80 Years Later, Cosmetics Chemicals Still Unregulated

EWG  June 25, 2018

It’s been 80 years since Congress last voted to regulate cosmetics.

And a lot has changed since June 25, 1938 – the day Congress passed the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938. These days cosmetics are a $60 billion-a-year business, and the average woman uses 12 products with 168 different ingredients every day.

The 1938 law only prohibited the sale of cosmetics with any “poisonous or deleterious substance,” or any “filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance,” so the Food and Drug Administration has so far only banned nine cosmetics ingredients for safety reasons. Members of Congress made other efforts to modernize cosmetics law, starting in the 1950s, but all of these attempts were defeated by the cosmetics industry.