Tag: cream

Phthalate Concerns Cause Company Makeovers

  • Women marching on behalf of a campaign to remove phthalates and other chemicals from cosmetics. (Photo courtesy of the Breast Cancer Fund)

There are new concerns that products we use every day to keep us clean and make us beautiful may contain toxic chemicals. The targets are things like shampoos, deodorants, hair dyes and cosmetics. Some companies are taking these concerns seriously and giving themselves a makeover. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert has this story:

Transcript

There are new concerns that products we use every day to keep us clean and make us beautiful may contain toxic chemicals. The targets are things like shampoos, deodorants, hair dyes and cosmetics. Some companies are taking these concerns seriously and giving themselves a makeover. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert has this story:


(Sound of woman and child talking)


Teri Olle is playing dress-up with her two-year-old daughter, Natalie, in the family’s bathroom. Teri is applying lotions to her daughter’s chubby cheeks, while Natalie puts lipstick on her mother.


Little girls like Natalie have been playing dress-up for generations. But Natalie’s game is slightly different. She’s using nail polish, lipsticks and creams made without man-made chemicals.


That’s because her mother is an environmental activist who lobbies against toxic chemical use. With cosmetics, her biggest fear is a group of chemicals called phthalates. Phthalates increase the flexibility of plastic and keep nail polish from chipping.


“Phthalates are testosterone-suppressing synthetic hormones, essentially. And they’ve been linked with all sorts of developmental problems, including, most dramatically, a set of male genital defects that show themselves as birth defects in infant boys.”


Last month, scientists released the first study on male babies. They found a strong link between high levels of phthalates exposure in pregnant women and damage to their sons’ reproductive tract. Studies like this, and others on lab animals showing possible links to reproductive problems, prompted the European Union this past March to ban two types of phthalates from all products sold in Europe. The states of California, New York and Massachusetts are also considering similar plans.


Olle is five months pregnant with her second child. She doesn’t know if she’s carrying a boy, but she says chemicals in cosmetics could be risky for any fetus. So she’s not taking any chances.


“For me, as a person, if someone said to me, ‘You can either use this product that may cause a genital defect in your baby boy or not’, I would think most people would go, ‘Really, we probably shouldn’t be using these products.'”


And it’s not just phthalates that could be a problem. Environmentalists say that the ingredients in cosmetics haven’t been evaluated for health or safety effects. The Food and Drug Administration doesn’t do that kind of testing. And in 60 years, it’s banned only nine ingredients. So there are other chemicals, like coal tars used in hair dyes and formaldehyde used in nail polish, that might cause health problems as they’re absorbed by the skin into the bloodstream.


Because of these concerns, a group of environmentalists called the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has convinced 136 natural cosmetics companies to sign a pledge to check for potentially toxic chemicals and eliminate them.


One of those companies is Avalon Organics. Over the past year, Avalon’s spent two and a half million dollars to reformulate their products and switch to more natural alternatives. Gil Pritchard is the company’s President and CEO. He says the jury’s out on whether these chemicals definitely cause harm. Even so, he didn’t hesitate to make the investment.


“It’s convincing enough for me and our company to exercise what we call a precautionary principle – to adopt it and say look, we may not have direct scientific evidence, but there’s enough evidence here to say whoa, I can feel the heat from the stove. I don’t need to put my finger on and burn myself to know that that’s one of the likely outcomes.”


But not all companies feel this way. Procter & Gamble, in Cincinnati, Ohio, has not signed the pledge. Nor have any other major cosmetic companies. Tim Long is a company spokesman. He says environmentalists are blowing this issue way out of proportion.


“The amounts of most of these ingredients that the activists have concerns about are, in fact, extremely small and at the doses used in our products, there’s no scientific evidence to support that they’re resulting in any harm to consumers.”


Long says Procter & Gamble complied with the EU directive and took the banned phthalates out of all of its products both in Europe and the U.S. But he says that wasn’t necessary, since phthalates, along with all other cosmetic ingredients, simply aren’t dangerous. He says his company wouldn’t be using them if they were. And the FDA says that these cosmetics are safe.


Environmentalists say that more research needs to be done to better understand the effect of chemicals used in cosmetics on the body. But Teri Olle says that with so many natural alternatives available, it makes sense to be careful.


“When I became pregnant, I definitely became more conscious of what I was putting on my body. I mean, if you’re supposed to avoid soft cheeses and cake batter, it certainly can’t be good for you to be spraying petrochemicals on your body. That definitely can’t be good for the baby.”


So when the baby’s born this September, instead of using products with man-made chemicals, Teri Olle will be spreading diaper rash ointment with beeswax and apricot oil on her newborn baby.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Halpert.

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Banking on Birch Bark

  • David Peterson is president of NaturNorth Technologies. The business is a spinoff from the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. It has a patent on a process to extract large quantities of pure betulin, a component of birch bark. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:


Have you ever noticed – walking in the woods – those cylinders of bright white bark, lying on the forest floor? Those are the remains of a birch tree. The inside of the tree rots away quickly, but the bark lasts much longer.


“The birch tree has some incredible defense mechanisms that protect the tree from weather, from rain, from sun, keep the moisture in, keep moisture out.”


David Peterson knows birch trees pretty well. He was a top manager at the Potlatch Paper Mill near Duluth, Minnesota. The plant processes thousands of trees every day, and burns the bark to make steam.


“I always was interested in trying to come with a way of using some of these low value waste streams generated from pulp paper mills and other places, it seemed like such a horrible waste, to take these really interesting compounds and put them in a boiler for boiler fuel.”


Peterson’s new company, NaturNorth Technologies, plans to make something worth a lot more than boiler fuel. The company has patented a process to extract large quantities of a chemical, betulin, that gives birch bark its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities.


Mill workers remove bark from a tree that’s harvested for lumber or paper-making. It’s shredded into pellets, and put through a chemical process that extracts the betulin. It ends up looking something like salt.


“Here’s a sample of betulin, and you can see how bright and white it is. It’s got a chalky feel when you touch it.”


Apparently, what birch bark does for the birch tree, it can also do for human skin – protect it from the assaults of the physical world. Betulin is already used in some creams and cosmetics, but NaturNorth plans to be the first company in the world to market it on a large scale.


The idea of selling lots of betulin from birch bark makes Skip Sandman nervous. He’s a Native American traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He uses birch bark for medicine. He says it’s a pain-killer and blood-thinner and can be used for intestinal disorders.


“Fortunately, when people use it for medicines and stuff, one small tree does go a long way. But you might have to travel 15, 20 miles to find the right type of tree.”


Sandman says the bigger trees – ten to twelve inches in diameter – have a bigger supply of the properties he uses in medicine. And lately he’s had to go farther to find those big trees. He says that’s because timber companies have cut down so many of the big trees and now they’re working on smaller and smaller trees.


“But you see the logging trucks go by, and they’re just whacking down everything. Well they think it’s only a tree. But when the trees are gone, then what do we do?”


Sandman says in the Ojibwe creation story, each plant and animal promised to help people in some way, and birch trees offered their healing qualities. He says it’s important to use them respectfully, and not for profit, but only to help people. He says he approaches the tree with an offering of tobacco.


“I will put tobacco down and ask and talk to that tree, because it is alive.”


The folks at NaturNorth are hoping to make money from birch trees, but they’re also excited about helping people. David Peterson says he gets letters from people who want some betulin to treat a skin condition.


“When you get those letters, you can’t help but to feel that somebody out there that’s gonna benefit eventually from these compounds, I think it’s quite sobering and humbling.”


NaturNorth has started marketing betulin to cosmetics companies, and scientists are studying betulinic acid for its disease-fighting potential. Peterson says it’ll be several years before NaturNorth generates a profit.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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