
US cosmetics are full of chemicals banned by Europe - gpresot
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/chemicals-in-cosmetics-us-restricted-eu
======
quickben
Maybe because hundreds of millions are spent to lobby for it:

[https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=H04&yea...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=H04&year=2018)

~~~
cooper12
Let's just call it what it is: bribery.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, "lobbying" should be outright banned.

~~~
pergadad
Complex matter. There is legitimate lobbying, which is for expert groups
affected by s policy to make their position known. The issue is that the
process favours big commercial players that can cough up the cash for long-
term professional lobbyists. Consumer groups, NGOs, etc. mostly have to resort
to signature campaigns etc.

But lobbying is helpful. Consider niche technical issue where maybe 3-4
organisations do reply have established expertise (because they are
commercially engaged). There is often on specific policy no established
evidence at the moment in time when government has to make a decision, nor is
the way forward obvious. Thus it's a matter of hearing everyone concerned and
finding a nuanced path forward.

Wonlobbying is legitimately useful. But what has totally spun out of control
is the US lobbying machine (which sadly is spreading to other places), which
really often is just bribery in many ways.

~~~
mdpopescu
Better yet, don't make laws that are understood only by a few people.

------
DubiousPusher
I 100% agree that the regulatory process in the U.S. is insufficient and
deeply flawed but this article is quite the piece of fearmongering. It's not
enough to say, "in this one specific case this substance can be harmful,
therefore it must be banned." You have to evaluate the conditions under which
it is harmful and whether those conditions are like to occur in consumer use.

A lump of coal is a fairly harmless substance. Put it in your garden, on a
shelf, sleep with it under your pillow. You'll probably never know a
difference. Grind it up and breathe it every day for 10 years and you'll
shorten your life by 5-15 years. Burn it and inhale it and you'll shorten it
by 30.

This article doesn't concern itself however with how a substance is used. It's
merely enough for something to have been harmful for it to be dangerous. Worse
yet, there's no evaluation of the quality of the science indicating potential
harm. They vaguely hint that a food dye is dangerous because one 2007 study
showed it might increase hyperactivity in children? Give me a break. If that's
our standard, that one study ever showed a possibility of potential harm we'll
have to ban everything.

Again, I totally agree with the sentiment. The FDA should have its funding
increased by 10 fold. They should be given the power to regulate supplements.
They should be one of the most powerful and effective government agencies. But
the standards of evidence are tremendously important. There's no reason to go
full California and start serving coffee with a cancer warning.

~~~
Retric
Potential for harm is only one side of the equation, benifit needs to sit on
the other. Considering we are talking about cosmetics minimal benefit is
combined with direct contact, regular ingestion, and even occasional contact
with the bloodstream.

Harm is also more of a continuum than a binary situation. Ten individual
sources of say lead exposure may not be that harmful on their own, but they
add up. When talking about public heath we have often gotten it wrong by
saying it’s low enough not to be an issue.

~~~
DubiousPusher
Good points. I generally agree.

------
mrob
>dioxins, used as an ingredient in Agent Orange, which the US sprayed during
the Vietnam war.

Dioxins were not used as an ingredient. Small quantities of dioxins were
unintentionally formed as side-products during synthesis.

~~~
cobalt
iirc, thats the same thing w/ agent orange. Agent orange (in particular) was a
combination of a herbicide and a fungicide. The manufacturing of one or both
of those created dioxins as a side product. They did not refine them further
to remove the dioxins.

~~~
Pxtl
And afaik, it was the dioxins that were the cause of the health problems with
agent orange, not the herbicide and fungicide.

So "toxic dioxins created as byproduct and not properly removed creating a
health hazard" sounds like a fair comparison, since they share that.

------
h3ckr
This applies to so many other things: cosmetics, food, drugs, guns, etc. And
now they’re lobbying to influence other countries too (UK, Brazil, etc).
Incredible amount of greed and lack of ethics.

~~~
devy
Definitely! Growth hormone (rbGH/rbGT) used in American diary products has
been prevalent for decades where those were forbidden in Canada and Europe.
FDA practically turned a blind eye on this (and later research proven FDA's
screwed-up) and nowadays market and producers are taking self-regulating
approach. [1]

[1]:
[https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/1044/rbgh/about-r...](https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/issues/1044/rbgh/about-
rbgh)

And this is just one of hundreds if not thousands FDA mishaps out there. The
lobbying influence is BAD.

~~~
JamesBarney
Do you have any links you could share that show cow hgh increases human igf-1
levels meaningfully?

I went to the article but it mentioned a change was detectable but didn't link
to the study.

~~~
m0zg
Of course they don't have any links, because studies proving this don't exist.
Another little known fact: even _human_ growth hormone is utterly pointless to
consume orally: it gets destroyed by stomach acid. That's why people who take
it go through the trouble of injecting it.

I also don't think I've ever seen dairy in store that doesn't come from cows
"not treated with rBST". I don't buy organic unless the price is roughly the
same, and for milk it's easily double, so I don't buy organic milk.

But even if it did boost igf-1 a tad, that'd be freaking great. People would
start growing muscle, losing weight, etc.

------
fma
Everyday, women are smearing formaldehyde on their body...story time.

I bought a new construction house a few years back and have been paranoid
about formaldehyde. Prior to moving into it, I bought a formaldehyde detector.
I had it on at my old house just for kicks. Once in a while, it would reach
high values and flash red with a death symbol (no joke). We realized it
flashed red whenever my wife was putting on cosmetics.

It contains an ingredient called DMDM hydantoin
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMDM_hydantoin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMDM_hydantoin))
which is basically a slow release formaldehyde, which prevents bacteria growth
on the cosmetics.

You can argue it's minute amount...maybe. But certainly enough for a detector
to detect it after dispersion from across the room. Shampoo has it too. I've
since checked for this ingredient prior to buying anything, and probably
substituting for another bad chemical.

------
imgabe
And is there a corresponding increased rate of cosmetics-related illnesses in
the US compared to Europe?

~~~
zaphod4prez
I think this question is misguided. It is extremely difficult or even
impossible to trace problems back to a specific source. The burden should be
on companies that are creating an entirely new compound to prove that it is
safe. See: talcum powder contamination taking decades to come to light even
though it was a huge effect and a case of contamination instead of a new
compound having some as-yet-unknown effect that we would then have to
retroactively identify.

~~~
imgabe
That's an impossible standard to meet though. If you're going to say "Prove
that this new thing won't have any negative effects 50 years from now", that
means it takes at least 50 years to release anything new. You might as well
say "never make anything new".

> It is extremely difficult or even impossible to trace problems back to a
> specific source.

Then why is the EU banning random things without being able to definitively
attribute any negative effects to them?

~~~
repolfx
_Then why is the EU banning random things without being able to definitively
attribute any negative effects to them?_

That's easy. It's for two reasons:

1\. Trade barriers. The WTO mechanisms are full of holes. The so-called
"precautionary principle" is just a justification to ensure that anything new
the US invents can be instantly be made illegal in the EU until it can be
"shown to be safe", i.e. the EU assumes everything to be dangerous by default
until it decides otherwise. Actual science showing it's dangerous is not
required. This is a great way to work around WTO rules on tariffs by abusing
safety regulation and _in particular_ protect French farming from genetically
modified American imports. Americans aren't exactly dying en-masse from eating
GM food (except maybe from obesity because food is so cheap), but pretending
it's dangerous is a great way to block imports whilst avoiding a WTO dispute.

2\. The EU regulatory apparatus is enormous. It has a staff of 32,000 people
in the Commission _alone_ , and many more in associated agencies. Many of
these jobs are created for political reasons, for instance, countries are
theoretically able to appoint one Commissioner each (in practice the head of
the commission, Juncker, blocks any proposed appointment he doesn't like -
this isn't meant to happen by treaty but does) and each Commissioner needs a
staff.

But more importantly, unlike in democratic governments, the Parliament does
_not_ create law. The Commission does that, and as a consequence the quantity
of regulations the EU creates is staggering compared to any normal government.
The throughput of regulations banning things is limited in democracies by the
size of the chamber: there's only so much a group of a few hundred people can
do after all. But there are so many regulations being churned out by the EU
that the Parliament has rubber-stamp votes over 1000 times _per week_. You can
see a video about the deleterious effects this rate of voting has here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLh9DMuetm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLh9DMuetm4)

------
dsfyu404ed
TL;DR because Europe basically uses a whitelist model and the US basically
uses a blacklist model.

~~~
ChrisSD
And from the article it sounds like the US is reluctant to blacklist anything
even when there are known harms. As someone from the UK, it surprised me to
read that even asbestos is allowed.

~~~
chrismeller
Allowed? Perhaps. Is anyone _using_ it? Well certainly not that I know of...
who in their reasonable mind would?

You have to remember that the U.K. is very much of the mindset that everything
will kill you until they’ve proven, tested, provided warning signs and
signals, etc.

The US is the exact opposite. Until there is a problem... go for it (with some
caveats, obviously). Sure sometimes that causes a problem, but on the whole
the market _does_ work itself out. Case in point? We’re still alive.

~~~
athenot
> Case in point? We’re still alive.

But we die younger than Europeans: 78.6 years in U.S. vs 82.4 in France or
83.3 in Italy.

I've always thought this was mostly because healthcare systems over there
better tackle preventable deaths, but now I wonder if there might be some
environmental factors at play too.

Data: [https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-
birth.ht...](https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.htm)

~~~
wang_li
>mostly because healthcare systems over there better tackle preventable
deaths,

This is not a chart of life expectancy as a result of medical care. When you
remove fatalities from car accidents and murders, the US life expectancy is in
line with other developed countries.

~~~
bonzini
The United States are also an outlier for medical expenses though. American
healthcare is _not_ efficient, despite the common claim that US healthcare is
expensive because it provides patients with the best treatments.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>despite the common claim that US healthcare is expensive because it provides
patients with the best treatments.

To play devils advocate, nothing is cost efficient at the top end.

You can buy a Honda Civic that gets you from A to B just fine, a 'vette for
under $100k or some super-car that's the absolute limit of what technology can
do within the bounds of what's road legal and it costs an order of magnitude
more than the 'Vette.

You can buy a rug at Walmart for $100, Ikea for $200 or you can buy some fancy
pants oriental rug befitting royalty for a million bucks.

~~~
bonzini
Right, but then the US should have a higher life expectancy in exchange for
the cost. Instead it gets the same and only after correcting for murders and
car accidents.

~~~
wang_li
>Right, but then the US should have a higher life expectancy in exchange for
the cost.

For plenty of maladies the US has the best care as measured by things like
five year cancer survival rates for particular cancers.

>Instead it gets the same and only after correcting for murders and car
accidents.

If the point is to use life expectancy to compare quality of medical care,
then you have to remove causes of death that don't involve treatment. E.g. if
I'm a 35 year old person in good health sitting on the steps with my homies
and someone drives by and shoots me in the head and I die, how is that a
failing of medical care? It should be done from all countries.

Ultimately, life expectancy is a bad metric to use anyway. It treats it as a
score for bureaucrats to maximize. In the US, at least, people have the right
to live in ways that will reduce their life span.

------
Causality1
My wife is an aesthetician. She's had to put considerable effort into learning
which off the shelf cosmetics are harmful to the point of uselessness.

------
maiterth
^^ A few years back when in the US for a short while: "Uh, Mountain Dew, we
don't have that." Turning the label, "oh, makes sense"... :P Sometimes one
wonders if consumers can't read, or don't want to.

------
otakucode
Does the EU have a general policy of banning any substance determined to cause
problems when taken internally from external use automatically? Lots of the
things mentioned in the article make it seem like that might be the case.
Formaldehyde in hair straighteners for instance... yes, formaldehyde is a
carcinogen.... if you swallow it. If it touches your skin momentarily? Not
aware of anything claiming that's dangerous. Same thing with the parabens...
they cause problems when taken internally, but used externally there shouldn't
be any problem.

~~~
deogeo
> they cause problems when taken internally, but used externally there
> shouldn't be any problem.

I don't know about parabens specifically, but that sounds like a reckless
approach, akin to assuming a gun isn't loaded. You have _proof_ it's harmful
under X conditions, but you're just going to _assume_ it's benign under Y?

~~~
coldtea
> _I don 't know about parabens specifically, but that sounds like a reckless
> approach, akin to assuming a gun isn't loaded._

Well, wait till you hear how the US considers gun ownership...

------
Gallactide
It's amazing that all US critical posts are being downvote-bombed...

Also the claim that the US is not lax in its regulation is a bad joke. Half of
the parties available literally made de-regulation their damn group mantra...

~~~
TheArcane
HN is traditionally quite pro-US to the point that many here were defending
Boeing during the 737 Max fiasco. Not to mentions the vitriol against the EU
when it fined American tech giants.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I find it amusing or at least ironic that you say "many here were defending
Boeing during the 737 Max fiasco" when in reality the mainstream opinion here
is very anti-Boeing and there is a down-voted and dead comment that says they
didn't see anyone defending Boeing. Well of course, those people are/were a
tiny minority so they got down-voted and buried like that comment. It's a
perfect illustration of what it's asking about.

And this is going to get down-voted because of the first of fight club.

~~~
dang
There are a lot of users on both sides of the topic, just like there on other
controversial topics. But it always feels like the "mainstream" opinion is
being the one most opposed to your own. The confident generalizations people
make about HN are nearly all based on this feeling. That's why they contradict
one another.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I'm "anti-Boeing" here though and even I don't see much controversy. Everyone
who isn't down-voted seems to think Boeing is solidly at fault to varying
extents. There's no hostile media effect going on (from my POV on this issue).

~~~
dang
There have been plenty of comments defending Boeing and not being downvoted,
though probably not as many as are critical. That's a function of it being an
indignation story, though. Indignation always wins.

------
bob_theslob646
The Instagram influencers who push these products should be held accountable.

------
aceon48
In the US... products can list an ingredient as "Fragrance" at which point, it
becomes a Trade Secret which is far less regulated... they could put arsenic
in fragrance if they wanted. The US handling of Chemical regulations is a
joke.

~~~
mg794613
Removed unwanted opinion.

~~~
EpicEng
But for the fact that it's not true, yes, it absolutely shows exactly that.

------
eeZah7Ux
The very same goes for food: US regulations are extremely lax when compared to
other wealthy countries.

~~~
freddref
"US lobby groups for agriculture and pharmaceutical firms want UK standards
changed to be closer to those of the US in a post-Brexit trade deal."
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47036119](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47036119)

------
macspoofing
>A long list of potentially harmful ingredients banned in the EU are legally
allowed in the US due to historically relaxed regulations

Maybe European regulations are overly strict?

US regulations aren't lax.

~~~
purple_ducks
Clearly not as the US has adopted that mindset for new chemicals. From the
linked article...

"The US has similar rules for new chemicals entering the market but no such
precautionary principles for the thousands of potential toxins already in use"

~~~
makomk
Hang on - doesn't that mean that every single chemical that was used in US
cosmetics but not EU cosmetics would automatically be banned by Europe rather
than the US, regardless of whether there was any particular reason it would be
unsafe?

