Annie Leonard, better known as the director of The Story of Stuff Project and author of The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health, has added a new informative video to the collection: The Story of Cosmetics. It explains what's really in our personal care products — numerous chemicals like carcinogens, neurotoxins, and reproductive toxins — and it talks about how the big cosmetic companies are mislabeling products as "organic" and "natural" when they're really full of harmful toxins.
What's even scarier is the fact that the FDA doesn't inspect the safety of the ingredients in personal care products and have only banned eight out of the over 12,000 ingredients used in cosmetics since the federal cosmetics law was written over 70 years ago.
European governments have already started to ban chemicals in cosmetics and their companies are finding ways to comply. If Europe is doing it, why can't we?
This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.