Safe Cosmetics Ingredients -- iPhone App

Today I received daily highlights from Cosmeticsdesign.com and learned that a new iPhone application is available for users who care to monitor the ingredients comprising the personal care products they purchase. The developer claims that the app is touted as having a searchable database of 5000 ingredients. This is the link to Cosmetifique for iPhon and iPod Touch.

Organic Or Not? Silk report

So, as a proponent of transparency on consumer product packaging, I found an article published by the Cornucopia Institute this month interesting. The Institute reported that an investigation by the USDA's National Organic Program determined that Target corporation wrongly used an image of an organic product when promoting a conventional non-organic product to consumers. Click here to read Cornucopia's article. Minnesota Public Radio also published an article on this subject, here.

Doubt Is Their Product, Particularly those Targeted Toward Children

Consistent, or approximately so, with Michaels' "Doubt is Their Product," what does a company do when hurried to create doubt about safety of a baby/infant personal care product?  When faced with a public interest report about 1,4-dioxane in baby personal care products (click here) a company might ask people in China (click here) to say that ingredient isn't in whatever was manufactured there.

Canada Bans/Restricts Additional Personal Care Product Ingredients

Canada recently banned or restricted the use of 4 ingredients in cosmetics. Anyone interested can read the article by clicking here. Or, check the following against the labels on your own personal care products: 2-MEA (2-methoxyethanol acetate); DEGME - 2-(2-methoxyethoxy) ethanol; 2-methoxypropanol (reportedly not added, but may be an impurity); and Pigment Red 3.

Penguin House

I think this video is interesting about using light to make a small space seem larger. Click here.

Wyeth v Levine -- A great victory for a severely injured woman

On March 4, 2009, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in a case involving a woman who was severely injured by an antinausea drug called Phenergan, manufactured by Wyeth. After a clinician injected Ms. Levine with the drug by the IV push method, she developed gangrene and doctors amputated her forearm. The Vermont jury determined that Ms. Levine's injury would not have occurred if Phenergan's label included an adequate warning. Anyone who's interested in reading the opinion can click here, or simply be happy that the Supreme Court rejected Wyeth's argument that Ms. Levine could not recover from them for her injuries because federal law precluded her recovery under state law. The score was 6 to 3.

High Fructose Corn Syrup & Mercury

On January 26, 2009, Environmental Health published an article titled "Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar." The authors discuss an investigation by an Environmental Health Officer at the Food and Drug Administration after the EPA reported that on average approximately seven tons of mercury were missing from each of eight mercury cell chlor-alkali plants in operation in the United States. The results are shocking. Click here to read the article.

CFL Lightbulbs, Mercury, & What To Do If The Bulbs Break

A friend forwarded this link to a video recording Representative Ted Poe (Texas) speaking to the U.S. House in May 2008. One point of interest is the steps to be taken in the event that consumers break one of these lightbulbs. Click here to read EPA's instructions.

Attack On Phthalates Study

For anyone following the Phthalates health issues, it appears that an organization calling itself Center for Individual Freedom (CFIR) is waging an uncertainty campaign related to a February 2008 study published in the journal Pediatrics. The uncertainty campaign is discussed in an excellent book, "Doubt Is Their Product; How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health." Another organization called SourceWatch exposes CFIR's beginnings and connections to possible tobacco funding. You can read the SourceWatch profile of CFIR by clicking here.

Phthalates

There has been renewed news coverage about phthalates in baby personal care products. Click here to read one carried by AP. You can read the underlying study titled "Baby Care Products: Possible Sources of Infant Phthalate Exposure" by clicking here.