicals, like parabens. There were two dozen exposures to parabens in my morning routine."
These two chemical groups don't even touch on the "lead in lipstick" controversy. Consumer advocate group The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found small amounts of lead in lipsticks over a year ago [5]. Malkan says that even trace amounts of lead are dangerous, as lead builds up in the body over time: "If a teenage girl is wearing lipstick with lead in it every day, those exposures could add up and stay with her." Although the FDA was quick to swat down the swelling internet rumors [6] about dangerous lead content in popular lipsticks, they have yet to release public information about their own testing, and are coming under fire [7] for their lack of action on the matter.
Finally, nail polish may be one of the most toxic products of all. A number of campaigns have arisen in the past few years to protect salon workers from the chemicals, which have potentially ugly ramifications for reproductive health and are linked to birth defects. (RH Reality Check covered this issue here [8]). "If you have a toxic environment, it's worst for the workers, but it's not ideal for anyone," says Malkan. With a boom in manicures as an easy and cheap way for women to feel good [9], repeated and prolonged exposure has become more common.
So all of the products listed above are far from safe. And in adolescence, when hormones are fluctuating, the reproductive system is developing, the scientists who conducted the study said that that sensitivity to these chemicals may in fact increase. "We're certainly concerned about teens in particular because during adolescence they're going through a lot of radical changes to their physiology," says Dr. Rebecca Sutton, the staff scientist for EWG who authored the report. "All these changes are guided by hormones, so if we've gone hormonally active ingredients in personal care products entering their bodies, there's a higher risk."
Furthermore, the doctors at the Environmental Working Group found that their teen study participants used an average of 17 (yep, 17) personal care products a day - this was 5 more products than the average woman uses, again increasing their exposure.
Think about the way teenagers behave - experimentation makes up a big part of their lives, no matter how risk-prone their personalities. They are trying on different images and traits before settling into adulthood. Furthermore, young teenage girls are beginning to take a vigorous interest in their looks in order to conform to the newly-noticed (and horribly oppressive) beauty standard. And so, as the results above indicate, young women will spend more time and attention on their toilettes and makeovers than they may when they're older.
In a column for truthdig that also got reprinted in Alternet [10] just last week, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman sees hope for this issue in the European Union. As mentioned above, the EU's regulation and disclosure policies [11] are more stringent and transparent, respectively. Therefore, the substances they've banned provide the insight on product safety that that we can't find at home. And yes, they've banned both phthalates and parabens among other chemicals. One of the reasons Goodman cites for this difference in government policy is that Europeans collectively shoulder the burden of health insurance. Therefore they see regulation as a money-saver down the line and good policy; disease prevention will keep health costs lower for all.
So what to do? Sutton says that parents and teens should not buy based on brands or labels, because toxic chemicals can vary from product to product. She recommends using the Skin Deep [12] database which lists nearly every imaginable makeup product on a scale of toxicity from 1-10, including natural products. The EWG also has a printable their pocket-size shopping guide [13] (pdf) to take along to the makeup counter or drug store. "Some good basic advice is to use fewer products," she says. "And parents can be good role models by using fewer products themselves."
But on a wider scale, it's also important to get involved in lobbying the government and FDA to start regulating these ingredients. Sutton recommends checking out the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics [14] or an activist group that is active in some local safe cosmetics campaigns-including lobbying the California government-called Teens for Safe Cosmetics [15]. The beauty industry will not go down without a fight, Sutton and other activists warn. "It's a powerful industry," she says. "The government by its silence is somewhat complicit in the situation."
