Every morning, women all over the United States wake up and get ready for the day. They shower, using their shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving gel, and possibly more. Then they move to their face, some of the most delicate skin on your body and cover it with cleanser, toner, moisturizer, lotions, scrubs, serums, sunscreen, and primer. Then comes the makeup: mascara, eye shadow, blush, bronzer, eye liner, brow pencil, lip liner, lip gloss, lip stick, the amount of products we can cake on our faces in endless. We use all these products thinking they are helping us. Making us more fresh, young, and beautiful. However, in reality, these products we use to make us look “natural” can contain hundreds of cancer-causing chemicals. So why do manufacturers sell them to us if they are killing us? Because they can; the government lets them. The laws in place to regulate these products are passive. The government is not doing enough to regulate the chemicals used in and during the manufacturing of products people use daily.
For thousands of years women have searched for ways to alter their appearance. Society has lost touch to what real beauty is. We look through magazines and see pictures of “beautiful” women covered head to toe in cosmetics. Models are subject to hours of time getting covered in body makeup, just to look “natural.” In reality, the pictures we see are just as fictitious as paintings. Formaldehyde, lead acetate, toluene, coal tar, parabens, and phthalates are just a few chemicals that can be found in our personal care products.
According to the President’s Cancer Panel report by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition, “For women the lifetime chance of developing an invasive cancer is one in three, and one in five die from cancer ... More than 1.5 million people were diagnosed with new cases of cancer in 2009”(nrdc.org). If these products are so bad for us why are we they so readily available? The government is not doing enough to stop manufacturers from selling them.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a coalition effort started in 2004. Their mission is to raise awareness and push legislation to do what is necessary to eliminate the dangerous chemicals in cosmetics and personal care products. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics cofounder, the Environmental Working Group, analyzed cosmetics and personal care product ingredients against definitive government, industry, and academic databases of hazardous chemicals and found that more than one in five personal care products contain chemicals linked to cancer, 80 percent contain ingredients that commonly contain hazardous impurities and 56 percent contain penetration enhancers that help deliver ingredients deeper into the skin.” (Safecosmetics.org)
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has another website, a database of products, ingredients, and popular brands. One can search a product they use and if the database has it, they have a list of criteria they use to analyze the product and determine how harmful it may be. Their database only has so much information so the product may or may not be as harmful as it says. However the database can be a good way for people to check to see if products they are using contain harmful manmade chemicals. It contains thousands of products; some of the most well-known brands are among the ranks; Revlon, L’Oreal, Nars, Elizabeth Arden, and Almay, to name a few. Revlon’s Color-Stay mineral blush was among the “10-10 hazard scale product list” (Cosmeticsdatabase.com). According to Revlon’s website, their “Innovative mineral-baked powder technology has a silky, weightless feel for natural, healthy blush color that lasts for up to sixteen hours” (Revlon.com), however, it is ranked to be one of the worst blushes on the market. “The color-stay blush contains forty-two chemicals, the Classic Coastal Creations organic safe alternative the database suggests, contains two.” (Cosmeticsdatabase.com) Brands we have been familiar with for years aren’t always trustworthy. They use marketing words like, “natural, healthy, and organic” to mislead consumers.
