News Coverage
Natural Beauty
As the popularity of organic personal-care products grows, standards for the industry remain unclear
Published August 19, 2008
You may have seen the promises at cosmetics counters: "Pure." "Natural." "Organic."
Sounds good, especially considering you'll be putting the stuff on your face. Now that the organic revolution that began in health-food stores has reached the beauty industry, healthy-sounding labels adorn personal-care products -- from lipsticks to lotions, polishes to powders.
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So what do they really mean?
Technically, not much -- but they may still be useful in a search for products that are better for your body. Just how important that search is has been increasingly debated in the past year.
On one side: Experts at the Food and Drug Administration and cosmetic companies who maintain that study after study has proven the makeup certification process is safe, and health scares -- for instance, dangerously high levels of lead in lipstick -- are baseless.
On the other: Consumer groups who are pressuring the cosmetic industry to phase out chemicals that have been linked to health hazards.
"Your skin has thousands of pores that are like little mouths that are swallowing what you're putting in your skin," says Craig Minowa, an environmental scientist with the Organic Consumers Association, a Minnesota-based nonprofit. "When you eat something, it goes through your digestive system and the liver can clean out the toxins. But when you put it on your skin, it doesn't get filtered."
That's the kind of claim that's disputed by many experts, clouding the issue with controversy and making it difficult to assess risk.
Andrea Bradley-Stutz decided to play it safe. Concerns over chemicals in nail polish drove Bradley-Stutz, director and an owner of Ology, a spa at Clarian North and West hospitals, to seek out a polish with no formaldehyde, toluene or DBP, chemicals that some consider questionable.
Because Ology offers patients treatments in their rooms, including those in maternity units, Bradley-Stutz didn't want to take any chances.
"There is some concern about whether these chemicals are safe to use among infants," she says. "We needed to find something that was safer and less volatile."
The organic personal-care industry has steadily climbed by about 15 percent a year for the past 15 years. By 2007, organic products accounted for about 15 percent of the personal-care market.
"What this whole natural thing is doing is not taking any chances," says Marilyn Patterson, a cosmetic chemist who owns Natural Cosmetic Solutions in Ontario.
The terms
Words like "natural" and "pure" aren't regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees personal-care products. That means companies can slap buzzwords on their products, making healthy-sounding designations little more than sales pitches.
The term "organic" is trickier. It isn't regulated by the FDA, but some personal-care items are eligible for the "USDA Organic" stamp of approval, given out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to products made with agricultural ingredients that meet its approval.
A new group called the Organic and Sustainable Industry Standards, created four months ago by a group of American companies, including Aveda and L'Oréal, will begin doling out OASIS seals. To receive one, a company will need to prove that its product is at least 85 percent organic. The Organic Consumers Association, however, has called the system useless and misleading.
The concerns
Parabens, a common preservative, and phthalates, found in fragrance and nail products, have been linked to cancer and reproductive health.
Another group of ingredients often cited as problematic are those that end in "eth" (such as sodium laureth sulfate), or contain the letters "PEG." It's not these chemicals that are the problem; rather, it's 1,4-dioxane, a toxin created when the product is ethoxylated, a process that makes it water-soluble. The government considers 1,4-dioxane a probable human carcinogen and limits the amount that can appear in any product.
But few people have contact with just one product -- and that's precisely the problem, say those working to make cosmetics safer.
The average woman uses a dozen products a day that contain about 126 synthetic chemicals, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of environmental, women's and public health groups sounding the call for stricter government regulation.
"Those exposures add up," says Stacy Malkan, spokeswoman for the campaign. "We're learning more about the toxicity of chemicals all the time and the dramatic impact that they can have on our bodies."
Some experts say such concerns are mostly unfounded. Take last fall's widely circulated report from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics on lipstick's lead content ("Are your lips full of lead?" read one typical headline). Cosmetics companies say lead, a neurotoxin, is present only in trace amounts. The FDA has never found any cause for alarm. Still, after the ensuing public outcry prompted a call from the U.S. Senate for more investigation, the FDA is doing new tests.
The solutions
Since selling points like "all-natural" aren't regulated, it's up to you to dig a little deeper.
That might mean checking out company Web sites or calling corporate offices to learn more about the ingredients used. The Environmental Working Group has compiled Skin Deep, an online resource that contains detailed safety assessments of more than 25,000 personal-care groups. Available at www.cosmeticsdatabase.com, Skin Deep also lets you compare products within a group, such as eye shadows.
Whole Foods Market has introduced a "Premium Body Care" standard that guarantees the product does not contain any one of 250-plus ingredients. These products must all meet rigid standards, including being primarily plant-based, 95 percent petroleum-free and performing well.
Like organic or natural foods, organic or natural cosmetics may come at a premium price. For many, they're worth it.
"When you're putting that many different chemicals on your body," says Minowa, "cleaning that up is comparable to quitting smoking."
