FOREWORD

To varying degrees, the American public, as well as that of other nations, is exposed to carcinogenic and other toxic pollutants in air, water, and the workplace. At least minimally, these exposures are all subject to explicit federal regulation.

Nevertheless, the entire American public remains exposed to carcinogenic and other toxic ingredients in consumer products—household, food, cosmetics, and personal care. While today’s consumers increasingly want to make informed shopping decisions, nearly all are still doing so in the dark. They receive highly misleading information from the industries involved, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the supposedly responsible regulatory agency, remains recklessly silent.

Of particular concern are cosmetics and personal-care products. These are regulated under the 1938 FDA Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which requires that all ingredients in these products must be labeled on their containers. The Act also gives the FDA authority to protect consumers from dangerous products, including requiring that their labels must bear a clear warning statement to prevent any health hazard. However, seven decades after the Act was passed, the FDA still takes the reckless position that the industry is responsible and accountable for the safety of its products. Accordingly, the FDA fails to regulate the industry, let alone warn the public of the dangers of its products. It’s no wonder that, at the 1997 hearings on the FDA Reform Bill, Senator Edward Kennedy warned that “[t]he cosmetics industry has borrowed a page from the playbook of the tobacco industry by putting profits ahead of public health.”

In reader-friendly language and with meticulous scientific documentation, Dr. Epstein details the wide range of toxic ingredients in currently marketed cosmetics and personal-care products, along with those ingredients’ effects. The ingredients fall into five categories and are listed in five tables: frank carcinogens, hidden carcinogens (carcinogens that contaminate other ingredients, or ingredients that are precursors of carcinogens), endocrine disruptors (ingredients that are hormonally toxic, particularly to women and their fetuses), penetrating agents (ingredients that pass through the skin), and allergens. Other tables list the toxic ingredients in a wide range of common products.

Fortunately, Healthy Beauty is not a gloom and doom book. Also listed are safe alternative products, including those that are certified organic. Concerned and responsible shoppers can readily download the book’s five tables on toxic ingredients from the author’s Cancer Prevention Coalition Web site, www.preventcancer.com, or from NaturalNews.com. They can then use these tables while shopping to avoid buying products with toxic ingredients.

Dr. Epstein is well recognized as a leading international expert and crusader on avoidable causes of cancer and other life-threatening diseases. I have known him well for more than two decades and have endorsed his critical initiatives in protecting our health and lives.

The importance of the information in this book cannot be overstated. Healthy Beauty is a must-read for all concerned citizens.

 

Quentin D. Young, M.D.
Chairman, Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, Chicago
Past President, American Public Health Association