Sexy Hot Beauty

Personal care and hygiene products from toothpaste to eyeshadow contain thousands of largely unregulated chemicals that could pose serious damage to your health.

Seemingly innocuous personal-care products contain a host of largely unregulated chemicals and toxic ingredients. Some of those chemicals — phthalates, formaldehyde, petroleum, parabens, benzene and lead — have been variously linked to breast cancer, endometriosis, reproductive disorders, birth defects and developmental disabilities in children.

Women and girls should be particularly concerned, as our bodies are uniquely susceptible to certain environmental chemicals. Women have a greater percentage of fat in comparison to men, so fat-soluble chemicals such as parabens and toluene tend to be more readily absorbed and fatty breast tissue can be a long-term storage site for some of the more persistent toxic chemicals.

Hormones also play a role: Synthetic chemicals such as alkylphenols (found in some detergents) and bisphenol A (found in hard plastics) can mimic natural estrogens in the body — and excess estrogen can play a role in the development of breast cancer.

Childbearing women may also pass toxins to fetuses in utero or to newborns when breastfeeding.

But U.S. consumers are left in the dark about vital safety information: Cosmetic companies are not required to label many of their products’ ingredients, and the Food and Drug Administration does not mandate premarket safety testing of those ingredients.

And that’s why the California Safe Cosmetics Act is such a landmark achievement.
Signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last October and taking effect in 2007, it requires manufacturers to disclose product ingredients found on state or federal lists of chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects.

The law further authorizes the state to investigate the health impacts of chemicals in cosmetics, and requires manufacturers to supply health-related information about their ingredients. Finally, the act enables the state to regulate products in order to assure the safety of salon workers.

California is the first state in the nation to pass such legislation, thus serving as a model for the other 49. “This is an important disclosure bill, and an important victory for women’s health,” says Jeanne Rizzo of the Breast Cancer Fund. “California has set the stage for states to assert regulatory authority around toxic chemicals in cosmetics, which the federal government has thus far refused to lead on.”

Story from AlterNet