 

Personal Care Product Use Survey Results

June 2004. A personal care product use survey of more than 2,300 people,
conducted by the Environmental Working Group and the Campaign for Safe
Cosmetics shows that the average adult uses 9 personal care products
each day, with 126 unique chemical ingredients. More than a quarter of
all women and one of every 100 men use at least 15 products daily. Among
the findings of this survey are the following:

12.2 million adults - one of every 13 women and one of every 23 men -
are exposed to ingredients that are known or probable human carcinogens
every day through their use of personal care products. 

One of every 24 women, 4.3 million women altogether, are exposed daily
to personal care product ingredients that are known or probable
reproductive and developmental toxins, linked to impaired fertility or
developmental harm for a baby in the womb or a child. These statistics
do not account for exposures to phthalates that testing shows appear in
an estimated three quarters of all personal care products but that, as
components of fragrance, are not listed on product ingredient labels
(EWG et al. 2002). 

One of every five adults are potentially exposed every day to all of the
top seven carcinogenic impurities common to personal care product
ingredients — hydroquinone, ethylene dioxide, 1,4-dioxane,
formaldehyde, nitrosamines, PAHs, and acrylamide. The top most common
impurity ranked by number of people exposed is hydroquinone, which is a
potential contaminant in products used daily by 94% of all women and 69%
of all men. 

Women use more products than men, and are exposed to more unique
ingredients daily, but men use a surprisingly high number of products as
well. The average woman uses 12 products containing 168 unique
ingredients every day. Men, on the other hand, use 6 products daily with
85 unique ingredients, on average. 

The personal care product industry's self-policing safety panel, the
Cosmetic Ingredient Review, approaches each safety assessment as if
consumers are exposed to just one chemical at a time, and as if personal
care products are the only source of exposure for each chemical
considered. The panel is often wrong on both counts.

The results of this survey in combination with other studies show that
people are exposed to hundreds of chemicals over the course of a day
(CDC 2003, Thornton et al. 2002, EWG 2003), and that people face
multiple sources of exposure from multiple consumer products for some of
the common industrial chemicals used as cosmetic ingredients. Exposures
can add up. The industry's panel does not consider the reality of
patterns of human exposures — additive effects of exposures to
multiple chemicals linked to common health harms — in declaring
chemicals "safe as used" in cosmetics.

By considering the human body to be a "clean slate" free of background
contamination, free of related chemicals linked to common health harms,
and free of exposures from other kinds of consumer products, the
industry's panel will every time underestimate the potential for a
particular personal care product ingredient to harm human health.

Survey methodology.

Personal care product use survey data collection. Between January and
May 2004, six public interest and environmental health organizations
conducted an in-depth survey on personal care product use, compiling
information from more than 2,000 survey respondents. The groups involved
in this effort included The Breast Cancer Fund, Women's Voices for the
Earth, Health Care Without Harm, the Massachusetts Breast Cancer
Coalition, Clean Water Action, and the Environmental Working Group.

These groups and some of their affiliated organizations distributed
surveys in both paper and electronic form, through membership mailings
and organizational newsletters, and by canvassing college campuses,
community forums, and high volume retail areas. Surveys were entered
electronically; results were stored in a database housed at
Environmental Working Group. The vast majority of surveys were collected
in hard copy and entered electronically by the groups mentioned above.
Some individual respondents chose to complete the survey online instead
of on paper, in which case their responses were recorded directly into
the database.

Personal care product use survey data analysis. Using Monte Carlo
modeling techniques, EWG analyzed product use rates and ingredient
exposure profiles from 2,335 valid survey responses (those for which all
requested information essential to the analysis was completed). The
model generated one million usage profiles from sequential, random
selections of survey responses from among valid surveys. Using the
frequency of use, product type, and brand of product, we selected
products from our product database to match the survey response. When
our product database did not contain the brand identified by the survey
respondent, we randomly assigned the person a product of that type. From
the one million generated usage profiles, we generated statistics on the
ingredients contained in the products these usage profiles indicated, as
well as statistics on the toxicity profiles of those ingredients.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2003). Second National
Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. Available online at
http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/2nd/.

Environmental Working Group (EWG), Healthcare Without Harm, and Womens
Voices for the Earth (Houlihan, Brody, and Schwan) (2002). Not Too
Pretty. Phthalates, beauty products, and the FDA. July 2002. Available
online at http://www.ewg.org/issues/cosmetics and
http://www.safecosmetics.org.

Environmental Working Group (2003). Body Burden. Pollution in People.
January 2003. Available online at
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden/index.php.

Thornton JW, McCally M, Houlihan J. (2002). Biomonitoring of industrial
pollutants: health and policy implications of the chemical body
burden.Public Health Rep. 2002 Jul-Aug;117(4):315-23  

Campaign Steering Committee

Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow

Breast Cancer Fund

Commonweal

Environmental Working Group

Friends of the

Earth

Health Care Without Harm

National Environmental Trust

