Do you know what’s in your beauty products? The Government doesn’t!

Do you really know what went into the cleanser or lotion you slathered on your face this morning, or the body wash/soap you used in the shower?

Many of the ingredients that go into beauty and skincare products in the U.S. are poorly understood. While the food and medicine that we consume are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government does not oversee the personal care industry. So who knows if that anti-aging cream you’re using is toxic?

Researchers at Tufts University are eager to understand more about how the ingredients in our personal care products impact our health. Dr. Ana Soto and her team at the Tufts University School of Medicine are undertaking an ambitious study in collaboration with the clean beauty brand Beautycounter to study key ingredients commonly used in personal care products. They expect to publish the results in peer-reviewed journals, the gold standard for academic research. This will ensure that the findings are unbiased and available to the entire beauty industry.

Soto is a leading researcher on the hormonal effects of chemicals. For instance, some chemicals are known to be endocrine disruptors that weaken your immune system and increase your risk of contracting certain forms of cancers. In the past, Soto and her scientific partner, Dr. Carlos Sonnenschein, published groundbreaking research about the endocrine-disruptive effects of the chemical BPA, which led the government to ban BPA from many everyday consumer products, including plastic water bottles and baby products. Now, with this project, Soto is focused on filling the data gap on the potential endocrine effects of ingredients used in personal care products and the plastic packaging in which it comes.

Beautycounter is finding out what is in our beauty products. The six-year-old startup has been in leader in pushing for better regulation in the personal care industry, and is lobbying lawmakers to pass the Personal Care Products Safety Act. The company also creates products that are free of more than 1,500 chemicals that are known to cause harm or are questionable. This research with Tufts will help bolster its own product development process.

Since 2016, Beautycounter has been helping fund this Tufts research. This is the first time that Beautycounter is announcing this collaboration. Tufts hopes to share its initial findings about phenoxyethanol and lavender extract, two ingredients it has been testing for the last few years. Gregg Refrew, the brand’s founder and CEO, sees this investment as a form of corporate social responsibility. “We’ve known for years that there are large data gaps in the beauty industry,” she says. “This collaboration is a new type of giving.”

The government has no clue what’s in your beauty products. It has been 80 years since Congress has passed any legislation to make our beauty products safer for us. Join the movement that’s trying to make beauty products better for all of us. There is currently legislation in California to get safer, better beauty products to women!

Maria Shriver places focus on those she considers “architects of change”, and she believes Beautycounter to be just that! Maria loves what Beautycounter stands for because of the company’s movement to make our cosmetics healthier, better for us.

Source: The Fast Company