Act
Find out what you can do to help!
Learn
Want to dig deeper? Get started here.
Share
Show you care, share this story.
If you liked The Story of Cosmetics and the messages it conveys, please feel free to share it far and wide! Host a screening at a house party, or classroom, or church group, or neighborhood association or any other location.
To make things easy, we’ve compiled just about everything you need to organize a successful event HERE.
And when you’re done having an awesome screening party, you can drop a pin on the SOS Community Screenings Map!
When we released The Story of Cosmetics a year ago this week to rally support for the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, we weren’t terribly
surprised when the Personal Care Products Council—an industry front group—called the movie “a repugnant and absurd shockumentary.” After all, for years the multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry had been largely left alone to decide what was safe to put in their products. You know, things like lead in lipstick. Neurotoxins in body spray. Carcinogens in baby wash.
From www.toxies.com:
If you haven’t heard of “The Toxies”, it’s a satirical awards ceremony highlighting “bad actor chemicals.” This 2nd annual event, created by the statewide coalition Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy (CHANGE) and led by Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA), has now come together with groups across the country to share the concept of “bad actor chemicals” by bringing them to life with a Hollywood spin.
If you’re using Chrome or Safari,click the image below to view the annotated script in your browser. Otherwise, you can right-click the image to download it and open with the PDF-viewer of your choice.
If you’re using Chrome or Safari,click the image below to view the annotated script in your browser. Otherwise, you can right-click the image to download it and open with the PDF-viewer of your choice.
If you’re using Chrome or Safari,click the image below to view the annotated script in your browser. Otherwise, you can right-click the image to download it and open with the PDF-viewer of your choice.
Our Creative Commons License permits you to download and share our films for free so long as you play it in its entirety for non-commercial use. And while sharing our films in full for non-commercial use is free, the production cost and hosting fees are not! Donations in any amount are always appreciated. You can make a secure, tax-deductible on-line contribution via our donation page and help keep this information free. Thanks!
Please be patient, when downloading. Our films are large files.
Help us spread the word! Feel free to use these images on your site or blog. We just please ask that you link back to us. Simply right-click on your PC or ctrl-click on your Mac to download a zip file of images from each film. This file is 1.5 MB.
This probably comes as no surprise to anyone already in the SOS Community, but a recent study conducted at the University of Washington found that fragranced products, including “green” ones, release many chemicals that are not listed on the label. Some of said chemicals are even classified as toxic.
Facts from the study worth highlighting (study was conducted using 25 commonly used scented products):
• Products emit an average of 17 chemicals each.
• Almost 25% of the 133 chemicals detected are classified as toxic or hazardous under at least one federal law.
• There was only one chemical listed on any product label: ethanol.
• Products emitted more than 420 chemicals, collectively, but virtually none of them were disclosed to consumers, anywhere.
• Product formulations are confidential!
If you like to read the full article of the results from the study, it’s published in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.
You can also read more from the University of Washington.
A big thank you and congratulations to Anne Steinemann and her colleagues for conducting this study! It just goes to show, once again, that we can educate ourselves as much as humanly possible to be informed, discriminating consumers but until we flex those citizen muscles so that policy changes are made, we still won’t be fully empowered with the ability to choose wisely and safely.
Excerpt of article written by Annie Leonard & Stacy Malkan for the Huffington Post
What a couple of weeks it’s been! More than 200,000 of you have watched the Story of Cosmetics since its launch July 21, and we’ve received an outpouring of support — from cancer survivors, salon workers who’ve been harmed by chemical exposures on the job, green business owners and people around the world who are thanking us for raising the debate about toxic chemicals in the shampoos, deodorants and lotions we rub on our bodies every day.
The introduction of the Safe Cosmetics Act on the same day as the film premiere provides a vehicle to organize this energy into action. There are real opportunities ahead to shift the $50 billion beauty industry in a safer, more sustainable direction‘
Surprise, surprise: the big cosmetics companies aren’t such big fans of the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010—legislation introduced yesterday to more strictly regulate their business—or of our new movie. The Personal Care Products Council went so far as to issue a statement calling The Story of Cosmetics a “repugnant and absurd…shockumentary.” Whoa!
There’s a good reason the cosmetics industry doesn’t like all the attention it’s getting: for years, they’ve been largely left alone to decide what’s safe to put in their products. You know, things like lead in lipstick. Neurotoxins in body spray. Carcinogens in baby wash.
Now that’s repugnant!
Yesterday, the industry front group released their own plan for “reforming” cosmetics industry regulation—basically a lame, watered-down version of the kinds of changes that would really help to make our products safer and healthier.
To learn more about the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, click here, or check out Stacy’s blog to learn more about the industry press conference.
Now is a critical time to really turn up the volume on personal care product safety and to demand that Congress forces cosmetics companies to get the neurotoxins and carcinogens out of our personal care products.
We got a great start yesterday: thanks to you, more than 50,000 people have watched The Story of Cosmetics over the last 24 hours and thousands more have taken action to make sure we get these nasty toxics out of our products. Yay!
In the next week, we want at least 100,000 more people to watch the film and add their voices to the call to clean up the cosmetics industry.
Will you help us get there?
Just keep doing what you’re doing—posting the video on your Facebook or Twitter, forwarding it to friends, family and colleagues, writing about it on your blog, shouting the url from the rooftops! It also really helps when you comment on blog posts that mention the film.
And of course, make sure that you visit the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics website to sign a letter to your Member of Congress. Make your voice count!
July 22, 2010—
Congress and the cosmetics industry are both calling for tighter regulation of the chemicals used in cosmetics and other personal care products due to concerns over possible carcinogens and other toxic ingredients.
In Congress, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) introduced a bill on Tuesday calling for cosmetics makers to register with the federal government and for larger cosmetics firms to pay user fees to enforce the regulation. The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 also would require all ingredients in a cosmetic product to be listed on the product’s label and would give the Secretary of Health and Human Services two years to develop a list of prohibited or restricted ingredients.
Cosmetics manufacturers would be required to notify the federal government of consumers who reported experiencing adverse health effects from their cosmetics and to use alternatives to animal testing of products.
Schakowsky said during a teleconference Wednesday that she introduced her bill — which was cosponsored by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — because “Americans need to know that their cosmetics and personal care products don’t contain chemicals that could harm them.”
She noted that cosmetics manufacturers aren’t currently required to list all their ingredients on the package, “and when investigators have gone looking, they have turned up toxic chemicals: A recent Chicago Tribune investigation sent skin lightening creams to a lab for testing and found dangerous levels of mercury — a banned substance — in some of the products.”
Schakowsky said that current cosmetics laws are “woefully out of date, and Americans are at risk of being unknowingly exposed to harmful chemicals.”
For its part, the Personal Care Products Council, a lobbying group for cosmetics manufacturers, released its own plan for regulation in mid-July, which included requiring all cosmetics manufacturing facilities to register with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to disclose all product ingredients to the FDA, and to report any serious adverse events to the agency. It also would require the FDA to establish safe levels for trace constituents in cosmetic ingredients and products.
The agency also would be required to review the safety of any ingredients used in cosmetics and other personal care products and establish “good manufacturing practice” requirements. The council detailed its proposal in a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to pass the legislation needed to enforce the proposed rules.
Council president and CEO Lezlee Westine said in a statement that although cosmetics “remain among the safest in the marketplace … Nonetheless, we believe it is time to develop a more contemporary approach that includes a greater federal regulatory role … Our consumers deserve multiple layers of protection and transparency.”
Schakowsky said in an email to MedPage Today that she was glad the council saw a need for increased oversight, “particularly given the fact that at the moment, they have virtual free rein to put dangerous chemicals into their products with very little federal intervention.” But she said she didn’t want the council’s letter to overshadow her bill.
“This legislation requires real FDA oversight and relies on independent scientific analysis by the FDA of the manufacturers claims about which ingredients are safe,” she said. “And, most importantly, that safety standard would ban entirely the use of dangerous chemicals in cosmetics — something the cosmetics industry opposes.”
Better regulation of cosmetics also is the focus of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, which on Thursday released a video urging consumers to lobby for safer cosmetic products. The campaign, founded by a coalition of groups including Clean Water Action, the Breast Cancer Fund, and Friends of the Earth, said in a press release that endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and other toxic chemicals are found in many personal care products, including lipstick and baby shampoo.
Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures
Do you know what’s in the personal care products that you use? Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced legislation Tuesday night that would toughen safety standards for beauty products and require regular government testing for hazardous ingredients. We host a debate between Stacy Malkan, founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, and John Bailey, chief scientist at the Personal Care Products Council and a spokesperson for the cosmetics industry
We speak with Jane Houlihan, vice president for research at the Environmental Working Group and the creator of Skin Deep, an online cosmetics safety database. The database provides safety ratings for more than 62,000 products on the market and receives about one million hits per month.
Actress and cancer survivor Fran Drescher is speaking out in support of the bill introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D–IL) that would toughen safety standards for beauty products. Drescher is best known for her role as Fran Fine on the long-running former sitcom The Nanny. She is also a cancer survivor and the founder of the group Cancer Schmancer.
Major loopholes in U.S. federal law allow the $50 billion beauty industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products with no required testing, no monitoring of health effects and inadequate labeling requirements—making cosmetics among the least-regulated consumer products on the market.
The Story of Cosmetics employs the Story of Stuff style to examine the pervasive use of toxic chemicals in everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo. The film will explore the health implications for consumers, workers, and the environment, and show how we can move the industry away from hazardous chemicals and toward safer alternatives.
The Story of Cosmetics is co-produced with the trailblazing environmental health activists at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The release will support the introduction of groundbreaking national legislation to regulate personal care product ingredients.
Join our team: Please consider a tax-deductible gift to support the distribution of The Story of Cosmetics. You can make a secure contribution to the Story of Stuff Project HERE.
Want more articles, books and media so you can learn more about toxins in personal care products AND what you can do about it? Check out the annotated script and to see our sources and give the script a read ...MORE
You, our awesome community, have screened our movies all over the world in all types of places! Check out the map to see where community screening have already happened. Click on the pins to read a little about each event.
If you haven't added your screening to the map yet, you can do so by filling out this form. Thanks!
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License
