How Do Companies Get Away With Using Harmful Ingredients?

If so many of us are learning about the harm certain ingredients in our personal care products cause, then the question remains:

How have companies gotten away with it for so long? 

And how do they still get away with it? 

Loopholes. 

Lack of legislation.

No regulation to keep product & marketing claims under wraps. 

Lack of education.

And possibly a little bit of ‘why should we care about the health of Black women?’ Right?! 

Let’s dig in a bit, shall we? 

Loopholes. The biggest example is fragrance. As an ingredient (even though it is composed of thousands of chemicals) it is categorized as a trade secret. So we don’t even know the extent of the harmful ingredients included. Next is the number of names certain chemicals have, in various & seemingly coded forms. There is also a large lack in oversight of where brands source their ingredients, the process at manufacturer facilities, all before it reaches shelves. 

Legislation. There are only two pages from 1938 for a 511 billion dollar industry. That just isn’t going to cut it. We know it. They know it. It’s just known. Guess what also isn’t included? Recalls. It’s all voluntary and self-regulation based. There is no testing. No hoops to jump through before a product sits on the shelves of our favorite store. 

Regulation. Words like organic, natural, free are all as flat as Flat Stanley. They hold no real merit. They have no weight. No checkpoints. You can list those things on the front and when you flip the product to read the ingredients on the back the same ‘ol harmful lurkers can still be listed. 

Education. We really just can’t know what we can’t know. And it doesn’t pay to be trusting. Look at Johnson & Johnson and the deliberate re-marketing they did with baby powder after they found out how harmful talc was. Something like that shouldn’t be able to exist - and is exactly why we need better legislation.

Or we can just use our power. The money we spend. The brands we support.

Share your favorite, safer, transparent brands with us!