There’s a new effort to make beauty and personal care products safer.
This month, U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL-09) and three other House members introduced the Safer Beauty Bill package to Congress.
The package is made up of four federal bills – H.R. 4433 – The Toxic-Free Beauty Act, H.R. 4434 – Cosmetic Supply Chain Transparency Act, H.R. 4435 – Cosmetic Hazardous Ingredient Right to Know Act, H.R. 4436 – Cosmetic Safety Protections for Communities of Color and Salon Workers – that would prohibit “hazardous chemicals” and “two chemical classes” from beauty and personal care products sold in the U.S.
According to Schakowsky’s office, the average American adult uses about 12 personal care products a day, resulting in exposure to an average of 168 unique chemicals.
“Most consumers would be shocked to learn there are over 10,000 industrial chemicals used to formulate the beauty and personal care products consumers use every day,” said Janet Nudelman, the Senior Director of Program and Policy for Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP).
Nudelman is also the Director of BCPP’s “Campaign for Safer Cosmetics,” which lists what it calls the “top ingredients and contaminants to avoid and the types of products they’re found in.”
If passed, the bills would ban dozens of chemicals, including lead, mercury, formaldehyde, asbestos and parabens from beauty and health products, many of which have been linked to cancer, brain damage and reproductive health issues.
They also fund research and education into safer alternatives to synthetic hair products.
The lawmakers said women of color and professional salon workers are the most vulnerable because toxic chemicals are present in the beauty and personal care products marketed to them or commonly found in their workplaces.
The bills would also require the disclosure of hazardous materials on product labels and websites.
“We should be voting with our pocketbooks and buying safer products, patronizing the companies maker safer products. But, at the end of the day, we shouldn’t have to be organic chemists to make safer purchases,” Nudelman said.
In 2022, President Joe Biden signed The Modernization of Cosmetic Regulations Act, or MoCRA, into law, which expanded FDA oversight to include the regulation of the cosmetics industry, including mandatory recall authority, adverse event reporting, and requiring facility registration.
“What MoCRA did was level set the cosmetic industry with the other industries the FDA currently regulates, like the pharmaceutical and food industry,” Nudelman said. “What it didn’t do was give the FDA any additional direction to ban or restrict the hundreds and hundreds of toxic chemicals we know are in the products consumers are using.”
Nudelman said the Safer Beauty Bill package “fills critical gaps in cosmetic safety.”
