Personally, I want to thank the EU (European Union) and Canada for their efforts to ban certain questionable ingredients from personal care products. Even if the U.S. is not putting into law similar logical mandates, at least, by default, Americans are getting some of the benefits… (I’ll discuss that more in a minute.)

If you aren’t familiar with the topic of safety in cosmetics, I’ll be reviewing it a lot on this blog, but please feel free to do as much research on your own and post comments below. This way we can all learn from one another.
I’m providing a link to a recent article that addresses this subject well. The article is called:

Cosmetics safety comes under fire

Clicking the title of the article will take you to where I found it – on theolympian.com -it was written by ROBERT COHEN of Newhouse News Service.

Though I thought Robert’s article gave some good info, I found the quotes from both Eric Schwartz (chief operating officer of OPI) and John Bailey (executive vice president for science at the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association) to be…well…”incomplete,” and that maybe “they are not telling the full story.” (Which – if you read the article – is ironically what Bailey suggests of the parties pushing the ban.)

Granted, it is difficult to do a full review in a short article, but I would like to have heard valid evidence supporting the use of toxins by these parties…not that I believe there is any, but would like to hear it, if it truly exists.

As Robert Cohen and so many others have pointed out, “Under U.S. law, the FDA neither tests, reviews nor approves cosmetics and personal-care products before they go on the market…” So, how can there be valid proof when there is no testing?

Bringing this conversation back to my initial comments of wanting to thank the EU and Canada, Cohen’s article highlights some good news for the health conscious: due to bans outside of the U.S., cosmetic manufacturers are starting to reformulate products (sold inside the states) by removing ingredients that propose toxic concerns.

See, when a U.S. product is sold over in Europe, it needs to meet the 2004 EU ban on over a 1000 “chemicals known or strongly suspected of causing cancer, mutation or birth defects.” This means U.S. based companies are changing their products in an effort to retain their international sales.

This works for me in the cases when the manufactures implement those changes in their product lines across the board, and across the world.

However some companies, like the makers of Grecian Formula (hair dyes for men), are forced – by a ban – to remove dangerous toxins due to another countries standards, yet retain that toxic ingredient in the products sold within the U.S. market.

(In the case of Grecian, Cohen’s article points out they have removed lead acetate for their distribution in Canada, but still sell it with this proven harmful ingredient here in the U.S.)

QUESTION: What do you think about the fact that in America you can not cover gray walls in your home with lead in the paint, yet men are still covering their gray hair with lead in the dye?