Slightly off topic but not too much!

[Guest guest]

Some interesting facts that many of us are not aware of. Just thought I would share this with the group.

 

Don Quai

 

ORGANIC BEAUTY IS ONLY SKIN DEEPPersonal Care Products Do Not Yet Comply With The National Organic Program By Lacey Phillabaum Reprinted with permission from In Good Tilth, a publication of Oregon Tilth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is an abridged version of the article originally published in In Good Tilth. For the complete version,

 

 

 

Beauty care products are notoriously under-regulated. Any number of dangerous chemical and synthetic additives are used in their processing. The National Organic Program (NOP) has been vague about when and whether organic personal care products will be held to the same standards as organic foods. In the meantime, body care manufactures have seized on the label "organic" as a marketing scheme, sometimes heralding a negligible amount of organic ingredients while their bottles are filled with the same synthetic chemicals.

Unwitting consumers pay premium prices for "organic" products under the misconception that they are materially different than the non-organic products on the shelf.

Body care manufacturers have set out to develop their own standards for organic processing. Many insist that their products simply cannot be made in a manner compliant with existing organic standards and want to list hundreds of synthetic processing ingredients as allowable for organic personal care.

For now, organic personal care products making fraudulent claims, using toxic ingredients and, at the very least, misleadingly labeled will continue to crowd the shelves of natural food stores.

Lifestyle or Method?

 

 

 

 

 

"Unwitting consumers pay premium prices for 'organic' products under the misconception that they are materially different than the non-organic products on the shelf."

 

 

But organic is neither concept, theme, nor marketing ploy. It is, first and foremost, an agricultural method. Unchecked, the proliferation of the organic beauty market could redefine organic into the language of body care, overwhelming organic agricultural products through sheer number of SKUs and revenue size. With just $26 billion in global organic sales projected for this year, the entire trade is dwarfed by the $30 billion US cosmetics market.

Organic personal care manufacturing will benefit four big cosmetic chemical manufacturers unless rigorous processing standards are developed and enforced. Only by tying organic beauty care closely to the National Organic Program standards can the "lifestyle" marketed by the manufacturers represent the values at the core of organic agriculture.

The growth of the natural body care industry has not slowed the market for chemical additives for such products. In fact, the chemical companies expect to profit from the trend. "The incorporation of active ingredients, such as plant acids and enzymes, into toiletries and cosmetics has become a major force behind growth in an otherwise mature industry," according to a chemical industry analyst from the Freedonia Group.

Cosmetic Regulatory Failings

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "A cosmetic manufacturer may use any ingredient or raw material and market the final product without government approval." Seven toxins are banned, but many more known toxins and carcinogens are allowed in cosmetic formulations. Less than one percent of the FDA's budget is for skin care.

Toxic makeup is nothing new, and at this rate, organic makeup doesn't look likely to be the end of it, as the same dangerous chemicals are allowed in organic personal care products.

The approximately six pounds of skin each human carries around is a porous membrane one-twentieth of an inch thick, through which numerous environmental toxins enter the body. Skin is a "more significant gateway for toxins into your body than what you eat," says organic personal care product manufacturer Diana Kaye of TerrEssentials. Traces of 700 different chemicals can be found in the body. Positive Health cites a study showing 500 chemicals present in a single fat cell of a healthy 30-year-old British female.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that 884 chemicals used in personal care products and cosmetics are known to be toxic. A Canadian study in Pediatric Drugs cites cosmetic and personal care products as the most common cause of unintentional poisonings of kids under six.

Another toxin used in organic personal care is methyl paraben. The majority of skin lotions and creams use methyl paraben as a preservative. In the past, worries over methyl paraben have centered on its low systemic toxicity, which can cause allergic reactions. Now methyl-, ethyl-, propyl-and butylparaben have been found to be weakly estrogenic. The European Union has asked the European industry trade group about the implications for breast cancer. While parabens are not potent estrogens, continuous topical exposure may pose a danger. In fact, because the liver metabolizes most ingested paraben, an article by Dr. Elizabeth Smith suggests you'd be better off drinking the stuff than regularly slathering it on your skin.

Health Claims

None of this stops consumers from looking to organic personal care products as a sop for worries about cosmetic materials.

It is widely accepted in the industry that consumers buy organic beauty products under the illusion that the products are held to organic food standards. Despite this awareness, the word organic is used on the labels of products that do include toxic processing materials and which do not comply with the NOP.

"Customers may not realize that the organic label claims on nonfood products doesn't necessarily represent the same standards as they do on foods," acknowledged the organic trade publication Natural Food Merchandiser in March.

"Nowhere do the terms 'natural' and 'organic' take more of a bruising than in the cosmetic industry," according to New Vegetarian and Natural Health. "Most cosmetics companies utilizing the term 'organic' on their label are using the chemistry definition of organic-meaning a compound that contains carbon... By using this definition they could say that a toxic petrochemical preservative called methyl paraben is 'organic' because it was formed by leaves that rotted over thousands of years to become oil."

"Right now, it's really a free for all," says Kerin Franklin of Frontier Natural Brand, the manufacturer of a line of personal care products.

But most organic advocates are hesitant to call a spade a spade. The network of certifiers, ingredient reviewers and consultants who monitor the marketplace on behalf of organic farmers and producers, after all, have a monetary interest in courting, not castigating, potential organic manufacturers. English organic certifier the Soil Association refers delicately to "a marketplace currently saturated with unverified claims" and many products with "unsubstantiated or questionable organic claims."

Draft Standards

 

 

 

 

 

"It is widely accepted in the industry that consumers buy organic beauty products under the illusion that the products are held to organic food standards."

 

 

Behind the scenes the personal care task force has attempted to heavily influence NOP policy regarding personal care products. The task force has already drafted its own personal care standards that it would very much like to see used as the basis of the NOP's. While the task force is composed of a wide variety of experts from all sizes of industry and private certifiers, its track record is mixed and the draft standards have tended to err on the side of industrial ease over organic integrity. If not monitored carefully by farmers and consumers, the task force may become a force forestalling stronger regulation.

Existing NOP regulations for organic foods establish four categories of organic claims. The least significant category, products that use less than 70 percent organic ingredients, cannot make organic claims on the primary display panel. The personal care task force first tried to dilute these categories for organic personal care products by lowering the threshold for "made with organic" to 50 percent. It has since given up the effort, but a number of member manufacturers continue to label products with less than 70 percent organic ingredients as "made with organic."

Organic Water

The task force also considered the proposition that water should be included in the calculation of organic ingredient percentages for personal care products. Some manufacturers argued that a water infusion of certified organic ingredients was a single ingredient and must be weighed and calculated as one. This position is cheerfully acknowledged as ridiculous now, and English organic certifier, the Soil Association, has since required that certified components of all water-based ingredients be measured separately. The draft task force standards, however, still recommend that hydrosols with a small percentage of certified extracts be factored at their weight with water.

"The task force had recommended for the purpose of calculating the percentage of organic ingredients, a hydrosol is considered a single ingredient. Also the task force determined that water infusions cannot be counted as a single ingredient," says task force head Phil Margolis.

Coincidentally, Donna Bayliss, founder of the task force, manufactures all of the lavender hydrosols that are at the foundation of many "made with organic" products. [A well-known "organic" body care company's] web page claims the task force "standards specifically address the issue of 'blends' and 'infusions,' which are simply organic ingredients (typically herbs) blended in added water." Though hydrosols are also water-based dilutions, [a well-known "organic" body care company's] products include "certified lavender hydrosol" in their calculation of ingredient percentages.

While the task force and [a well-known "organic" body care company] may be holding to a fine distinction between a hydrosol and a water-based ingredient, the exclusion of water is carefully laid out in the NOP's labeling guidelines. Any personal care product companies that do include water in their calculations of organic ingredients will be flouting the labeling guidelines of the National Organic Program.

Non Food Materials

Some organic personal care manufacturers argue that their products cannot be held to the NOP standards because it is not possible to make the products with only the ingredients allowed for food processing.

Organic consultant Peter Murray suggested that non food ingredients would need to be allowed for personal care products, saying a materials list of "all the ingredients that make things like shampoo and soap functional, preservatives, carriers, solvents and things of that nature" should be created. Murray cited ingredients "that provide functionality" like "soil removal with surfactants" as necessary. The most common surfactant in shampoo is sodium lauryl sulfate.

Preservatives are one of the key ingredients that manufacturers claim are necessary to produce shelf-stable organic products.

An article in Alive: Canadian Journal of Health and Nutrition explains, "Every chemical cosmetic product on the market is formulated for shelf life of over three years. Therefore, each contains a large amount of preservatives (usually four synthetic parabens) to prevent spoilage. These are cellular toxins; otherwise, they wouldn't kill microbes. They penetrate the skin to a certain extent and many have been shown to cause allergic reactions and dermatitis."

Brian Baker, a materials reviewer for the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) who was briefly part of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) task force, points out that the use of preservatives for shelf stability may not be compatible with consumer expectations of the meaning of organic. "Consumers who buy organic expect their food to be fresh... without preservatives. Even if people are required by law to use prohibited substances to make a product that does not entitle them to label it organic," says Baker.

While some companies claim organic personal care products can't be made without synthetic preservatives or with all-organic ingredients, others say they are already doing it. American producer TerrEssentials claims to make a line of all organic personal care products. [To clarify, we claim that our products are 100% natural, and organic - some truly natural ingredients are only available in wildcrafted form, such as shea butter, or can't be classified as organic because they are not agricultural materials, such as clays. We don't use any ingredients that violate the USDA National Organic Program standards.]

Jayne Ollin of Lakon Herbals wrote in June for the Organic Consumers Association: "Many large health and beauty aide manufacturers have begun lobbying USDA in an effort to convince officials that personal care products cannot be made without the use of synthetic additives or that botanical preparations or herbal essential oil cannot be extracted without the use of toxic solvents such as hexane or petrol… This attempt to lower the standards is not compelled by the science of botanical formulations."

"Preserving" the Environment

 

 

 

 

 

"The NOP should begin challenging fraudulent organic labeling claims."

 

 

The effect of cosmetic chemicals on the environment is just beginning to be understood. In March, a team of US Geological Survey scientists showed that a variety of chemicals from personal care products were among 95 wastewater contaminants found in US waterways. While clean water efforts historically focused on obvious, point-sources of pollution like heavy industry, personal care products and pharmaceuticals have posed a much more insidious and serous threat to aquatic life. Every night when the daily share of that $30 billion in cosmetics is washed off, it is washed into the sewage system and ultimately the waterways. An EPA report notes that these chemicals have a devastating effect even when they are not "persistent" because they are continuously replenished. "Their continual infusion into the aquatic environment serves to sustain perpetual life-cycle exposure for aquatic organisms." Similarly the anti-fungal and anti-microbial ingredients that make personal care products shelf-stable retain their anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties in microbe- and fungus-rich aquatic environments. Ultimately, the result is a double exposure for humans, who drink the chemicals they wash down the drain in their tap water.

Organics offers body care what amounts to gold in the language of the industry of illusion: something new. If makeup is hope in a bottle, organic ingredients in organic makeup should be the substance of that hope. The acceptance of natural forces implicit in the work of an organic farm is in tension with the mission of all things "cosmetic." The illusions and misconceptions at the base of cosmetics may be irreconcilable with the transparent, uniform standards of the National Organic Program. The NOP should begin challenging fraudulent organic labeling claims while evaluating these questions. In one way, organic beauty can affirm the acceptance of nature that organic farms seek-by accepting the meaning of the word organic as legislated by the National Organic Program and mimicking the spirit of organic farming, which does not endlessly seek to replicate the world in its own image.

 

Article © 2002 Oregon Tilth. Become a member of Oregon Tilth - see http://www.tilth.org/MEMB.html for details.

Oregon Tilth470 Lancaster NESalem OR 97301(503) 378-0690, 378-0809organic

 

 

---Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).Version: 6.0.445 / Virus Database: 250 - Release 21.1.03