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The FDA still hasn't stepped up to make sure chemicals used in our personal care products are safe -- but yet another new independent "certification system" seems to pop up every day. How's an enviro girl to navigate through them all?
An optimist might hope these systems could fill the void the FDA's left. After all, many of these new certifications claim high organic requirements! First, there's the Organic And Sustainable Industry Standards (OASIS), self-dubbed the first organic standard for the U.S. beauty and personal-care market, which requires 85% organic content. Then there's Ecocert, the current prevailing European standard and certification, which requires a minimum of 10% organic content for all products and 100% organic content for products with organic in the label. Doesn't 85-100% sound pretty high?
Unfortunately, getting to a seemingly-high percentage doesn't actually mean a high standard -- because water content can be counted in this percentage. For some EcoCert products, "up to 80% of the organic content is just regular tap water," according to Organic Consumers Association.
Besides, the fact that 85% of a product is organic doesn't mean that that last 15% is safe -- and really, it's these smaller percentages that contain all the gross stuff in conventional as well as some of these "certified" products. Would you eat a dessert that's 85% organic fruit and 15% mercury? Didn't think so....
Organic Consumers Association has already pointed out that both OASIS and EcoCert allow questionable ingredients to be used in their products.. OASIS, for example, will certify products that include synthetic petrochemical preservatives like Phenoxyethanol. EcoCert, for its part, will give its certification to products containing petrochemicals such as Cocamdiopropyl Betaine. Worse, some EcoCert certified products with organic in the name actually aren't actually 100% organic, because EcoCert bends its own rules.
That said -- sometimes, OCA's warnings are rather alarmist. For example, some of the ingredients that the OCA warns about actually aren't really dangerous, according to Environmental Working Group's database Skin Deep. The fact that an ingredient isn't (or can't be) certified organic doesn't automatically mean that the stuff is poison!
OCA's more concerned with consumer confusion surrounding the word "organic," than with whether or not the products are actually safe for your use. Thus the OCA will sometimes yell and scream about how a product with "organic" in its name includes a non-organic ingredient, and make the product sound really bad -- when the product is actually quite safe (though not organic). I can see OCA's point about consumer confusion surrounding the organic label-- and the reason behind why they're taking the tactics that they do -- but their actions also sometimes create additional confusion on the part of the consumer who might then "give up" trying to find good products and go back to using unhealthy, chemicalized stuff.
Healthy personal care products really do make a difference; all sorts of skin and health problems you've learned to live with may simply be caused by your less-than-green shampoo or makeup. Kelly Leahy at Green Daily report that her two-year-old had a patch of cradle cap on the crown of her head that wouldn't disappear -- and then her five-month-old developed the same. So she ditched the dandruff shampoo brought on the eco-friendly Dr. Bronner's Baby Mild: "only days after switching shampoos, the cradle cap is disappearing from both heads."
My advice: If you must have 100% organic certified products, then stick to the stuff that has the USDA organic seal. Otherwise, the certification systems might help steer you in a better direction if you're in a pinch, but if you can, plug in the product you're buying into EWG's Skin Deep cosmetic safety database to see if the ingredients in it are safe. One word of caution: Double check to make sure the ingredient lists on the product label and EWG's review match up to make sure you're getting the correct safety rating. Yes, the research effort is a bit of a pain, but once you find a safe product you like, you can just stick to it for years to come --
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BlogHer Contributing Editor Siel also blogs for the Los Angeles Times at Emerald City, and at greenLAgirl.com.
