Companies Keep Cosmetics Chemicals Secret

  • Researchers have found undisclosed chemicals in a variety of products, from perfume to floor polish. (Photo courtesy of Escape(d) CC-2.0)

When you use cosmetics or cleaning products, you might assume that the government has checked out the ingredients and has deemed them safe. But Julie Grant reports – that’s not the case. Companies don’t even have disclose everything that’s in their products.

Transcript

When you use cosmetics or cleaning products, you might assume that the government has checked out the ingredients and has deemed them safe. But Julie Grant reports – that’s not the case. Companies don’t even have disclose everything that’s in their products.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics wants the labels on cosmetics to reflect all the ingredients in a product. But spokesperson Stacy Malkan says that’s not what’s happening. The Campaign recently sent 17 brands of perfumes and body sprays to an independent lab.

“We found in these products an average of 14 hidden chemicals that were not on the labels that the lab was able to detect.”

Malkan says some of those hidden chemicals have been associated with asthma and headaches, while others are hormone-disruptors, linked to sperm damage, thyroid problems, and even cancer. Malkan says there’s a reason companies don’t put those chemicals on the labels: they don’t have to.

“It is required that companies list the chemicals in their products, except that if they are part of the fragrance. So there’s a huge loophole in the federal law that allows companies to keep secret the chemicals in fragrances.”

And this loophole exists for more than just for perfumes.
Malkan says they have things like children’s bubble bath can create toxic contaminants. And researchers have found un-disclosed chemicals in nearly all brands of cleaning products – things such as dishwashing soap, floor polish, and air fresheners.

“If a chemical is found in a product, it doesn’t mean that the product is toxic or hazardous.”

Gretchen Shaefer is spokesperson for the Consumer Specialty Products Association, which represents the makers of cleaning products. She says companies are required to list anything that’s hazardous on the label.

As more consumers ask for additional information, she says manufacturers are providing more about their chemical formulas. But Schaefer says most are not willing to disclose the trade secrets of their fragrances:

“It is the fragrance that makes those products unique. And that’s why protecting those fragrance formulas are absolutely critical to the manufacturers of the overall product.”

That’s also true when it comes to companies that make cosmetics and perfumes. The trade group representing the cosmetics industry says that new study, the one that found 14 un-disclosed chemicals in the top perfumes and colognes, is misusing the information. The Personal Care Products Association says the chemicals in question are only a concern at very high levels. But the study doesn’t report the levels of these chemicals.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics says most of the chemicals it found in fragrances have not even been assessed for safety.

Ann Steinemann is an environmental engineering professor at the University of Washington, and has studied hundreds of cleaning products. She says nearly all brands on the market, even those labeled green products, contain undisclosed carcinogens – which are considered hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency:

“According to the EPA, things that are classified as carcinogens have no safe exposure level. There is no safe exposure level. Even one molecule cannot be considered safe.”

Bills have been introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate to change labeling laws on things like cleaning products. And the EPA has recently classified some of the chemicals found in fragrances as chemicals of concern. Advocates for improved labeling and safer ingredients advise consumers to use fewer products with fragrances.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Overestimating the Organic Label

  • The "organic" label means that food's grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but Lee says some shoppers think it means "healthy" in other ways.(Photo courtesy of Mica M CC-BY-SA)

Researchers have known for a while that food labels, such as “low in fat,” can mislead dieters into thinking they’re eating healthy. Shawn Allee reports the “organic” label could lead dieters astray, too.

Transcript

Researchers have known for a while that food labels, such as “low in fat,” can mislead dieters into thinking they’re eating healthy.

Shawn Allee reports the “organic” label could lead dieters astray, too.

Cornell University ran an experiment to look at how people think about food made with organic ingredients.

One researcher was Jenny Lee.

Lee gave people cookies – some were labeled organic, some not.

Then people guessed the calorie count.

“We found that those who ate cookies with the organic label rated those cookies to be lower in calories than those who ate cookies without the organic label.”

Actually, they were exactly the same cookies: organic Oreos.

The “organic” label means that food’s grown without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, but Lee says some shoppers think it means “healthy” in other ways.

“You have to be a little suspicious about what the label’s actually claiming and not to draw any other inferences.”

Lee says people need to think about what they expect from food labeled “organic,” since organic products are becoming common in mainstream grocery stores.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Fixing the Organic Label

  • Mark Kastel, director of an industry watchdog group, says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic:

Transcript

They cost more, but sales of organic foods are rising. Even in this down economy, organic food sales are going up 3-times faster than other foods. Julie Grant reports… that’s happening as the government is working to make sure everything that’s labeled organic actually is organic.

Near where I live in Ohio, it costs more to buy a half-gallon of organic milk than it does to buy a whole gallon of regular milk. So, that circular green and white seal that says “USDA Organic” better mean something.

Mark Kastel is director of the Cornucopia Institute. It’s an organic industry watchdog group. He says over the past decade, more and more people are buying organic – and the market share has grown. So, big business has moved in to get a piece of the action.

Kastel says some so-called organic cows were being raised on factory farms instead of on pastures.

“You really can’t milk 2-thousand or 5-thousand or 7-thousand cows and move them back and forth every day to pasture to graze them every day as the organic law requires.”

Kastel says part of the problem with milk production was that the rules didn’t specifically state how long cows had to be out on pasture. So, some weren’t getting any time eating grass – and were still being certified organic.

Kastel was among those who complained to the folks at the USDA’s national organic program about this.

“Corporate investments in large factory farms that are gaming the system and creating the illusion of practicing organics.”

That’s one reason why the Cornucopia Institute requested an audit of the National Organic Program.

“We need the force of law to come down and make sure that the organic label still means something.”

The USDA has responded. It started an audit of the organic program last year. At the same time, the program got more money… and hired a new director.

Miles McAvoy has inspected hundreds of organic farms and is now in charge of the national organic program. His first order of business was to help with that audit of the program. It found a lot of problems. But McAvoy is glad it was done.

“Basically, the report to me is a roadmap. It really outlines a lot of the fundamental problems that the national organic program has had and so it enables us to focus on those areas that really need to be addressed right away.”

The audit found that the organic program wasn’t cracking down on producers that labeled their foods organic, even if they violated organic rules. It found that the program wasn’t processing complaints in a timely way, and it wasn’t doing a good job inspecting farms in foreign countries. That meant that products imported from China and elsewhere might have the organic label, but not have been inspected properly.

McAvoy says the program just didn’t have enough money before to do everything it was supposed to do.

“Given the resources that the program had at the time, they did the best job that they could…”

Until recently, the national organic program had only eight people on staff.

McAvoy plans to hire more than 20 this year. And his office has already addressed most of the issues from the audit.

Organic watchdog Mark Kastel is pleased with the direction of the program. He says even the issue of cow pasture has been resolved. Milk labeled organic must now come from cows that are allowed to graze at least 120 days each year.

Kastel says the problems have come from a few bad actors. He says people are willing to pay more for organics because they want to support certain types of farms:

“I think we’re in a position with the current administration in Washington where we’ll be able to make sure those promises are kept.”

So the USDA Certified Organic label does mean something when you’re handing over more money to make sure animals and the land are treated better.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Making Biodiesel Kosher

  • Glycerin is a common ingredient in foods. It's made from fat from animals, or oil from vegetables. So automatically, there's kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. (Photo courtesy of Wakefern CC-2.0)

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

Transcript

The next time you’re near your cupboard, check for kosher food items.
The packages have specials symbols, like a “U” or a “K” with a circle around it.
The kosher label shows Jewish people the food was prepared with ingredients that meet religious guidelines.
Shawn Allee learned rabbis had to work overtime to keep kosher food separate from the byproduct of an alternative fuel.

The world of futuristic alternative fuels got tangled up in ancient Hebrew food laws.
To understand how, I talk with a rabbi in the know … Sholem Fishbane of Chicago’s Rabbinical Council.

To start, I admit I don’t understand the key word: ‘Kashrut’ in Hebrew … or ‘kosher’ in English.

“How about your Yiddish?”

“Not so good.”

“Not so good, OK.”

“The word kosher means straight, correct. So when it comes to consumer items, and especially food, how does this play out?”

“The basic concept is that you are what you eat. You become the character of what you’re consuming.”

For example, in the Hebrew Bible, pigs are unclean, so pork’s not kosher.
But even some ‘clean’ foods are not kosher if you mix ’em …

“A very big thing in kosher is not to eat, uh … milk and meat together. meat representing death. milk representing life. Those are things that shouldn’t be coming together.”

So, you separate kosher food foods from non-kosher foods and even each other at times.

Well, Rabbi Fishbane’s job is to keep all this straight at big food factories.
He inspects food equipment and ingredients.

If everything’s kosher, he lets factories use the little “K” character on packages.

So, a few years ago, Rabbi Fishbane was at this factory, inspecting paperwork.

“All of a sudden you see an increase amount of glycerin receipts and hey, what’s going on? You usually have X amount a month and now it’s tripled.”

Glycerin is a common food ingredient, so Rabbi Fishbane thought, ‘no big deal.’
Until … he saw glycerin prices plummet, and his factories substituted it for more expensive ingredients.

“This is now a pattern. When we see a pattern, that’s when we get nervous.”

So, Rabbi Fishbane dialed up a teleconference with other rabbis.

They noticed the same thing … loads of cheap glycerin hitting the market.
The rabbis started sweating.

“glycerin has always been a kosher-sensitive item.”

This is one of the other rabbis on that conference call – Abraham Juravel of the Orthodox Union.

Glycerin keeps food sweet or moist.

It’s a clear, slick goo … and it’s made from oil or fat.

“The fat can be from animal or that fat can be from vegetable. and so automatically, there’s kosher glycerin and non-kosher glycerin. As a food ingredient it’s very common in all kinds of products. They actually use glycerin as a sweetener in certain candies.”

Rabbi Juravel started tracking down the source for all this new glycerin.
After some detective work, he found it was coming from factories that make biodiesel.

Biodiesel is an alternative fuel made from oil or fat.

You chemically process the fat … and you get fuel for cars and trucks, but …

“What you’ll also get is very crude glycerine, which is the waste product.”

Several years ago, new biodiesel factories were popping up and they looked for whatever fat they could find … kosher or otherwise.

“So, they buy used oil that you fried french fries in, and who knows what else you fried in there. if you made french fries and then you also made southern fried chicken in that oil, then that oil’s not kosher.”

Again, if the oil’s not kosher … neither is the glycerin and whatever food glycerin goes into.

There is a happy ending here.

Rabbis worked overtime to keep non-kosher glycerin out of the kosher food supply, but they actually made biodiesel operations part of the solution.

Some factories switched to all-kosher oils, so now their waste guarantees a steady supply of religiously pure, kosher glycerin.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Stores Required to Label Some Foods

  • This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:

Transcript

Starting this week, supermarkets are officially required to tell you where some of your meat and produce comes from. But as Rebecca Williams reports it can get confusing at the store:

This rule requires stores to tell you what country some of your food comes from.

The rule covers things like beef and pork, chicken, and vegetables.

Supermarkets have already been adding these labels over the past few months.

Deborah White is with the Food Marketing Institute. The group represents supermarkets. She says they don’t like being forced to label specific products – and the law is quirky.

“The law applies, for example, to chicken but not turkey. It applies to peanuts and pecans but not almonds and walnuts and those were decisions that Congress made.”

And there are other quirks. Frozen peas have to be labeled and so do frozen carrots. But a bag of peas and carrots mixed together doesn’t have to be labeled.

The new agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, says he wants to fix these quirks. He’s asking the food industry to voluntarily add more information to labels than the rule now requires.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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New Standards for Organic Fish

  • Farmed fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating over-fished species. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service)

To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:

Transcript

To be labeled organic, animals
have to be fed all organic food. But
under the new proposal that won’t be
the case for fish. Julie Grant reports
that in the recommendations for organic
fish, the standard is much lower:

Some fish is raised in huge net-pens in the ocean. Farmed
fish, such as salmon, eat a lot of wild fish that happen to
swim into their pens. And that means they could be eating
over-fished species.

New recommendations by the National Organic Standards
Board would go ahead and allow farmed fish to eat up to
25% wild food – as long as it’s not from endangered species.

George Leonard is director of aqua-culture with the Ocean
Conservancy. He says these standards would weaken the
organic label.

“You don’t change the organic standard to be consistent with
current practices, you hold the organic standard steady and
you allow or you incentive the industry to change their
practices to reach that standard.”

The new “organic fish” recommendations still need final
approval from the USDA.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Feds Want Control of Food Labeling

A bill that would pre-empt states’ rights to label food is making its way through Congress. Most of the states’ Attorneys General have signed a petition opposing the law. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A bill that would pre-empt states’ rights to label food is making its way
through Congress. Most of the states’ Attorneys General have signed a
petition opposing the law. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:


The sponsor, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, says the National
Uniformity for Food Act is an appropriate extension of national
standards protecting food. But if it becomes law it will prohibit states
from telling people about chemicals or additives approved by the FDA,
but likely to be of concern when you buy your groceries.


For example, in California any food that contains chemicals known to
cause cancer or birth defects is required to carry a label saying so.


Another additive – recently approved by the FDA – is carbon monoxide
to help keep the meat looking red. Labels warning about that would not
be allowed under the proposal.


37 state attorneys general have signed a petition opposing the law, saying
the states should be allowed to warn against such chemicals. Opponents
say the bill puts special interests in the food industry before public’s right
to know what’s in their food.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

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New Law Requires Seafood Labeling

  • A new law states that labels on the majority of seafood will need to list the country of origin. Some are worried about the amount of time and money this will cost. (Photo by Ivan Pok)

Seafood lovers will soon know where their dinner was caught. A new U.S. law requires most seafood to have a label that names the country it came from. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:

Transcript

Seafood lovers will now know where their dinner was caught. A new U.S. law requires most seafood to have a label that names the country it came from. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Peter Payette reports:


The label will tell the country of origin and whether the seafood was farmed or wild. Processed foods like canned tuna or fishsticks will be exempt and smaller stores won’t be required to label their food.


The new law is supported by some in the fishing industry who think shoppers would rather buy seafood caught in U.S. waters. But other suppliers and retailers complain the law is forced marketing and has nothing to do with food safety.


Linda Candler is with the National Fisheries Institute. She says it will cost billions of dollars for the industry to keep track of all the necessary information.


“We’ve already heard from several retailers that, in order to keep their record keeping to a manageable level, they will cut the number of their suppliers. Meaning, they’ll have less flexibility in price.”


The law is now in effect. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture won’t enforce it for six months. They say that will give the industry some time to adjust to new requirements.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Peter Payette.

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Glassing Bottled Water’s Image

  • While your bottle of water may depict this... (Photo by Ian Britton)

Over the past ten years, sales of bottled water have tripled. There’s a huge thirst for water that’s pure, clean and conveniently packaged. As part of the ongoing series, “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner takes a look at why we’re turning to bottled water and whether it’s worth the price:

Transcript

Over the past ten years, sales of bottled water have tripled. There’s
a huge thirst for water that’s pure, clean and conveniently packaged.
As part of the ongoing series, “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Victoria Fenner takes a look at why we’re
turning to bottled water and whether it’s worth the price:


On a warm sunny day, it’s easy to believe that sales of bottled water
are skyrocketing. People everywhere in this waterfront park in
Toronto are carrying plastic water bottles labeled with pictures of
glaciers and mountains. With a price tag of anywhere from fifty
cents to over a dollar a bottle, that’s a lot of profit flowing to
the companies that sell it.


But Catherine Crockett and Colin Hinz are packing water the old-
fashioned way. They don’t buy bottled water. Instead, they fill up
their own bottle before they leave home and refill it at the drinking
fountain.


Crockett: “Well, it’s cheaper and as an environmentalist, I’d rather
refill a container than waste a lot of money on pre-filled stuff that
isn’t necessarily any better than Toronto tap water. What’s the
point in paying a dollar for a disposable bottle full of what’s
probably filtered tap water anyway?”


Hinz: “Personally I think a lot of what’s behind bottled water is
marketing and I don’t really buy into that very well.”


Colin Hinz’s suspicions are shared by Paul Muldoon, the Executive
Director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. His
organization has done a lot of research on water issues. He says the
reality often doesn’t live up to the image that companies have tried
to cultivate.


“There’s no doubt in my mind that when a person buys bottled water at
the cost they pay for it, they’re expecting some sort of pristine 200
year-old water that’s from some mountain range that’s never
been touched or explored by humans, and that the sip of water they’re
getting is water that is so pure that it’s never seen the infringement
of modern society. In reality, pollution’s everywhere and there are
very few sources of water that has been untouched by human intervention
in some way, shape or form.”


Environmentalists say it’s not always clear what you’re getting when
you look at the label on an average bottle of water. First of all,
it’s hard to tell by looking at the label what the source of the
water is. In many cases, it comes from rural areas just outside of
major cities. It can even be ordinary tap water which has been
refiltered. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does set maximum
levels of contaminants, and some labeling requirements as well. But
they don’t regulate water which is bottled and sold in the same
state. That’s one of the reasons critics of the bottled water
industry say the standards for tap water are at least as stringent,
and often even higher than for packaged water.


Lynda Lukasic is Executive Director with Environment Hamilton, an
environmental advocacy group in Ontario. She still has confidence in
tap water, despite the fact that the water supply in a neighborhood
in Hamilton was recently shut down because of the threat of
contamination.


“I think we’d all be better to focus on ‘what is the water
supply like in the place that we’re in?’ and ensuring that we’re
offering people who live in communities safe, affordable sources of
drinking water. And going the route of bottled water does a few
things. It creates problems in exporting bottled water out of
certain watersheds when maybe that’s not what we want to see
happening. But there’s also a price tag attached to bottled water.”


Paul Muldoon of the Canadian Environmental Law Association says there
are other costs associated with bottled water that can’t be measured
in dollars.


“Some of the costs of bottled water include the transportation of water
itself, and certainly there’s local impacts. There are many residents
who are now neighbors to water facilities with truck traffic and all
that kind of stuff. There’s also the issue of bottling itself. You’ve
now got containers, hundreds of thousands… millions of them probably.
So there is the whole notion of cost, which have to be dealt with and
put into the equation.”


There are many things to take into account when you pick up a bottle
of water. You can think about the cost and whether or not there are
better ways of spending your dollar. You might think about
convenience. And whether the added convenience is worth the price. Ask
yourself what you’re really getting. Read the label to find out
where the water comes from and consider whether it’s any better than
what comes out of your tap.


The bottom line is, be an informed consumer. And keep in mind that
the choices aren’t as crystal clear as the kind of water you want to
drink.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Victoria Fenner.

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