Do your favorite products contain hazardous chemicals? Watch Stacy Malkan discuss the latest research from her award-winning book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry” on ABC 7 San Francisco, View from the Bay

Also see Stacy on: ABC 7 Chicago, CBS 4 Miami, Good Morning America and Grist.com

Oct. 6, 2008: Wall Street Journal article names “Not Just a Pretty Face” by Stacy Malkan one of the best environmental books. Buy Stacy’s book here.

Recent articles by Stacy Malkan:
Pretty In Pink? Companies market make-up to girls as young as 3, and the health implications are huge — Natural Solutions magazine

Panic in the Organic Aisle: How a dirty scandal is forcing the natural products industry to come clean — Common Ground magazine

New: Natural Products Radio, Oprah.com, Men’s Vogue and the Sacramento News & Review 

Men’s Vogue story: “The fantasy of a body spray transforming an adolescent boy into a virile Casanova who attracts throngs of lust-crazed women couldn’t be further from the truth.” Check out this new study showing how fragrance chemicals called phthalates may be feminizing male babies.

“Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry” is available for the first time in Korean. Copies are available through the U.S. based bookseller:
SPRING WATER BOOK IMPORT, INC.
3003 W. Olympic Blvd. #105, Los Angeles, CA 90006
T. 213-380-8787 F. 213-380-0264

The French titan of the beauty industry is caught in yet another toxic firestorm. This time, L’Oreal is getting sued by a former employee — the director of regulatory affairs, no less — who claims he was fired for complaining to his superiors that the company put animal ingredients into their “100% vegan” line and sold products containing banned toxic chemicals. Oh L’Oreal, was it worth it?

Check out The Coveted, and here’s a great piece from Huffington Post

We had a fantastic turn-out at last Saturday’s Green Makeover event at the San Francisco Library. More than 150 people came out to hear about the Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, including many moms, teens, and women and men of all ages and ethnicities. The energy was huge! Stay tuned for Q&As from the event, which I promised to write about here. In the meantime, here are a few comments:

From Claudia: It’s always really compelling and such a call to action after I leave a Safe Cosmetics event! I’d love to learn a little more about how to get involved and I know some of my coworkers (as I mentioned, 14 and ALL women) would be interested as well…

From Janice: It was such an honor to experience your presentation “live” on Saturday at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics event in San Francisco and to talk with you afterwards at the book signing table. I introduced myself as the 60+ new grandma, who recently had cancer surgery (parotidectomy) and radiation treatment. I was so inspired by your talk; in addition, the other presenters, the informative hand-outs, and the various vendors with their knowledge to share all contributed to an extremely stimulating afternoon…

From Alexandra (13): I have been researching a lot lately and am absolutely inspired by all the amazing girls my age. Although I am only going into 8th grade, I feel that I have made a huge impact on my school by being one of the 1st members of my school’s Eco-council and being a student leader for our green movement. I want to do more though. The cosmetics industry does need a makeover and I want to help…

Yes! We all have a role to play in this important project. If you haven’t done it already, sign up for the Safe Cosmetics Action list to stay updated about the work of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Email me with organizing ideas or questions at stacy@safecosmetics.org

July 2, 2008: Last week we saw what we are up against with the cosmetics industry! Did you hear what happened in Sacramento? Industry lobbyists lined the halls of the California legislature to complain that they can’t get lead out of lipstick. All the big companies were there – Estee Lauder flew in a vice president, and Johnson & Johnson’s (which doesn’t even make lipstick) lobbied to kill the bill that would have limited lead in lipstick to the lowest possible level.The companies say it’s impossible. They can’t get lead out of lipstick. But don’t worry, they say, it’s just a little bit of lead in the lipstick, and lead is mostly a problem only for children (and where do they think children come from?).

Well, we worry. Because we know that lead is highly toxic to the brain even in tiny doses. Lead builds up in our bodies and it stays in our bodies for a long time, so it can endanger our future children even if we aren’t pregnant now. And more than worried, we’re mad, because lipstick doesn’t need to contain lead!

How do I know this? Because I am holding in my hand a $1.99 tube of Wet N Wild lipstick that has no lead in it. And here I have an $8.50 Revlon lipstick in a lovely shade of red — with no lead.

Here is an $8.50 tube of L’Oreal Colour Riche lipstick with the highest lead content found in recent product tests conducted by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. And here’s a fancy tube of lead-containing lipstick made by Dior Addict that sells for $24.50 — and let’s not forget that the actual lipstick part of the product costs the company about 15 cents!

So yes we think the beauty industry can do better. Stay tuned for round two in the lead-in-lipstick legislative battle, coming soon.

And a B.S. radar alert: The beauty industry may be under the gun with toxic chemical controversies, but they have plenty of mind-warping weapons in their arsenal. The leaded lipstick scandal got huge press — from Good Morning America to the Washington Post — but all the beauty industry has to do to get our attention is buy a prime time series.

If you watch Lipstick Jungle (I admit to being a fan even though I may be the only one): keep an eye out for sneaky Maybelline NY product placements in the show, faux make-up tips with experts (so you, too, can look like Nico Riley!) and the annoying barrage of lip-plumping ads (6% plumper guaranteed!) — all sponsored by L’Oreal, the manufacturer that makes the most lead-contaminated lipstick of all. It really is a jungle out there! … Stacy Malkan

“Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry” by Stacy Malkan has won a top award in independent publishing. The book received a Silver Medal in the category of Health/Medicine from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. More details…

RECENT INTERVIEWS with Stacy: ABC 7 Chicago, CBS 4 Miami, Grist.com. the LA Times blog, Green Living Online, and see the Green LA Girl book giveaway!

Thanks to everyone who organized events, attended, spread the word and cheered us on for the ‘Not Just a Pretty Face’ Book Tour. Over the past eight months (drum roll please…) we’ve held 44 book-reading events in 13 states attended by 3,142 people! There have been so many inspiring stories along the way – from moms organizing their communities, activists winning political change, entrepreneurs creating the next generation of green products, and so many of you who are writing books, making films, launching websites and starting businesses. To all of you: Keep Going and Keep Believing! Here are a few of my favorite signs of divine inspiration that things are going our way:

The political winds are shifting: Nine states introduced legislation in 2008 to regulate toxic chemicals in personal care products, and Democrats in the US Congress are pushing to strengthen cosmetics regulations at the federal level. California is considering a bill to ban lead from lipstick.

Skin Deep tops 59 million searches! EWG’s Skin Deep is now getting 5 million searches per month and growing – proving that once people start asking questions about their favorite personal care products, they don’t want to stop!

Natural products raise the bar: The rush is on to create standards for “natural” and “organic” personal care products. While there is still no single industry standard, the upshot is that products are actually getting safer. Example: In order to meet Whole Foods’ new Premium Body Care standard, companies have been quietly removing synthetic fragrance, toxic surfactants and other undesirables.

The good word is spreading: “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” the book that tells the inside story of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, is now in its second printing with more than 10,000 copies sold. The book recently won a 2008 Silver Medal IPPY award!

And best of all…

Babies are getting safer: Years ago, I heard Pete Myers, co-author of “Our Stolen Future,” say that the single most important thing a person can do to avoid toxic exposure is to stop using #7 plastic bottles made with bisphenol-A (BPA). This freaked me out because I spent years in Colorado where the Holy Grail of water bottles were the fashionable (and toxic) #7 Nalgene bottles. Nalgene finally agreed to reformulate (which should have happened years ago), and now even the New York Times is advising parents to avoid BPA-containing bottles. Congratulations to everyone who exposed the ridiculously risky practice of making baby and water bottles out of estrogenic chemicals. Who ever thought that was a good idea to begin with??

There is still much to be done to raise public consciousness about the toxic chemical soup that is modern industrial society. But back to the good news: millions of you are working to change that every day by supporting and developing the new green economy. Cheers to you all! –Stacy Malkan

You might expect a shampoo labeled “pure, natural and organic” to be, well … pure, natural and organic. And so you might be surprised, and ticked off, to learn that many leading “natural” body care products are contaminated with a mad-made carcinogen, according to new product tests.

The Organic Consumers Association and author David Steinman shook up (and hopefully shook awake) the natural products industry with their report that 46 out of 100 brands of “organic” or “natural” body care products contained 1,4 dioxane, a probable human carcinogen that is the byproduct of a nasty petrochemical process involving ethylene oxide.

Contaminated brands included JASON Pure Natural & Organic, Giovanni Organic Cosmetics, Kiss My Face, Nature’s Gate Organics, and Citrus Magic 100% Natural Dish Liquid. (See full list of products here.) These companies should immediately reformulate. Consumers must be able to trust that we can use products labeled “organic” without rubbing carcinogens in our hair or on our dishes. In order to gain that trust, the natural products industry must adhere to strict standards that disallow all nasty petrochemical processes. –Stacy Malkan

The beauty industry is sitting not-too-pretty after a wave of toxic scandals. Several states are now pushing for greater control over the virtually unregulated $50-billion industry. Two bills just introduced in California would eliminate toxic ingredients from certain personal care products; New Jersey, Connecticut and other states are following suit. So what is Big Beauty to do? Hire lobbyists and launch a public relations campaign to convince people their products are safe. Haven’t we heard this one before?

The good news is, while the mainstream industry fights for its right to use toxic chemicals, a more hopeful face of the future is emerging. Efforts are underway in the booming natural products sector to put real meaning behind the terms “natural” and “organic.” Last week, Whole Foods Market became the first major retailer in the US to create a private standard for natural personal care products. Products with the premium seal will be free of synthetic fragrance and some 250 synthetic chemicals, including parabens, PEG compounds and sulfates. Whole Foods’ own 365 brand doesn’t even meet the strict criteria for the premium label (the line will be reformulated). The race to the top is on …

Mary Brune remembers the exact moment she got angry about toxic chemicals. She was nursing her baby Olivia, who had just turned six months old, while watching the evening news. A new study of breast milk from 19 states found that all the milk samples were contaminated with perchorate, a component of rocket fuel. “I’m sitting there on the couch nursing my daughter and I was stunned,” Mary said. “I thought breast milk was as pure as it came as a food source for children, to find out there’s all sorts of stuff in there… I was up all night thinking about it.” Mary didn’t just get mad; she got together with other new mothers and launched a nationwide effort to get toxic chemicals out of breast milk – called Making Our Milk Safe (MOMS).

Andrea Martin launched the Breast Cancer Fund from her living room after her second breast cancer diagnosis. Today, Andrea’s legacy lives on in the only national organization focused solely on preventing breast cancer by eliminating environmental causes of the disease.

So what do breast milk and breast cancer have to do with safe cosmetics? Carcinogens and other harmful chemicals; which do not belong in the environment, in our breast milk, or in the products we slather on our bodies every day. Yet one third of personal care products contain chemicals linked to cancer – even products made by those billion-dollar companies (Revlon, Estee Lauder, Avon) that put pink ribbons on their products to convince you they care about breast cancer (see chapter six, ‘pinkwashing,’ in my book “Not Just a Pretty Face“). But hey, let’s not just get mad or scared, let’s agitate like hell – like Mary, like Andrea – and take our bodies back from the corporate polluters.

Tonight I got to share the stage at the Women’s Building in San Francisco with Mary and two of my other favorite s-heroes, Dr. Sarah Janssen, MD, PhD, MPH, and Lisa Archer of the Breast Cancer Fund and national coordinator of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. These women are changing the world, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart. Join up with MOMS at www.safemilk.org and help prevent breast cancer here.