Most Recent Campaign Headlines
A jury in Middlesex County, New Jersey, awarded $30 million in compensatory damages on Thursday to a man who got cancer after decades of using talcum powder. His wife was awarded $7 million in damages.
Beautycounter enlists its sales team to fight for better regulation in the beauty industry. It’s part of a wave of activist brands taking on Washington.
Although automobile emissions are declining, contributions to air pollution from household products is rising, now estimated to be 50 percent of volatile organic compound (VOC) air pollution. Once VOCs migrate outside your home they react with nitrogen oxides and heat, transforming into ozone, and when exposed to sunlight, the VOCs transform into fine particulate matter. Researchers find those who use cleaning sprays as seldom as once a week for 20 years suffer similar decline in lung function as those who smoke a pack a day for 10 to 20 years.
We are blessed with a vast variety of choices in our lives, from food and clothing to home, office, and personal health products. But along with all the choice comes a responsibility to make wise, informed decisions—which means we need to recognize ingredients in these items that may be harmful to our health.
Popular personal products chain Ulta Beauty is accused of reselling used products.
The rapidly-growing company with more than 1,000 stores in 48 states is facing two class-action lawsuits that claim employees repackaged products that were damaged or returned and then put them back on shelves.
The internet can be a bit of a Wild West situation when it comes to purchasing beauty products. Not getting what you paid for is never a plus but, as a new report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office this week suggests, there may be some much bigger risks involved in the road to the ripoff.
Earlier this year a group of more than a dozen health advocacy groups and individuals petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban lead acetate from hair dyes. The compound, a suspected neurotoxin, is found in many hair products—Grecian Formula, for example. Lead acetate has been outlawed for nearly a decade in Canada and Europe. Studies show it is readily absorbed through the skin and can cause toxic levels of lead to accumulate in the blood.
There's been a lot of talk about reducing regulation across industries, but in the beauty and personal care products industry, there's one company advocating for more. Beautycounter CEO and founder Gregg Renfrew joined Kai Ryssdal to talk about why she founded a "clean" product company and why it combines sales with advocacy. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Just how natural are your “natural” beauty products? It is difficult to say. Really difficult, actually. While it is undeniable that natural cosmetics and beauty goods are surging in popularity and profitability – as “consumers, increasingly wary of products that are overly processed or full of manufactured chemicals, are paying premium prices for natural goods,” as the New York Times put it recently – it is far less clean cut as to just how natural “natural” really is.
Face wash, lipstick, makeup, and nail polish often carry labels like "tested" and "clinically-proven." Cosmetics like these are big business in the US, constituting about a $60 billion market.
But how does the cosmetics industry regulate the safety of its products?
In the US, the FDA oversees cosmetics. But unlike drugs (which must get approval before they can be sold), cosmetics do not. As a result, companies that use or sell unsafe ingredients usually only get in trouble if they get caught.
