1 State down, 49 more to go? sounds expensive…
News update: Colorado voted NO to the safe cosmetics bill.
I’ll be the first to tell you, we have some serious problems with our environment and product culture that is helping cause the increase of Cancer and other diseases. We need to get to the bottom of the ROOT Cause. If you read the previous post on the Safe Cosmetics bill from CO, you’ll know that it’s not the intent of the bill that that many large and small businesses have a problem with. It’s the details and ingredient levels that the Colorado bill by passed entirely.
In a Global age of information and commerce, each US State is going to mandate laws differently? Sounds expensive, counterproductive, and perhaps missing the point. What happened to regulating at a federal level? Oh wait, why are we regulating? What about customers having a choice? 9 times out of 10, educated customers are going to decide for healthy anyway. If you want to thrive as a business, you head toward healthy selection. Do we really need a law telling us business owners which ingredients to use? Why aren’t cigarettes outlawed then? This goes back to your green purse strings…what you buy, is your vote.
Science is rarely bad, we just need more of it. Think about Galileo! Large sample sizes keep statistics from wading into muddy water. We also need to understand the proportions. I liked what another fellow soap maker tweeted:
@sarvasoap: 1,4-dioxane: for toxic exposure, requires 700 baths a day for 70 years to reach toxic level in consumer products
@sarvasoap remember folks, 1 PPB =1 drop of water in an Olympic sized pool. That’s what they are talking about in this #COcosmetics bill
Seeing the forest for the trees, literally. Do you use fertilizer on your lawn or bug spray to exterminate? You are using much harmful poisons at higher proportions in those two areas than you could almost ever wash with.
What of B-PA? It’s in our food packaging, water packaging, our cars, our plastic bags that we STILL use. It’s not since recently that we even knew there was a problem. (Thank you science!) In fact many folks still don’t understand this one. Perhaps if we focused energy on it, we could get folks to see how bad it is…
How we produce food is another leg of the root cause. If you look at some of these plots of land where there is no more green grass and our cows all eat corn instead. Cud chewing cows are meant to eat grass in nature, not grain. Is this a problem that could impact Cancer causes? You bet! If you want to see the pictures, watch the movie Food, Inc.
Perhaps we are chasing a speck of trouble when we have a log pile that we have not even addressed as a nation. Not that skin care isn’t a leg of the table, but the other legs of the table of Cancer/disease root cause are thicker and longer than the skin care one. We have plenty of work to do. Let’s don’t waste time!
I’m back to stirring the soap pot…
Happy (and safe) Washing!
~Regina
6 Comments
Donna Maria Coles Johnson
Great post, Regina! Yes we need money. That’s the reality of course. IBN now has state advocacy leaders in an increasing number of states so we can coordinate efforts at the “speck” level and at the national level. We’ve been in the “log pile since 2008 when we first went to Capitol Hill and the FDA personally. We’ve had numerous phone calls and email exchanges with lawmakers and regulators on these issues. We returned to Capitol Hill in 2009 and will return again this year, probably very soon. I agree with you, let’s not waste time!
admin
Hey dM! Let’s not spend that money on legislation 49 more times. That’s my whole point. Let’s focus instead on the Root Cause. It’s not skin care/cosmetic regulation. It’s the food we eat, the poisons that we don’t even notice we are using, etc. That’s my direction. It’ll be where I spend my $.
Donna Maria Coles Johnson
I’d love to hear more about how the “root cause” focus would work from a strategy perspective. Let’s say the Georgia legislature was considering a bill like what we just saw in Colorado in GA. What would the strategy be to address it? I’d love to hear, like everyone else, am open to all ideas! Thanks!!
admin
Root cause is not about strategy. It’s about identifying why we have a problem.
Cancer rates are rising. Why? Is Skin Care as a sole root cause for cancer? The science isn’t there as it was most aptly noted by scientists testifying specifically for this Colorado Bill. No politics…just science facts currently known.
If the other 49 states want to try skin care on these same premises that Colorado just went thru, shame on them. It would be the same effect as copy and paste and a sure waste of time and money. Yes, they could take the same bill and reword or wordsmith in the detail but this fact remains. These are the points that I would raise if Georgia were the next state to do the same. I’d fight tooth and nail with the facts just as the many have done regarding Colorado’s bill. Donna Maria, you are a grand advocate for our industry.
I would like to see Food and B-pa plastics (I throw these out as examples) tow the line on the root cause train of why we have a rise in Cancer. To me, they are much bigger problems than cosmetics. It’s time for the other industries to pony up to the root cause of why the rise in cancer and let us get back to work making America stronger one soap bar at a time.
Donna Maria Coles Johnson
Those are such awesome points! Some of them came up yesterday, like when a few legislators said, “Why not start with my lunch” instead of my sunscreen? LOL!
admin
sunscreen…well that’s a whole other show as AB on the foodnetwork would say 😉