Black Women at Higher Risk from Harmful Toxins in Beauty Products
The FDA proposes a ban on formaldehyde in hair care merchandise on account of its hyperlinks to most cancers and different opposed well being results, significantly affecting Black girls. Jeanette Toomer, a Black lady, shares her expertise of utilizing chemical relaxers and being recognized with most cancers, believing it’s linked to her use of hair straighteners. The article explores the lengthy historical past of acknowledged hazards of formaldehyde and the dearth of regulation within the magnificence trade.
Current research by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being have discovered elevated dangers of most cancers, significantly uterine most cancers, amongst girls who use formaldehyde-based hair straighteners. The FDA, beneath the management of Namandjé N. Bumpus, is working in direction of selling safer alternate options and defending individuals’s well being from dangerous exposures.
The shortage of regulation within the U.S. cosmetics trade contrasts sharply with Europe, the place over 2,400 chemical compounds in cosmetics are banned. The FDA’s proposed ban on formaldehyde is seen as a optimistic step, however advocates consider extra must be accomplished to manage different dangerous components in magnificence merchandise.
The article highlights the affect of lobbyists from the cosmetics trade on rules and the numerous challenges confronted in passing legal guidelines to manage shopper merchandise. With the passing of the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act in 2022, the FDA positive aspects new authority over beauty merchandise, marking a step ahead in defending shoppers.
Ami Zota’s analysis on the opposed well being results of chemical compounds in magnificence merchandise focuses on how racialized magnificence norms impression girls of colour. Zota’s work sheds mild on the disproportionate publicity of girls of colour to dangerous chemical compounds in magnificence merchandise and the idea of “Environmental Injustice of Magnificence.”
General, the article underscores the necessity for stricter rules within the magnificence trade to guard shoppers, significantly girls of colour, from publicity to dangerous and carcinogenic chemical compounds in magnificence care merchandise.
