Chemical ingredients in Perfume, Fragrances, Cosmetics: Endocrine-Disrupting?

A new analysis reveals that top-selling fragrance products contain a dozen or more secret chemicals not listed on labels.  

Okay, trade secrets are allowed.  In fact, at a large conference in Denver on May 24th, manufacturing executives will be discussing just that:  trade secrets and material disclosure regulation and compliance.  Hot topic, timely conference.

Fragrance sprays contain chemicals not listed on labels.

(Photo by Tina Schofield, courtesy Environmental News Service)

Manufacturers' role
According to the report, multiple chemicals in popular men's and women's fragrances can not only trigger allergic reactions but can disrupt hormones.  Many substances have not been assessed for safety by the beauty industry’s self-policing review panels.  

This is not so "okay." 

This is not good news for anybody: not for manufacturers, nor for male or female - adult or child - consumers, nor for health officials, nor for chemical regulatory agencies, like EPA (see TSCA) or the FDA.  

At this point, consumers should probably be developing a little common sense about health risks and chemicals.

However, manufacturers, at this point, should also be a little more sensible.  They must be prepared for this type of exposure.  The way to be prepared is to have reports ready: have ingredient-data available, with CSR reports, and similar ways to show efforts at the very least toward greening in advance of being exposed.  Risk management demands it. This is like the Toyota fiasco, where the company should've been ready to show Responsibility efforts.  Supply chains can mess up, a manufacturer or distributor may mess up, and an executive board may make some weak choices; but still, ingredients do not have to be invisible in this day and age and manufacturing practices should be defensible.

Which perfumes in particular?  The who and what
For this study, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of health and environmental groups, commissioned tests of 17 fragranced products at an independent laboratory. Campaign partner Environmental Working Group assessed data from the tests and the product labels.  The analysis reveals that the 17 products contained, on average:

• Fourteen secret chemicals not listed on labels due to a loophole in federal law that allows companies to claim fragrances as trade secrets. American Eagle Seventy Seven contained 24 hidden chemicals, the highest number of any product in the study.
• Ten sensitizing chemicals associated with allergic reactions such as asthma, wheezing, headaches and contact dermatitis. Giorgio Armani Acqua Di Gio contained 19 different sensitizing chemicals, more than any other product in the study
• Four hormone-disrupting chemicals linked to a range of health effects including sperm damage, thyroid disruption and cancer. Halle by Halle Berry, Quicksilver and Jennifer Lopez J. Lo Glow each contained seven different chemicals with the potential to disrupt the hormone system.

Hormone disruptors that may play a role in cancer were found in many of the fragrances analyzed for this study.  The Cancer Panel report recommends that pregnant women and couples planning to become pregnant avoid exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals due to cancer concerns.  “This monumental study reveals the hidden hazards of fragrances,” said Anne C. Steinemann, Ph.D, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Professor of Public Affairs, University of Washington. 

“Secondhand scents are also a big concern," said Steinemann. "One person using a fragranced product can cause health problems for many others.”  Like second-hand smoke.

Additional resources:

1. FDA has precious little about fragrance regulations
2. TSCA has nothing on perfumes or fragrance
3. Actio Corp tracks chemicals, compliance and product ingredients (for manufacturers)
4. EPA good January blog on fragrances
5. GC3 (Green Chemistry out of Lowell, MA) is looking into chemicals in cosmetics
6. Design for Environment (DfE)on fragrances
7. Environmental Working Group (EWG) (Stacy Malkan, 202-321-6963, stacy@safecosmetics.org)
   

“Something doesn’t smell right—clearly the system is broken,” said Lisa Archer, national coordinator of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at the Breast Cancer Fund. “We urgently need updated laws that require full disclosure of cosmetic ingredients so consumers can make informed choices about what they are being exposed to.” 

“Fragrance chemicals are inhaled or absorbed through the skin, and many of them end up inside people’s bodies, including pregnant women and newborn babies,” said Jane Houlihan, senior vice president for research at Environmental Working Group.

Perfumes on display  

(Photo by Alastair Dunning, courtesy Environmental News Service)

A recent EWG study found synthetic musk chemicals Galaxolide and Tonalide in the umbilical cord blood of newborn infants. The musk chemicals were found in nearly every fragrance analyzed for this study. Twelve of the 17 products also contained diethyl phthalate (DEP), a chemical linked to sperm damage and behavioral problems that has been found in the bodies of nearly all Americans tested.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a national coalition of nonprofit women’s, environmental, public health, faith and worker safety organizations. The mission is to protect the health of consumers and workers by securing the corporate, regulatory and legislative reforms necessary to eliminate dangerous chemicals from cosmetics and personal care products.

The mission of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) - says their documentation - is to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment. EWG is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded in 1993 by Ken Cook and Richard Wiles.

Sceinceblogs.com writes it up this way:  "The President's Cancer Panel (PCP) report is very long (over 200 pages), which is why it's good that the executive summary does a good job of boiling down the vastness of the report into a more digestible chunk. I read the whole thing, but the report started to get repetitive fairly quickly. It begins, as all such reports do, by pointing out the enormity of the cancer problem in the U.S. and then proposes to address the question of environmental influences on cancer...."  View the summary. 

Is there a solution for manufacturers, suppliers, regulatory agencies, and consumers?  There actually might just be.  

More will be revealed at the conference in Denver, AIHce 2010, next week.  But here's a preview:

Material Disclosure

“Environmental compliance in a supply chain is necessary today for globalization,” said Actio Corporation co-founder and CEO Russell McCann. “Globalizing products requires in-depth knowledge of all raw materials and parts in a finished product – and the status of each in regards to environmental regulations. Risk managers must analyze each component in the Bills of Material or ‘BOM.' They must get this BOM information from suppliers.”

In the past, suppliers have resisted sharing ingredient information because of the threat of losing competitive advantage.

“Suppliers engage in ingredient-disclosure for environmental compliance when a tool enables them to do so,” McCann emphasized. “If suppliers don’t get decent tools for providing compliance information, then manufacturers and customers don’t get decent compliance information; it’s that simple.”

More on tools for material disclosure can be found at www.materialdisclosure.com.

Till next week.