Environmental Working Group recommendations to cosmetics companies

Body care product manufacturers that truly value the health and well-being of their consumers must take these basic steps to ensure their products are safer:

  • All products and ingredients must be tested for safety;
  • All testing data must be made public;
  • All marketing claims must be substantiated and data presented in a publicly accessible way;
  • All ingredients must be listed – no exceptions for fragrance or other proprietary ingredients;
  • All ingredients must meet purity standards at least as protective as those set by FDA for foods, beverages, and medications;
  • All products must meet at a minimum the standards set forth in the EU Cosmetics Directive.

Ingredients that do not belong in cosmetics and personal care products

Known and suspected carcinogens and reproductive or developmental toxins identified by leading public health agencies:

Petroleum-based ingredients with contamination concerns must meet food-grade purity standards:

Many of the cosmetic industry’s own chemical safety assessments reveal that common petroleum-based cosmetic ingredients can be contaminated with a cancer-causing impurity called 1,4-dioxane. Studies show that this chemical readily penetrates the skin. EPA classifies it as a probable human carcinogen, and the National Toxicology Program considers it a known animal carcinogen. Although companies can easily remove it from ingredients during manufacture, tests documenting its common presence in products show that they often don’t, leaving consumers at risk for potential chronic and widespread exposures to this cancer-causing compound.

Preservatives of particular concern:

Preservatives that release detectable levels of known human carcinogen formaldehyde do not belong in personal care products. Lab studies on the brain cells of mammals suggest that methylisothiazolinone is neurotoxic, and may be developmentally neurotoxic as well. Longer chain parabens like Propyl and Butyl paraben produce reproductive and developmental effects in lab animals.

Ingredients best eliminated from specific products
Product type Ingredients to eliminate
Anti-aging products

FDA-sponsored studies have identified a doubling of UV damage to skin among people using AHA-containing products.
Anti-bacterial bar and liquid soaps and other products

The American Medical Association, Food and Drug Administration, and at least 40 researchers from 13 universities and public institutions worldwide have concluded that antimicrobial soaps, such as those containing triclosan or triclocarban, do not work any better than plain soap and water at preventing the spread of infections or reducing bacteria on the skin. These chemicals contaminate people and have unusual hormone disrupting properties according to laboratory tests.
Baby products

The cosmetic industry-funded safety panel recommends against including these chemicals in children’s products.
Skin lighteners

This skin bleaching chemical can cause a skin disease called ochronosis, with “disfiguring and irreversible” blue-black lesions that in the worst cases become permanent, intensively black bumps the size of caviar all over the skin.
Sunscreens

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study reveals that 97 percent of Americans are contaminated with the widely-used sunscreen ingredient oxybenzone, linked to allergies, hormone disruption, and cell damage. Recently available data from an FDA study indicate that a form of vitamin A, retinyl palmitate, when applied to the skin in the presence of sunlight, may speed the development of skin tumors and lesions. Many sunscreen ingredients enhance the absorption of pesticides into the skin.