Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 (Not)

Oh spare me. The Environmental Working Group should know better than to focus on cosmetics using the “Cosmetic Safety Act of 2010”: “safety” concerns should be motivating a righteous noise about a comprehensive chemical policy in this country. They should be hammering on the Toxic Chemical Safety Act of 2010 (TCSA). That will solve most of the problem. Any parent knows you’ve got to choose your battles wisely. Let’s make TCSA well designed and implemented, then let’s see what is left to clean up with the cosmetic industry and other product sectors.

Energy is finite and, when it comes to politics, energy is expensive. If EWG:
– thought more comprehensively about safety
– if they really understood the cosmetic industry
– if they were honest that the same chemicals in cosmetics are in medicine, household goods, and food (wow!)
then they would recognize that it all leads back to the chemicals that are made and allowed to be used in this country. They would use their energy and money to regulate chemicals instead of one portion of the consumer products industry.

ALL consumer products should be safe. This proposed Cosmetic Safety Act is making one consumer product group responsible for a small part of the pollution and safety risk we all face. Folks – why make it hard for thousands of small businesses when the responsibility sits with the chemical industry in this country and those of us who have the voices to change it? Hello!! Cosmetics are blended chemicals. The cosmetic companies don’t make the chemicals, chemical companies do. How do we push them to make safer chemicals?

I advocate that we delay this poorly written Act that will hurt small cosmetic companies and not really make cosmetics any safer and focus on the real issue: comprehensive chemical reform.

(Oh – and if you watch the video that they made, you might want to note that when the narrator reels off her chemical body burden, most of the chemicals are products from food or household furniture, not from cosmetics).