Backchannelmedia

Backchannelmedia

Why do personal care products contain toxic chemicals suspected of causing cancer and birth defects? Simple. The $35 billion cosmetics industry is so powerful they've kept themselves unregulated for decades. A new, just-off-the- presses book by Stacy Malkan -- "Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry" (New Society Publishers, October 2007), reveals the toxic truth about the personal care products used daily by women, men, teenagers and children.

"Not Just a Pretty Face" chronicles the story of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of health and environmental groups that asked some tough questions of the world's largest cosmetics companies:

* Why do companies market themselves as pink-ribbon leaders in the fight

against breast cancer, yet use hormone-disrupting and carcinogenic

chemicals that may contribute to that very disease?

* Why do companies put chemicals linked to reproductive harm into

products used daily by men and women of childbearing age?

As doors slammed in their faces and the beauty myth peeled away, the industry's toxic secrets began to emerge. The good news is that while the multinational corporations fight for their right to use hazardous chemicals, entrepreneurs are developing safer non-toxic technologies and building businesses on the values of health, justice and personal empowerment.

About the Author

Stacy Malkan is communications director of Health Care Without Harm and a co-founding member of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. For more information about toxic chemicals in personal care products, see http://www.SafeCosmetics.org.

Read the author's blog: http://www.NotJustaPrettyFace.org

SOURCE Campaign for Safe Cosmetics