Name: The fight against toxic beauty
Uploaded: 2022-07-02
Duration: 8 min 58 s
Description: Toxic chemicals in beauty products disproportionately impact people of color, leading to health issues such as infertility and cancer. Here’s how activists and companies in the clean beauty industry are trying to change things.

Toxic chemicals in beauty products disproportionately impact people of color, leading to health issues such as infertility and cancer. Here’s how activists and companies in the clean beauty industry are trying to change things.

The fight against toxic beauty

Health

Toxic chemicals in beauty products disproportionately impact people of color, leading to health issues such as infertility and cancer.

I think many consumers feel that if something is available on the shelf at the store, then it's safe. And that's not always the case, we know that people of color are disproportionately affected by toxic chemicals and consumer products across the board. The good news is that the more that we're aware of this, and the more that we're pushing for accountability and change along the supply chain, the more we will have a positive impact and this is solvable. The clean beauty segment or the natural beauty segment is growing rapidly. We can make change in this industry and across industry to ensure that we just clean up our act. Unfortunately, products that are marketed to Women of color often contain more toxic chemicals than products marketed to white women. Whether it's chemical hair strainers that are known to have formaldehyde. We can talk about skin lightening creams that have mercury systems of power and oppression such as racism and Classism and sexism may impact our beauty worms, consequent beauty rituals, chemical exposures as well as health outcomes across a life course, Women of color are major consumers of the beauty industry's. They're not only using more products, but there are likely to be using products that have a greater toxic load. Beauty ideals, both in this country as well as across the globe are very much informed by systems of power and oppression such as structural racism, colonialism and essentially Eurocentric beauty norms really are the pervasive ideal that impacts all of us with white femininity really being at the top of this beauty hierarchy, very lovely crystal right beauty cream. The closer you are to the top of our pyramid, white femininity, the more social and economic benefits you'll be afforded. And so that propagates certain types of products that are heavily promoted, heavily marketed. Two women of color to help them attain that. Look, I'm a black woman. I remember I was 12 years old when I got my first hair relaxer for 20 years. Um I was I was doing that with my hair and I didn't realize the potential health risk seeing the disproportionate youth and products that were marketed to people like me that really hit close to home. Sadly a lot of the chemicals that you would find at a hazardous waste site are also found in our beauty products, largely because they do remain unregulated. So there's lead it's particularly of concern because it can have irreversible impacts on the brain, especially Children's brain. There's mercury, which is also a known human carcinogen. There could be asbestos in talc related products, another known human carcinogen. There's satellites and parabens process of chemicals called endocrine disrupting chemicals which can mimic hormones in our bodies even at small amounts which are particularly of concern to reproduction. So there can be many chemicals in a product that aren't listed on a label. So for example, because of trade Secret laws, companies don't have to disclose the specific chemical ingredients in the fragrances and certain products. So they can just list fragrance, even though fragrance can include 100 different unique chemicals, some of the conditions that disproportionately, for example, impact black women that may be linked to chemicals in these products include asthma related outcomes, pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth, pregnancy related complications that may impact maternal mortality, such as pregnancy related hypertension, gestational diabetes, impaired learning and development in Children. As well as a whole host of different types of cancers. Women who used hair relaxing products as a child, they have a 40% greater risk of early onset period, which is a risk factor for breast cancer. The law around beauty products haven't been updated since 1938, that was before World War II. That's absurd to protect consumers, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission, respectively. Keep careful watch for harmful ingredients in cosmetics and for misleading claims and advertisements. The FDA, The agency that is supposed to oversee this industry doesn't have quite frankly the power that it needs to actually do anything. The FDA doesn't know how many cosmetics are on the market in this country. It can't do a recall of something. So it's a really weak law basically useless and we really need reform. There have been bipartisan efforts to update that law, but those have failed in the absence of that. Certain states have started regulating what's in Personal care products. So in an under regulated space, what could we do differently to make the space as products possible and advocate for change credo is the largest clean beauty retailer in the United States for credo, the way that we define clean Credo. Clean standard is really the nexus of safety, sustainability and ethics all held within the through line of transparency. The credo Clean Standard is about 28 pages, very comprehensive guideline that all of our brands have to sign and adhere to. We're trying to accelerate companies free formulations and introduction of safer cleaner beauty products for women of color. Clean Beauty should be about creating products that have the lowest environmental impact and lowest health impact. It's not just about eliminating the toxic chemicals But ensuring the youth and the adoption of favorite chemicals. The global beauty industry is at this point over $550 billion beauty is still an emerging part of that. There's more companies that are trying to make green products. There's also retailers that are trying to have an influence on what's being sold on their shelves. So for example, Target and walmart now have chemical policies on the book, 99 cent stores unfortunately don't and that's still a place where a lot of people buy their products. A lot of clean beauty products really are situated or being promoted at higher end stores right, that may not be accessible to many women of color. One of the things that is important to us at E. D. S is that there's a democratization of clean beauty. The process of making clean products for everyone needs to be a holistic one. So certainly we need to be more of a demand and more investment from investors and from brands at the beginning of when they're conceptualizing products, making sure that there are products for everyone, either targeted especially for certain needs, especially textured hair, for example, or making sure that you have a product that can really serve a wide variety of customers. But I also think that we need to invest more in the industry in terms of just really taking a step back and saying, who is at the table, we need more women and more women of color in positions of power, whether that's as an investor or as an entrepreneur or as chemists and formulate Urz, it's time for companies to really recognize that the ingredients that they may have been using all this time, there are better solutions. We absolutely continue to need a sea change across the entire beauty market. So that means every brand, every retailer and every ingredient supplier putting at the core safer ingredients. We're seeing that customers really want safer, more sustainable products, more equitable products, more transparent products and they're willing to reward those companies that are doing that work with their dollars