US cosmetics are full of chemicals banned by Europe

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/chemicals-in-cosmetics-us-restricted-eu

by gpresot • 7 years ago

258 112 7 years ago

theguardian.com

quickben• 7 years ago

Maybe because hundreds of millions are spent to lobby for it:

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=H04&yea...

cooper12• 7 years ago

Let's just call it what it is: bribery.

coldtea2• 7 years ago

Yeah, "lobbying" should be outright banned.

refurb2• 7 years ago

Bribery? The dollar figures on that website aren't literal dollars being handed over to elected representatives. They list what the companies pay lobbying firm. Lobbying firms who get paid very well to craft messages and arguments for elected officials. If you've ever seen what a consulting company costs (hundreds of thousands of dollars for small projects), you'd realize most of that money is going to support lobbyist's lifestyles.

aceon48• 7 years ago

In the US... products can list an ingredient as "Fragrance" at which point, it becomes a Trade Secret which is far less regulated... they could put arsenic in fragrance if they wanted. The US handling of Chemical regulations is a joke.

mg794613• 7 years ago

Removed unwanted opinion.

EpicEng3• 7 years ago

But for the fact that it's not true, yes, it absolutely shows exactly that.

EpicEng3• 7 years ago

That is absolutely false. Literally in every way.

macspoofing• 7 years ago

A long list of potentially harmful ingredients banned in the EU are legally allowed in the US due to historically relaxed regulations

Maybe European regulations are overly strict?

US regulations aren't lax.

StanislavPetrov• 7 years ago

US regulations are more non-existant than they are lax. In the US a company is free to saturate you with whatever new chemical they invent until you can prove that it is causing you harm. In the EU a company has to first prove the chemical doesn't cause you harm before they saturate you with it. Its why all of us are saturated with hundreds of industrial chemicals and we have no idea what the long term health effects of this saturation will be.

https://www.forbes.com/2010/01/21/toxic-chemicals-bpa-lifest...

EpicEng3• 7 years ago

In the EU a company has to first prove the chemical doesn't cause you harm before they saturate you with it.

That's not possible. What the EU does is allow things which have been used by other people for some time once they feel comfortable that it's probably ok. In other words, they have guinea pigs.

purple_ducks• 7 years ago

Clearly not as the US has adopted that mindset for new chemicals. From the linked article...

"The US has similar rules for new chemicals entering the market but no such precautionary principles for the thousands of potential toxins already in use"

makomk• 7 years ago

Hang on - doesn't that mean that every single chemical that was used in US cosmetics but not EU cosmetics would automatically be banned by Europe rather than the US, regardless of whether there was any particular reason it would be unsafe?

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

TL;DR because Europe basically uses a whitelist model and the US basically uses a blacklist model.

ChrisSD3• 7 years ago

And from the article it sounds like the US is reluctant to blacklist anything even when there are known harms. As someone from the UK, it surprised me to read that even asbestos is allowed.

chrismeller5• 7 years ago

Allowed? Perhaps. Is anyone using it? Well certainly not that I know of... who in their reasonable mind would?

You have to remember that the U.K. is very much of the mindset that everything will kill you until they’ve proven, tested, provided warning signs and signals, etc.

The US is the exact opposite. Until there is a problem... go for it (with some caveats, obviously). Sure sometimes that causes a problem, but on the whole the market does work itself out. Case in point? We’re still alive.

Wohlf• 7 years ago

Asbestos is allowed for certain uses, because it's very useful and can be used safely in certain contexts. Asbestos removal is taken very seriously when remodeling or destroying old buildings.

otakucode2• 7 years ago

That sort of approach worries me. It is literally impossible to prove safety. It is only possible to prove harmfulness. If you were dedicated to a whitelist model, nothing could ever be permitted because you would always require more testing. There is also an inherent problem with arguing "why should X be legal" instead of "why should X be illegal". One argues from a viewpoint of infinite restriction as your default state.

swsieber• 7 years ago

That's being pedantic. Europe uses a whiteout model, and it seems to be working. There are things being permitted. And it's arguably safer than the U.S. blacklist model. You can do reasonable safety checks.

Edit: It's arguably safer because the whitelist should be a subset of what the blacklist allows.

eeZah7Ux2• 7 years ago

That's exactly how a precautionary principle should be applied.

You always tests something extensively and only after a long enough time you consider it safe.

The US should have learnt from DDT and countless other disasters.

otakucode2• 7 years ago

Does the EU have a general policy of banning any substance determined to cause problems when taken internally from external use automatically? Lots of the things mentioned in the article make it seem like that might be the case. Formaldehyde in hair straighteners for instance... yes, formaldehyde is a carcinogen.... if you swallow it. If it touches your skin momentarily? Not aware of anything claiming that's dangerous. Same thing with the parabens... they cause problems when taken internally, but used externally there shouldn't be any problem.

cygx2• 7 years ago

yes, formaldehyde is a carcinogen.... if you swallow it

The main concern with formaldehyde tends to be inhalation.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

they cause problems when taken internally, but used externally there shouldn't be any problem.

I don't know about parabens specifically, but that sounds like a reckless approach, akin to assuming a gun isn't loaded. You have proof it's harmful under X conditions, but you're just going to assume it's benign under Y?

coldtea2• 7 years ago

I don't know about parabens specifically, but that sounds like a reckless approach, akin to assuming a gun isn't loaded.

Well, wait till you hear how the US considers gun ownership...

notabee• 7 years ago

Things that you put on your skin often do not stay obediently there indefinitely. They find their way into your mouth, and as skin products dry they often become particulate matter that is eventually inhaled. This is especially true of makeup, since it's applied to the face already. It generally rubs off over time and gets on everything. Any one product may not have an overtly toxic effect, but when many such products are deregulated and leaving carcinogenic residues in a household the cumulative effect is serious and usually not sufficiently studied. There was an article just recently posted on here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-hidden-air...

eeZah7Ux2• 7 years ago

The very same goes for food: US regulations are extremely lax when compared to other wealthy countries.

tareqak• 7 years ago

This laxness appears in free trade negotiations where the second party to the country wants to forbid certain kinds of US agricultural goods and prepared foods and the US rebuttal is that that is protectionism. To be fair, there really is some real protectionism based solely on the protecting an economic sector now and then.

freddref• 7 years ago

"US lobby groups for agriculture and pharmaceutical firms want UK standards changed to be closer to those of the US in a post-Brexit trade deal." https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47036119

mrob2• 7 years ago

dioxins, used as an ingredient in Agent Orange, which the US sprayed during the Vietnam war.

Dioxins were not used as an ingredient. Small quantities of dioxins were unintentionally formed as side-products during synthesis.

ptaipale• 7 years ago

Guardian often has little "errors" like this.

dvfjsdhgfv• 7 years ago

To be honest, it doesn't change the argument much.

cobalt2• 7 years ago

iirc, thats the same thing w/ agent orange. Agent orange (in particular) was a combination of a herbicide and a fungicide. The manufacturing of one or both of those created dioxins as a side product. They did not refine them further to remove the dioxins.

Pxtl2• 7 years ago

And afaik, it was the dioxins that were the cause of the health problems with agent orange, not the herbicide and fungicide.

So "toxic dioxins created as byproduct and not properly removed creating a health hazard" sounds like a fair comparison, since they share that.

cobalt2• 7 years ago

also as an aside, Dow Chem/whoever dumped the dioxin they had removed in the middle of the Oregon desert

Pxtl2• 7 years ago

The article seems to be about chemicals that are present, intentionally or otherwise, in the cosmetics. The fact that the dioxins arrive as a byproduct of synthesis instead of being deliberately added as an ingredient does not seem to change the truthfulness of the article.

Gallactide2• 7 years ago

It's amazing that all US critical posts are being downvote-bombed...

Also the claim that the US is not lax in its regulation is a bad joke. Half of the parties available literally made de-regulation their damn group mantra...

TheArcane• 7 years ago

HN is traditionally quite pro-US to the point that many here were defending Boeing during the 737 Max fiasco. Not to mentions the vitriol against the EU when it fined American tech giants.

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

I find it amusing or at least ironic that you say "many here were defending Boeing during the 737 Max fiasco" when in reality the mainstream opinion here is very anti-Boeing and there is a down-voted and dead comment that says they didn't see anyone defending Boeing. Well of course, those people are/were a tiny minority so they got down-voted and buried like that comment. It's a perfect illustration of what it's asking about.

And this is going to get down-voted because of the first of fight club.

davemp• 7 years ago

You can't down-vote posts on HN--only comments?

nvrspyx• 7 years ago

Posts use "flags", which downweight the posts much like downvoting comments does.

refurb2• 7 years ago

To be honest, it's kind of a shit article?

theklub• 7 years ago

This is hacker news, not Reddit world news or politics...

Filligree• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what that means, but not all hackers are in the US.

snaky• 7 years ago

Imagine the reaction if that same piece had being published by RT.

dang4• 7 years ago

Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvoting, and especially please don't post nationalistic flamebait here.

HN users have a variety of views on both sides of any divisive topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Gallactide2• 7 years ago

I'm American myself, don't mean to bag on a country, just was surprised by a few comments.

Fair enough though, didn't mean to come across as polemic/whining hahaha.

I'll try to conform to HN netiquette.

h3ckr• 7 years ago

This applies to so many other things: cosmetics, food, drugs, guns, etc. And now they’re lobbying to influence other countries too (UK, Brazil, etc). Incredible amount of greed and lack of ethics.

devy• 7 years ago

Definitely! Growth hormone (rbGH/rbGT) used in American diary products has been prevalent for decades where those were forbidden in Canada and Europe. FDA practically turned a blind eye on this (and later research proven FDA's screwed-up) and nowadays market and producers are taking self-regulating approach. [1]

[1] https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/1044/rbgh/about-r...

And this is just one of hundreds if not thousands FDA mishaps out there. The lobbying influence is BAD.

JamesBarney• 7 years ago

Do you have any links you could share that show cow hgh increases human igf-1 levels meaningfully?

I went to the article but it mentioned a change was detectable but didn't link to the study.

bob_theslob646• 7 years ago

The Instagram influencers who push these products should be held accountable.

imgabe2• 7 years ago

And is there a corresponding increased rate of cosmetics-related illnesses in the US compared to Europe?

zaphod4prez• 7 years ago

I think this question is misguided. It is extremely difficult or even impossible to trace problems back to a specific source. The burden should be on companies that are creating an entirely new compound to prove that it is safe. See: talcum powder contamination taking decades to come to light even though it was a huge effect and a case of contamination instead of a new compound having some as-yet-unknown effect that we would then have to retroactively identify.

imgabe2• 7 years ago

That's an impossible standard to meet though. If you're going to say "Prove that this new thing won't have any negative effects 50 years from now", that means it takes at least 50 years to release anything new. You might as well say "never make anything new".

It is extremely difficult or even impossible to trace problems back to a specific source.

Then why is the EU banning random things without being able to definitively attribute any negative effects to them?

amai• 7 years ago

In general life expectancy in the US is lower than in the EU. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/09/health/american-life-expe...

So at least it can be proved that the toxic cosmetics don't lead to a longer life.

labawi• 7 years ago

Technically, it doesn't prove anything, as there are plenty (presumably prevailing) other correlations. It does make it slightly more probable.

Causality1• 7 years ago

My wife is an aesthetician. She's had to put considerable effort into learning which off the shelf cosmetics are harmful to the point of uselessness.

DubiousPusher2• 7 years ago

I 100% agree that the regulatory process in the U.S. is insufficient and deeply flawed but this article is quite the piece of fearmongering. It's not enough to say, "in this one specific case this substance can be harmful, therefore it must be banned." You have to evaluate the conditions under which it is harmful and whether those conditions are like to occur in consumer use.

A lump of coal is a fairly harmless substance. Put it in your garden, on a shelf, sleep with it under your pillow. You'll probably never know a difference. Grind it up and breathe it every day for 10 years and you'll shorten your life by 5-15 years. Burn it and inhale it and you'll shorten it by 30.

This article doesn't concern itself however with how a substance is used. It's merely enough for something to have been harmful for it to be dangerous. Worse yet, there's no evaluation of the quality of the science indicating potential harm. They vaguely hint that a food dye is dangerous because one 2007 study showed it might increase hyperactivity in children? Give me a break. If that's our standard, that one study ever showed a possibility of potential harm we'll have to ban everything.

Again, I totally agree with the sentiment. The FDA should have its funding increased by 10 fold. They should be given the power to regulate supplements. They should be one of the most powerful and effective government agencies. But the standards of evidence are tremendously important. There's no reason to go full California and start serving coffee with a cancer warning.

Retric• 7 years ago

Potential for harm is only one side of the equation, benifit needs to sit on the other. Considering we are talking about cosmetics minimal benefit is combined with direct contact, regular ingestion, and even occasional contact with the bloodstream.

Harm is also more of a continuum than a binary situation. Ten individual sources of say lead exposure may not be that harmful on their own, but they add up. When talking about public heath we have often gotten it wrong by saying it’s low enough not to be an issue.

DubiousPusher2• 7 years ago

Good points. I generally agree.

fma• 7 years ago

Everyday, women are smearing formaldehyde on their body...story time.

I bought a new construction house a few years back and have been paranoid about formaldehyde. Prior to moving into it, I bought a formaldehyde detector. I had it on at my old house just for kicks. Once in a while, it would reach high values and flash red with a death symbol (no joke). We realized it flashed red whenever my wife was putting on cosmetics.

It contains an ingredient called DMDM hydantoin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMDM_hydantoin) which is basically a slow release formaldehyde, which prevents bacteria growth on the cosmetics.

You can argue it's minute amount...maybe. But certainly enough for a detector to detect it after dispersion from across the room. Shampoo has it too. I've since checked for this ingredient prior to buying anything, and probably substituting for another bad chemical.

maiterth• 7 years ago

^^ A few years back when in the US for a short while: "Uh, Mountain Dew, we don't have that." Turning the label, "oh, makes sense"... :P Sometimes one wonders if consumers can't read, or don't want to.

US cosmetics are full of chemicals banned by Europe

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