CHEMICAL GOOD LOOKS
BY Emily Yoffe, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, November 10, 1997, pp. 86, 91
 

Each day American women reach for shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, moisturizer, and dusting powder. We apply blusher, eye shadow, mascara, and lipstick, then maybe dab on a nail polish and perfume. We look good, we smell good, and we have just exposed ourselves to 200 different chemicals. As American consumers we have every confidence that someone in a lab coat in a big government building has checked out these substances. Right? Not exactly. "You know more about the ingredients in your dog’s collar than you know about the toxicity of whatever you’re putting on your skin.", argues David Wallinga, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C. It turns out that cosmetics—a group of products that includes makeup, skin creams, hair-care products and dyes, baby lotions, and deodorants, on which Americans spend about $22 billion a year—comes to us almost un-examined by the Federal Government. And, as recent events on Capitol Hill indicate, the situation is not about to change.


To get a prescription or even an over-the-counter drug on the market, a manufacturer must first prove the drug’s safety and effectiveness to the Food and Drug Administration. The burden of proof rests on industry. That’s not the case for cosmetics, although the FDA regulates them, as well. Except for a handful of banned chemicals, manufacturers can add almost any ingredients to those revitalizing eye creams, vitamin-stuffed conditioners, and kiss-resistant lipsticks, and if questions about the safety of products arise, the burden is on the government to prove the product is unsafe. With a budget of about $5.5 million—less than one per cent of the FDA total—and around 30 employees, the cosmetics division is rarely up to that challenge, say critics.


The law governing cosmetics says that they may not contain "harmful substances". But how the tests for harmful or unsafe substances will be conducted is left up to the companies themselves. The FDA doesn’t accept standards for proper safety testing—and doesn’t require companies to do any testing at all. If the company does tests, the FDA has no authority to review the records. Companies test cosmetics for their tendency to cause allergic reactions and irritate skin (protests over using animals for these tests have led many companies to do them in test tubes and on human subjects). But as for possible long-term effects of exposure to cosmetic ingredients, says John Bailey, Director of FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors, "those kind of issues are not addressed very well".


State muscle. This summer, the cosmetics industry almost won an even laxer regulatory set-up from Congress. Republican Sen. Judd Gregg introduced an amendment to the FDA reform bill that would have prohibited states from requiring warning labels on products containing suspect chemicals, or otherwise filling the vacuum in the federal rules. Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, with the support of the Clinton administration, managed to defeat the proposal. "The reason preserving the states’ ability to act is so important is that FDA’s regulation has been so weak.". Kennedy says.


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Ironically, the law that created the modern FDA in 1938 is itself partly the product
of public concern over cosmetics-caused injuries. An eyelash-dyeing product called Lash Lure was damaging the eyesight of many women, and after one woman died and another was blinded, Lash Lure became the first product seized under the new FDA authority. Since then, the rules governing the manufacture and distribution of foods and drugs have been endlessly revised. But the cosmetics rules haven’t been changed much, despite a revolution in the way scientists think about the skin.


In the 1930’s, skin was thought to be essentially an impermeable barrier, a more attractive version of armadillo plate. But since at least the 1960’s, it has been widely known that the barrier can be breached, partly as a result of demonstrations that some pesticides could enter the body through the skin. In the 1980’s, in particular, molecular biologists began piecing together a new understanding of the skin as a reactive, dynamic organ. This view led to the development of transdermal patches, which deliver drugs into the body through the skin.


Not all chemicals can pass through the skin, however. Many ingredients in cosmetic creams are designed to sit on the surface, helping to keep the skin moist by holding in water, says Jim Riviere, Director of the Cutaneous Pharmacology and Toxicology Center at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Many ingredients in these products, such as fatty acids, are identical to chemicals that occur naturally in the human body. "Most ingredients I’ve come across in cosmetics are fairly benign compounds.", Riviere says.


But there is a controversial class of chemicals in cosmetics that may be absorbed through the skin. These are the color additives, derived from petroleum, known as coal tars. Coal tar colors (they are also found in foods, like M&Ms) are the single group of ingredients in cosmetics required to be tested for safety.


In 1960, there were about 200 on the market. But because so many have been found to be carcinogenic, such as Red No. 2, which was banned in 1976, today the list of approved colors numbers about 45.

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Hair dyes derived from coal tars are mostly exempt from federal rules. Women who use dark dye for many years might increase their risk of dying from cancer. The FDA’s Bailey says these remaining dyes have been so widely tested that he has "very high confidence that they’re safe". Not everyone is so sure. Dr. Andrew Weil, the natural health maven, advises avoiding the color additives whenever possible. "[Many] are energetic molecules that can interact with DNA, potentially causing mutations that lead to cancer", he writes.


There is an extraordinary loophole in the FDA regulations regarding testing and approval of colors. In 1938, the industry managed to win an exemption so that hair dyes derived from coal tars don’t have to meet the standard that products not be harmful under normal use. As the FDA’s own publication on hair dye points out, "Compounds suspected of causing cancer are found in temporary, semi permanent, and permanent dyes."


Bad hair daze. Does that mean hair dyes cause cancer in people who use them? The epidemiological studies are mostly reassuring. In 1994, a large survey found that dye users had a slightly lower rate of fatal cancers than women who didn’t color their hair. But there is one exception: Women who used dark hair dye for two decades or more had a four times greater risk of dying from two cancers of the immune system, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and multiple myeloma.


The FDA itself is looking into Alpha Hydroxy Acids (AHA), which are added to skin creams to help smooth out fine wrinkles. "We’ve demonstrated that the use of AHAs increases sensitivity to sunlight", says Bailey. He speculates that the chemicals may also make skin more susceptible to skin cancer and perversely to even more wrinkling from sun damage.


Of course the question arises, how much do we really want to know about the safety of our cosmetics? We face so many dangers in life, do we have to live in fear of our moisturizers, too? As an experiment, I cross-checked the ingredients in my Anti-Aging face cream with A Consumer’s Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients. Most seemed fairly harmless. Until I got to zinc sulfate, about which the dictionary noted that "injection under the skin of 2.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight caused tumors in rabbits." That’s when I began to wonder if the Anti-Aging moniker was a macabre joke. Is the idea that if I use it, I won’t live long enough to get my full complement of wrinkles? But I’ve already paid good money for it, and I’m still using it.


In 1978, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, did an analysis of how the laws should be changed to improve cosmetics safety. The office suggested reforms like establishing industry-wide standards for safety testing and reviewing data from countries that have banned particular ingredients to see whether similar actions should be taken here. Those are just the kinds of reforms industry critics are seeking today—and will be seeking for a long time to come.
 

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