Killer Lipstick: Toxic Cosmetics Discussion Coming to Missoula
Read the story at NewWest.netBy Emily Darrell, 9-21-07
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What do rising rates of learning disabilities, male infertility, and breast cancer have in common? According to Stacy Malkan, communications director of Health Care Without Harm, founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and self-described “recovering makeup addict,” they could be linked to the products –- soap, lotion, shampoo, shaving cream –- we put on our bodies every day.
In conjunction with the Missoula-based national environmental health and justice organization Women’s Voices for the Earth, Malkan is coming to Missoula on November, 1 to promote her forthcoming book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Cosmetics Industry, an account of her fight to get toxic chemicals taken out of everyday personal care products.
The European Union has banned cosmetics companies from using over 1,100 potentially harmful chemicals, while the United States has only banned nine, Malkan says. Since 2002 Malkan and other members of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics have been pressuring American cosmetics companies to make their products safer. While Malkan says most of the companies have been “largely unresponsive” to the campaign’s efforts, some strides have been made.
“We’ve seen a major shift in nail polish manufacturers,” Malkan says. Several companies that make nail polish, including Estee Lauder, recently stopped using dibutyl phthalate in their polishes, a chemical that has been linked in some studies to cancer in lab animals and infertility in human males.
Malkan says that there tends to be little difference, chemical-wise, between high-end cosmetics companies and more inexpensive drugstore brands. She also claims that many brands that tout themselves as “organic” or “natural” may not be any safer. Unlike with food, she says, when it comes to cosmetics “organic doesn’t have any legal definition.”
The average American women uses 10-12 personal care products a day, exposing themselves to around 180 potentially harmful chemicals, according to Malkan. The campaign has a website, www.cosmeticsdatabase.com, where consumers can go to find out what types of chemicals are in the products they use. Since Malkan began researching the effects of chemicals in cosmetics, her own personal grooming habits have changed somewhat. “I stopped dying my hair,” she says, “which was kind of painful.”
The event will be held at North Urey Lecture Hall at the University of Montana on November, 1 from 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. It will include a Malkan-led panel discussion and presentation with environmental scientists, grassroots organizers and entrepreneurs working to raise awareness about the relationship between toxic chemicals and public health and to promote safer non-toxic technologies based on the values of health, justice and personal empowerment.
Click here for more on the event, and here for more on Malkan’s book.
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