Our Bodies, Ourselves (158 page)

Phthalate exposure is associated with asthma and allergies (especially in children), autism, endocrine disruption, obesity, decreased sperm count, low birth weight, premature birth, and ADHD. The EPA rates phthalates as “probable human carcinogens.”
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Most women in the United States use multiple cosmetic and personal care products—including lotions, toothpaste, and makeup—every day. We apply these products directly to some of the most vulnerable parts of our bodies. Our skin is permeable; our eyes and mouths offer an entry
to the rest of the body, particularly the bloodstream; our lungs inhale hundreds of potential contaminants. Many of the chemicals commonly used in cosmetics are associated with allergies, multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), asthma, shortness of breath, changes in hormone function, different cancers, brain development, reproductive disorders, skin diseases, and birth impairments. According to the EWG, one in five personal care products contains chemicals linked to cancer. Even chemicals that have been banned from other products owing to their adverse health effects, like lead and mercury, still make their way into common cosmetics such as lipstick and mascara.
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Babies are also heavily exposed to personal care products, from baby wipes to powders. Fetuses can be exposed in the womb: A 2009 study by the EWG, for example, found chemicals from cologne present in the umbilical cords of newborns.

Cosmetics and household products contain some of the highest rates of synthetic chemicals, yet their regulation is minimal. While food and drug additives must be tested before they are sold, cosmetic products don't face the same requirements. Many suspected reproductive toxics are used in everyday cosmetics. The European Union has banned the use of more than 1,100 chemicals in personal care products, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The United States has banned or restricts only 11.
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For more information on cosmetics and health, see
“More Products, Less Regulation,”
, as well as the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (safecosmetics.org), which also features a video on “The Story of Cosmetics,” and the EWG's Cosmetic Safety Database (cosmeticdatabase.org), where you can search products and ingredients.

The risks associated with chemicals in cosmetics are often downplayed, as usually there is only a small amount present in any product. But most of us use a multitude of products in our daily lives, many of which have dozens of chemical ingredients. This combined exposure warrants
that chemicals be tested in combination rather than isolation.

Many chemicals are simply tested for their obvious effects, such as short-term allergic reactions, rather than their longer-term or combined effects. In addition, many chemicals are not even listed on some products. The EWG found that the average perfume includes fourteen ingredients not included on the label, most of which the FDA had not assessed; the fragrance industry has tested only 34 percent.
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According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, in the absence of a U.S. governmental safety standard, cosmetic manufacturers in particular are able to claim that their products are safe when in fact they may pose serious health threats.
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These low standards are upheld because of industry's close ties to government, their heavy lobbying, and the many loopholes in our laws.

Lack of knowledge about what chemicals are doing to our health goes far beyond just the cosmetic sector. During a special CNN report in 2010 on toxic chemicals in the womb, Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said, “For eighty percent of the common chemicals in everyday use in this country we know almost nothing about whether or not they can damage the brains of children, the immune system, the reproductive system, and the other developing organs.…It's really a terrible mess we've gotten ourselves into.”
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To protect consumers, the federal government must require industry to test for combination exposures. Until we understand more about the effects of multiple chemicals, it is important to do what you can to reduce your total exposure.

While everyone is affected by environmental conditions, gender, race, ethnicity, and class intersect with workplace and environmental conditions so that health hazards are borne unequally by people with low incomes and people of color. The movement to right such wrongs is called the environmental justice movement.

Economic and social power determines how much we are able to protect ourselves from environmental and occupational health hazards. Some people can afford to buy bottled water or food without additives, to get better health care,
or even to move to a less-polluted neighborhood. Others cannot. People of color are more likely to work in more dangerous workplaces, and to live in inadequate housing, closer to environmental hazards.

Research done by the Commission for Racial Justice (United Church of Christ) helped launch the environmental justice movement in the 1980s. The Commission's work pointed out that three of the five largest commercial hazardous-waste landfills in the United States are located in mostly black or Latino communities; three out of five blacks and Latinos live in communities with uncontrolled toxic-waste sites; and about half of all Asians/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans live near uncontrolled waste sites.
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The work continues on through many networks, with the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University (ejrc.cau.edu) being one of the best sources of information and inspiration.

Of the 3 million farmworkers in the United States, most are migrants, usually Latinos, and about one in four are women. Female farm-workers'
health issues are often neglected, with their occupational health exposure monitored less than that of men. According to the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment (cwpe.org), farmworker studies disproportionately focus on men's health exposure, with few being done on women. When women are considered, they are often classified as farmers' wives, a designation which excludes them from large studies considering pesticide-induced cancer. Without proper research, appropriate interventions for women have not been designed and implemented. The committee also notes that women face more of a burden than their male counterparts because of gender prescribed roles, such as washing dirty, pesticide-ridden clothes of a farmworking partner.

One of the most serious hazards facing Inuit women in northern Canada is the damage to the food supply from the atmospheric movement of contaminants from the United States and globally. This puts women at high risk for reproductive damage to themselves and their children, particularly breastfed children. Women there have needed to adjust their diet so that they are not as exposed to top-of-the-food-chain sources of food.

Pesticides, drugs, industrial chemicals, and processes banned in the United States are often exported to developing countries where regulations are nonexistent or ill-enforced. Poorer countries often have weaker environmental regulations in order to attract industrial business interests from abroad. Many U.S. companies, for example, work in countries with little or no workplace or toxic regulations, producing chemicals and products that could not be so easily and cheaply produced at home, risking the health and lives of workers in those countries. Some international agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), weaken countries' abilities to enforce regulations because of industries' dominance over their politics and economies.