Whew! This book was good and also pissed me off at the same time.

I added this to my list now that I'm a Beautycounter consultant (www.Beautycounter.com/karenchason) and trying to make healthier choices for what I put on my skin. It was published in 2007 so I would be interested to know what changes for the better and worse have been made since it's publication. It doesn't go into too much depth but is a easy read and beginner's intro into our nasty cosmetics industry. It also made me wonder if I too could get tested like some of the people in the book did for chemicals in my body and then see if by making better choices those amounts decrease. ( )

The ugly side of the beauty industry

This book was pretty good, but I can't say that I didn't already know most of what Malkan wrote about in this book before reading it. The gist of the book is that the chemicals in personal care products are quite astonishing in their sheer numbers and toxicity. Companies that produce personal care products are largely unregulated by any federal agencies (namely the FDA) and most companies are unwilling to remove toxic chemicals from their products in the US, even after being forced to do so in the EU after new guidelines were passed.

Malkan also brings up some comforting consumer and environmental movements in the US that are trying to bring light to this subject. I liked how she brought up Breast Cancer "pink ribbon" campaigns and how corporations can somehow whitewash their products by pinning them to a good cause, and how these same companies are actually probably contributing to increased rates of cancer in the first place. I'm glad that she mentioned the great disparity between searching for a cure and seeking prevention - two hugely different things. Prevention is vastly more important, but is often overlooked.

Probably because I just read this book after reading Mindful Economics I was unhappy that the author didn't think to mention anything about probably the biggest reasons that giant corporations aren't changing their product formulas - profits. It's certainly cheaper to keep the toxins they're currently using in their products, and it also profits the chemical and petroleum industries greatly to have these toxins so prevalent in consumer goods.

I also disliked how the author sums up the book with this great promise that science will ultimately lead to product advancements without resorting to the need for toxic chemicals. Maybe because I do scientific research, I'm driven to be quite skeptical about this claim. I think that science can do some great things, but like the potentially toxic nano-particles in lipstick, carcinogenic PTFE, among many other things, a lot of the "great things" that science produces aren't recognized as dangerous until after it's too late. Sometimes there's a lot to be said for old-fashioned, natural products (such as baking soda and vinegar). They've been time tested, and don't kill anyone. Without the proper precautions in place, and without knowing the motivations behind the science, the end results are questionable at best. ( )