(Via Personal Care Truth or Scare)
A frustrated ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross wonders why such needless regulations are being written by a chemophobic activist group whose only expertise lies in scaring the public and manipulating consumer fears about chemicals. “They even have the temerity to actually take ‘credit’ for calling cosmetics harmful and laced with such ‘toxic contaminants’ as phthalates, formaldehyde, and metals,” he says. “These products have been in widespread — indeed, universal — use for decades, and now, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (a creature of the Environmental Working Group) and its lackeys in Congress, they have suddenly become a health hazard?
Additionally, many of these “toxic” chemicals occur naturally in low doses in the foods we eat every day. Apples, for example, contain small amounts of formaldehyde—not from any human action, but they actually produce them as they grow. It’s small facts like this that can be used to make wild claims like “this lipstick contains cancer-causing formaldehyde”, when it could just be that it contains an apple extract. Groups like the Environmental Working Group aren’t generally interested in the truth, though. Just how they can present information in a way that fits their agenda.
Remember, any time a discussion about toxicity comes up, you can’t determine if something is toxic until you find out what kind of dosage you’re talking about. It’s the dose that makes the poison.