Now I know we can't live in a lead free world, but do we have to put lead in our lipstick? I don't know. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I just bought the wrong thing. At the store, the choices seem endless. I can get lipstick in 49 shades or shampoo for hair that's too dry, oily, fine, limp or frizzy, but what about the choices that really matter? Like the choice to buy products that are safe. It turns out the important decisions don't happen when I choose to take a product off the shelf. They happen when companies and governments decide what products should go on the shelves. 

 

So who are these companies? This is Procter & Gamble. They’re the ones offering me Herbal Essences, the number two shampoo in the country. It contains toxic petro chemicals made from oil. Since when is oil an herb? On cosmetics labels, words like “herbal”, “natural”, even “organic” have no legal definition. That means anybody can put anything in a bottle and call it natural. And they do. I mean, can you image a top seller called “Petro Essences”? Gross. What’s even nastier are hair relaxers marketed to five-year olds and skin whitening creams. These are super toxic both in their ingredients and in the messages they send about what beauty is. Oh, here is Estee Lauder offering me a chance to help find a cure for breast cancer. That's nice. But wait, they’re also using chemicals linked to cancer. Don’t you think the best way for Estee Lauder to fight cancer is to stop using those chemicals in the first place? So really, I get to choose between meaningless claims on a bottle. But these guys get the real choice about what goes into those bottles. And that happens back here, at the factories where they’re formulated. 

 

Why do the makers of these products use all these toxics? Are they trying to poison us? No, they’re just working from a 1950s mindset when people were totally swiped up in better their living through chemistry. In all that excitement, they forgot to worry about human health impacts. That was years ago, and they are still using the same old toxic chemicals. Today, big cosmetics companies say the doses of poison in their products are small enough to be harmless. Yeah, maybe if you use them once a year! I guess they never get out and see that their products are being used and combined with other products every day: a little toxic dose under your arms, a little more on your hair, on your lips. And workers in nail and hair salons get dosed all day long!