Cosmetics on Trial in Waterville Maine

These young women are incredible! The best of luck to them. This is an important project and it’s so refreshing to see them give voice to their concerns. Love the costumes!

I’m a small business owner in Maine manufacturing personal care products, and I share a lot of the same concerns about toxins in the environment. I have been a vegetarian for 25 years, and eat as much organic, local, and unprocessed food as is feasible. I have children and try to limit their exposure to toxins in their everyday lives. Like so many other people making personal care products in home businesses, I’m motivated by the knowledge that what I’m making is better than the options offered by big companies: like the lady selling handmade soap at your local farmer’s market, or organic lip balm at the health food store downtown, I am making choices about what’s in my products—and what isn’t—based on what I believe to be the best for my family AND my customers. But if you want more of that type of product available to every consumer and at more reasonable prices, the absolute LAST thing you should do is fight for more legislation and regulation.

Regulations are often unnecessarily burdensome to small businesses. Our companies rarely present the level of risk that big companies do, yet in this “one size fits all” world, we are generally required to comply as if we’re big. Compliance would be a daunting task if all states had lists of “priority chemicals” like the one Maine is poised to create. Keeping track of the chemicals listed by each separate state would be nearly impossible, as they will be changing all the time. Small businesses rarely have the manpower to keep track of new legislation as it is adopted in every state, which leaves us at risk for inadvertent non-compliance, expensive penalties, and lawsuits. How will these costs make our products LESS expensive to our customers? And how many of us will even be able to stay in business to provide your favorite farmer’s market soaps and other natural products?

I read with interest your comment above that “The European Union has banned over 1,000 ingredients from cosmetics, while the United States has only banned ten.” Legislation recently proposed in Colorado tried to use the same argument to get a long list of chemicals banned from personal care products. Their legislation would have removed even trace amounts of those chemicals, eliminating such natural ingredients as olive oil, cocoa butter, essential oils, and many fruits, which naturally contain trace amounts of substances listed as “carcinogens.” The bill was voted down due to a lack of supporting science. Blindly following the EU and throwing out the good with the bad will not make our products safer; we need to be careful not to be misled down a similar path here in Maine.

Small personal care products businesses share the public’s concern for the safety of their products; the variety and quality of natural and organic products available on the market today is largely due to the efforts of these small businesses. We are here to provide alternatives, but are concerned about legislation that would regulate us out of business. If you are really interested in more options for more people at lower prices, please help us find a way to legislate so we can stay in business. We are engaged in dialogues with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to try to find common ground between our groups (read more here: http://bit.ly/ca44QF).

I welcome you to join the conversation on Facebook at Safe Personal Care Products in Maine the Right Way http://bit.ly/dpFJTh — please check the group’s favorite pages links on that page for other similar pages in Virginia, California, Tennessee, and other states. We need to work together on this issue to keep lots of safe product options available!

I am very happy to see young women becoming informed on the toxins found in many personal care products!
Please remember that there are tons of incorrect information and scare tactics out there.
Groups such as the Environmental Working Group which controls the Skin Deep Database use scientific data to their advantage and ofter publish one sided information!
Do your own research, listen to many different opinions and form your own.
A couple of links to get you started:

http://essentialu.typepad.com/my_weblog/ingredients/

http://www.indiebusinessblog.com/2010/03/01/bad-science-and-bad-public-policy-combine-to-defeat-colorado-safe-personal-care-products-act/

Safe personal care products can be purchased at the Belfast Coop and The Natural Living Center in Bangor that are comparable or less than toxic products in the drug store.

Interesting comment from Emily Caswell. I am not a resident of Maine, but I do buy natural personal care products from people who make products in Maine. I think that we have to be reasonable and make sure that any legislation actually has a benefit to the public and is not there because of perceived risks that may not actually exist. It’s easy to say “chemicals are bad” without having any knowledge of what that means in the context of a specific chemical or a specific product.

Everything, whether natural or man-made, is composed of chemical substances. And pretty much any chemical substance can be bad for you if it’s used improperly.

I am hopeful that women’s lobbying groups like this one will also lobby for small, woman-owned businesses in all industries so that women can continue to be financially empowered, care for their children and plan their futures as they also provide valuable products that consumers enjoy using.

Thank you for sharing at your blog.