EWG strongly supports cosmetics companies that strive to make the safest possible products. Unfortunately, with major gaps in current cosmetics law, some manufacturers don’t always choose the safest ingredients. The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 would help close these gaps. Current law requires a...

Over the past decade, Environmental Working Group has uncovered either hazardous or untested cosmetics ingredients everywhere our research has taken us — in product tests, in ingredient label surveys and even in people. In our biomonitoring studies, we sent blood and urine samples from 20 teenage...

Green chemistry is one of those ideas that sounds great – until you look closely and find a bevy of devils lurking in the details. That’s the problem with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to implement the state’s much ballyhooed Green Chemistry initiative, conceived as a means of restricting...

Earlier this week, I joined a wide array of public health advocates to thank and honor Maryland Delegate James Hubbard and Senator Brian Frosh for their leadership in the successful effort to ban the plastics chemical BPA from drinking containers statewide.  The lawmakers received the “Children’s...

Last in a series of guest blogs by best-selling author Dan Goleman A friend who helped start a line of shampoos for a famous hairdresser confides that, truth to tell, every shampoo is built around just four basic types of chemicals. The first is surfactants, cleaning agents that strip dirt off hair....

Second in a series of guest blogs by best-selling author Dan Goleman Consider a box of microwaveable, butter-flavored popcorn. The label assures buyers it has zero grams of trans-fat and “zero mg cholesterol.” But the ingredients list fails to mention that the savory butter taste and mouth-watering...

If the consequences weren’t so serious, it would be entertaining to watch the chemical industry’s top lobbyists scramble to defend the signature toxic chemical of the new millennium, bisphenol-A (BPA).  This is a chemical with some serious toxic muscle.  It’s not just that BPA is a clear and...

When life’s a beach – and also when it’s not – we all need a sunscreen that gets the job done.   With skin cancer the most common of all malignancies and bogus claims and hype fogging the sun care products aisle, you’d think the federal Food and Drug Administration would step up the pace...

Michael Potter, who runs a company that cans organic foods in Michigan, has a problem. He doesn’t want to sell Eden Food’s products in cans lined with epoxy resin containing bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic estrogen linked to a variety of potential health hazards. But, as he told Washington Post reporter...

There’s a lot to like about Coca-Cola’s bid for green cred at the 2010 Winter Olympics.  A key sponsor of the Vancouver games, the multinational maker of more than 3,000 beverages  is boasting a no-waste, carbon-neutral presence, with coolers that don’t emit greenhouse gases, staff uniforms and...