CAUTION: This $24 lipstick contains lead!
Do you know what you’re buying?

Find out what’s in your favorite beauty products and discover the secret to safer alternatives. Join us for a free event July 19 at the San Francisco Library. Meet Stacy Malkan, author of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry,” and special guests Sarah Janssen, MD, PhD; and Jessica Assaf, Teens for Safe Cosmetics. Emceed by ALEXA from Movin’ 99.7

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 12-2, SAN FRANCISCO LIBRARY, KORET AUDITORIUM
100 Larkin Street, across from Civic Center BART

WIN FREE NON-TOXIC MANICURES AND MAKEOVERS!

Here is a $1.99 tube of LEAD-FREE Wet N Wild:
And the industry can’t get lead out of lipstick?!

The $50 billion beauty industry can do better. Companies already know how to make lipstick without lead and shampoo without 1,4 dioxane. Now we have to make them do it. Help us give the beauty industry a makeover! Hope to see you July 19 … Stacy Malkan

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 they can’t do it. It’s too hard to get lead out of lipstick. But don’t you worry, they say, it’s just a little bit of lead in the lipstick, and lead is mostly a problem only for kids (and where do they think kids 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.

But over 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: While the beauty industry is under the gun with toxic chemical controversies, 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 wins the prize for making 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.

Baby powders, lotions and shampoos — pure as the driven snow right? Not so much. A new study in Pediatrics Journal shows that using these products on babies markedly increased the levels of toxic chemicals called phthalates in the babies’ bodies.

Decades of research from animal studies shows that phthalates cause infertility, birth defects and other malformations of the male reproductive tract — health problems that have (coincidentally?) been rising in people over the past few decades. Several human studies also indicate that phthalates may adversely affect male reproductive function at levels commonly found in people. Young infants and fetuses are most at risk. So doesn’t it make sense that baby shampoo and lotions should not contain these chemicals?

Unfortunately, most personal care products do contain phthalates (see our 2002 study), and these toxic chemicals are NOT LISTED ON LABELS due to weak labeling laws that exempt companies from telling us what’s in fragrance. So how should parents avoid phthalates? The authors of the new study say: “If parents want to decrease exposures, then we recommend limiting the amount of infant care products used, and not to apply lotions or powders unless indicated for a medical reason.”

So that’s what it’s come to: avoiding baby products. This, of course, should be a wake up call to the beauty industry. Parents and women of childbearing age can stop using your products to protect themselves from exposure to chemicals linked to birth defects and infertility. Or you (I’m talking about you, Estee Lauder, Revlon, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oreal) can stop using phthalates, and stop making excuses.

Until then, consumers are advised to use fewer products, choose products with no added synthetic fragrance, and call the companies to let them know what you think about toxic exposures that put our reproductive health at risk.

Read more about phthalates, and the beauty industry’s resistance to change, in Chapter 2 of my new book, “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.” Buy the book at www.SafeCosmetics.org and a portion of proceeds will benefit the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ efforts to give the beauty industry a makeover. Stacy Malkan

It’s hard to believe, but beauty industry spokesman John Bailey is now defending the use of mercury in personal care products. “It’s added at very low levels, and for good reason,” Bailey told the Associated Press. There is a good reason to add a known neurotoxin to mascara? As toxicologist Carl Herbrandson explained in the story, mercury can retard brain development in children and fetuses, and can also cause neurological symptoms in adults. “Mercury is bad, basically in all forms that get into the body,” Herbrandson said.

Obviously, cosmetics don’t need to be one more source of mercury exposure. Yet John Bailey and the billion-dollar beauty companies he represents never met a toxic chemical they won’t defend. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Bailey defended lead in lipstick, yet said: “The principal concern about the safety of lead is ingestion by children.”

Where does Bailey think children come from? That’s right, from the bodies of women of childbearing age, who are at risk of getting exposed to lead and mercury from personal care products — for no good reason. Stacy Malkan

What a wild ride it’s been! I’ll be processing for weeks to come, but for now I’ll report: The crowds really turn out to hear about the Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry. More than 1,500 people attended rallies and book readings in 10 US cities for the inaugural “Not Just a Pretty Face” national book tour.

My favorite encounter was at the last stop, Elliot Bay Book Store in Seattle. A gray-haired, hippie-looking guy walked up to me before the event and announced that he didn’t want to be there. Toxic chemicals in cosmetics didn’t have much to do with him, he said, but he got stuck with the job of videotaping the event for local cable. I couldn’t help watching him as I spoke (was he sleeping?) and at the end he was the first to raise his hand (oh god). He said that the talk brought tears to his eyes, and he saw that this problem of toxic chemicals is connected to all the other problems - war, poverty, global warming, species extinction - created by bottom-line-driven corporate capitalism that has lost touch with the true needs of people. On that note, and to really get your head spinning about the scope of the problems, check out this 20-minute film by my friend and favorite s-hero Annie Leonard, The Story of Stuff.

Also check out some of the press coverage from the “Not Just a Pretty Face” tour: Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, KUOW, Missoula Independent, CommonGround, and the Washington Post’s Sprig.com. Stay tuned for more book tour stops in 2008… Stacy Malkan