[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Jaron.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: And today we're talking about WE act's beauty justice campaign, which is all about getting toxic chemicals out of our personal care and beauty products that most of us use every day.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Lonnie and I are definitely not the experts here either, so we'll be joined by Liz Reyes, we act's toxic policy campaign coordinator. She's got some exciting advocacy events coming up that some of our listeners might be interested in.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: That's right. But before we get to that, Jaron, can you share WEAC's mission?
[00:00:51] Speaker C: I sure can. REAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Thank you. So, as always, before we jump into our interview with Liz, we wanted to provide some more background about WE act's beauty justice campaign, including the Beauty justice act, which is the focus of our advocacy this year.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: And before we get into the specifics of the bill itself, let's just quickly clarify what we mean by personal care products. Because some people might hear that and think, oh, that doesn't apply to me. For example, got a shaved head. I don't use that many products, but I do still use personal personal care products. So when we say personal care products, we're talking about any products that you put on your body. Think cosmetics, shampoos, soaps, lotions, all of that. And most of the products we use contain a whole lot of ingredients. You look on the back of the bottle, you look at that list of ingredients, it's probably pretty long. And because the market is largely unregulated in the US a lot of the ingredients in our products are toxic and are linked to things like cancer, infertility and asthma. You get it?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm always shocked by the fact of how much is not regulated. What goes in there. As someone who has a very extensive skincare routine, I'm always surprised about the regulatory aspect or the lack thereof when it comes to our personal care products.
But we talked about this topic before one of our earliest episodes, which we'll link in the show notes. But young women and femme identifying people of color are especially at risk because of their targeted marketing that capitalizes on racist beauty standards that put pressure on folks to conform to Eurocentric beauty ideals like straighter hair and fairer skin.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Yeah. Which is why REACT launched a Beauty Inside out campaign back in 2019 to educate folks about those harmful personal care products and why we advocated for and helped pass the New York Mercury out of Cosmetics law, which banned mercury in cosmetics. You may ask, why mercury specifically? And why is it in our. Why is it in cosmetic products? That's because it's a common ingredient, or at least it was and still is in some cases, a common ingredient in skin lightening products. So it's an important, important bill to get passed.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Exactly. And this year, we act is continuing to move things forward by advocating for the New York Beauty justice act to ban the most dangerous toxic chemicals from our personal care products. And that is what Liz is here to talk more about.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: I know she'll go more into this, but just quickly. The focus of the bill is on banning toxic chemicals like pfas, parabens, and phthalates from our personal care products. Emphasis there on ingredients, not products. So the bill won't ban any products outright, only those toxic ingredients in them, which ideally will shift the market towards safer alternatives that already exist and make those products ideally more affordable over time as that market shift happens.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: And I know you're a public health person, Jaron, so I think you know how much of an impact some of these toxic chemicals can have. But endocrine disrupting chemicals alone cost the US $340 billion annually in medical expenses and lost productivity.
[00:04:13] Speaker C: Yeah. I think most people often don't realize how big of an impact these chemicals can have, especially on our health. But hopefully some of this context makes it a little bit more clear why we act is working hard to promote the Beauty justice act here in New York.
[00:04:29] Speaker B: I think that's a great segue for us to to jump into our interview with Liz to learn more about what the campaign looks like. What do you think?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: All right, let's get into it.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Thanks so much for joining us, Liz. I can't believe it's been this long that we haven't had you on the show yet. It's overdue. With that, I want to give you a chance to introduce yourself before we get too far into the episode. So if you wouldn't mind, just quickly introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your role at WEAct.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Hey, Jerry. Nice to see you. I'm really excited to be here. You're right. It really is really overdue, but really excited to be here talking about beauty justice nonetheless. So I'm Liz. I'm the Toxics Policy Campaigns Coordinator here. At we Act. It's a really long title. But basically what that means is that I focus on all of our toxics campaigns and policy within the New York Policy department. What that looks like is mainly focusing on lead poisoning, but also a lot of our BD justice work. And I also try and bridge the gap between the advocacy that the New York policy team does and like involving our members in a lot of the advocacy that we do. So yeah, that's what I do.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Exciting stuff. Doesn't mean that you are toxic, it just means that you work on toxics, right?
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I work on getting non toxic. It was cute because we went to Albany like right before Valentine's Day and so I was handing out like poster like little signs that were saying like be my non toxic Valentine. And I had like a bunch of like non toxic products and like alternatives.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: So I love that. That's cute. People love cute stuff. And any, any Valentine's related puns, I am here for it. So thank you for that and glad to have you, Liz.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: So Liz, we talked a little bit about the Beauty Justice Bill and what it does, but can you talk a little bit more in depth about the problems that Beauty Justice Bill addresses in your everyday kind of lived experience in lives of us as people use personal care products and beauty products, what are the problems that the bill is addressing?
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Yeah, so we all use personal care products. Like hopefully we've all taken a shower one day in our life. We've done our, our hair, use some shampoo, some conditioner. And so when we use these personal care products on our skin, our skin is very sensitive. And when we putting, we're putting on a bunch of different products, each that each product contains a certain amount of chemicals. Right? And so when you're thinking about like the multitude of products that you're putting on your body, then think about like the amount of chemicals that you're putting in your body. And what happens is, is that yeah, some of these ingredients are not safe for us. They cause things like skin allergens, hormone disruption, cancer even, and they're really toxic to us. And unfortunately a lot of these toxic ingredients are mainly found in products that are sold to and marketed to people of color, women of color, black women specifically. We talked about like the Beauty Inside out campaign and how from that we did the Beauty Inside out study which surveyed femme identifying people of color in northern Manhattan and in the Bronx to really understand how racialized beauty standards affect the different products that we use. And what if you read our study, you'll find that a lot of our respondents didn't necessarily use these products because they themselves thought that they would like, appear prettier or like get better benefits. They use them mainly because of how other like other people's influences and thinking that they would get like better job opportunities because of that. And so this bill, what it does is, you know, we can use whatever products we want, right? When you walk into a store, you want to assume that whatever you want to buy, like, you assume that it's safe for you, right? And if people want to straighten their hair, they can do that, right? But you want products that are safe for you. And so this bill is really important because it bans some of the most toxic ingredients from our, all of our personal care products. It'll ban formaldehyde, it'll ban lead, which there are no safe levels of lead anywhere. Why is it in your lipstick? You know, it'll ban things like pfas, parabens, silicones. So many chemicals that we come into contact with not just in one product, but in all of the like in a lot of the products that we use. And this bill is also really important because not only does it address the intentional ingredients that are being added into our products, it also adjusts the non functional byproducts and contaminants which are the chemicals that come into the, into our products through the manufacturing process.
So it's a really great piece of legislation.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: So thanks for that background on the beauty justice bill package, Liz. I think that that's helpful. There's lots of, lots of technical pieces in this. So I know we won't get too much in the weeds on what the actual about the products themselves and some of the chemicals in there, because we could do a whole episode about each of the individual types of products, the chemicals in them. You mentioned formaldehyde, lead, those things. I'll encourage folks that want to learn more about. We have a previous episode from way back, our second episode ever, that talked a little bit more about those. So folks can go back and listen to that episode to get into some of those a little bit more. But one of the things that we wanted to ask you, Liz, is more about the beauty justice campaign because it has been an ongoing, it's an evolving campaign. I think that it's been going on for several years now. And so I think it'd be interesting to hear how that campaign has kind of evolved. What does that look like and what the timeline looks like now. How are you all trying to move that work forward now to address these chemicals in personal care products that folks are using all the time.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So we act has been advocating for beauty justice and this bill in particular for a really long time. I remember when I was a sophomore in college and I was looking up we act. I remember watching a video right around the time when they were just like starting this conversation around media justice. And I think I manifested working here because I was just like, wow, I want to work on something just like that and here I am. But so yeah, so we act has been working on beauty justice for a really long time. Formally this bill is now known as the Beauty justice act, but it was known as the Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Act. And I think, don't quote me on this, but I think it's been around like five years now. It hasn't really changed much. The only thing that we changed is that we removed a disclosure aspect of the bill because of federal preemptions would basically like give the federal government like it gives them like an overrule over state law. And so we took out preemption. That's the only thing that's really changed in our bill. But and then we, we moved from like restricting chemicals to actually doing like a full ban, which is great because we want to ban these chemicals. But honestly I feel so much better about our campaign as it's going. I think as a coalition, we act as a part of the Just Green partnership which is made up of a lot of different organizations, health professionals and really people in the environmental, health and justice space. And our coalition has gotten so much stronger over the years. I think each year that goes by we learn so much more. We, we get better at our strategy also so much more research is coming out like literally every day talking about how toxic these products are and really highlighting like how toxic these chemicals are for our body and how really like there isn't any testing. So I think that like the research gets stronger, we get better and it's, it's, it's so hard right now, but I just know that like once we actually pass it, it'll feel so much better. And yeah, and also this bill, you know, it's a New York state bill, but New York state is such a big market that eventually, you know, the products that are being sold here that are non toxic are going to be sold everywhere else in the US because it's just more effect, cost effective to make them the same. So it's not just a bill that's going to affect New Yorkers.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: No, I really appreciate that in that conversation that you have, we're glad we have you on the campaign and also working with other folks across the state, state to move this along because as you said, industry has a lot of money. They spend a lot of money fighting against groups that are smaller and don't have as much money. Right. We don't spend as much money on lobbying for these things because, you know, we don't necessarily have those funds to do that in mass. Right. In large groups. So this kind of campaign is really important. But I think one thing that I wanted to kind of dive into a little bit about, you know, why we're advocating for this is because of how it's going to affect, like you just said, New Yorkers, but not just New Yorkers because it has a knock on effect. And we can talk about that a little bit later. But can you just describe about like how New Yorkers are going to see the benefits of this bill? Like what is this going to look like on the ground for folks who are just shopping around in Harlem, go to 125th, going to their beauty supply, getting their personal care products if this bill is enacted, what does that look like for that New Yorker?
[00:13:39] Speaker A: One of the big tactics that industry loves to use against us is that they're going to be empty store shelves. But that's just not true. Like when we banned 140 dioxane from detergents are tied, nobody noticed the difference in Tide. Like you could still go and buy Tide. Like the companies just had to comply. But that's a really big like scare tactic. So for us, we'll definitely feel the benefits. Like we won't be putting toxic chemicals on our body. We'll be healthier, less toxic ingredients in our bodies. Also in the earth, like PFAS stays in the environment and like it's, it goes into our waterways. Like it's really pervasive. And so yeah, it just means safer ingredients for everyone. We're all healthier. We'll probably glow a lot better. And then like I said, it also means that it sets a standard for other states to follow through. You know, it makes it easier for a lot of states to advocate for their bills that they want passed. And so it just means that we're healthier all around.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: Thanks for that, Liz. One thing that this is a bit of a detour, but I think it's an interesting, an interesting conversation to be had since you mentioned, you know, banning of banning of chemicals and trying to get, trying to get some of those more toxic chemicals out of products that are, that are out there in the market. Other parts of the world, other countries, like in Europe, for example, have a much more stringent market on what chemicals can go into products. So my question is, how is that kind of serving as, like, the guiding post for what, what we're working towards? I know that because of those restrictions and in European countries and other places that there, there are fewer, there should be fewer products out there on the market that have these toxic chemicals. Is that, is that kind of the goalpost of what we're working towards? I know that there's a long list of chemicals that are banned there. How does that inform, you know, how you all are structured, how the bill got structured, or just which chemicals should be banned? I know it's kind of a complicated question. Feel free to just thinking about what the relationship is there. I know that that looks different in Europe and in other parts of the world. How does that inform, you know, what we want this to look like here in the us?
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the big selling points that we always talk about, like, when we talk about beauty justice, is how the US only bans around 11 of the most toxic chemicals, whereas in the EU they ban thousands of them. And so that is something that, like, we want to strive for, you know, like, we want to ban a bunch of chemicals. But actually, I think that this bill is so great and actually, like, gives us a leg up in the eu and it's something that, like you said, we looked towards to like, make our, our bill stronger. Is that like, our bill actually bans, like, specific classes of chemicals, so it doesn't just ban them individually, it'll just ban, like, the entire class. And I am not a scientist, so please do not ask me any science questions about that. But I just know that instead of just like, using one chemical in the family and like, banning that chemical, then, like, industry can just go in and use, like, another chemical in that family, but instead, like, we're banning it all together. So that makes our bill a lot stronger than a lot of our EU counterparts.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: That's actually a really smart way to go about it, because when you hear, when you hear things like, you know, the eu, which is the European Union, for those who did not know, ban thousands of chemicals, it's like, damn, that's a lot compared to, because there are 16. But if you're saying that there are definitely, like, there are classes of chemicals that you can just swap out the dangerous chemical from one chemical to another. So instead of doing it, banning them individually, each by one by One as we kind of, if they got caught on to that tactic, the idea is we're just going to ban the whole class and saying that, you know, there's a class of toxins here, there's probably 50 chemicals within that range and you can't use any of them. And I think that's what makes them in industry, in the chemical industry a lot more, gives a lot more pushback on this bill because it does it in that class way. Instead of doing it the sneaky way that they were doing by, you know, just subbing out chemicals and also then using greenwashing adds a piece to their, you know, elements of like this paraben free or this free BPA free, you know. Exactly. So I think that's a, that's a really cool kind of concept of banning the entire class. I didn't think about it that way as well. And another thing is, I'm not sure if you can speak to this at all or have talked about this in the campaign is the idea that these large companies, there's only so many of them. So it's not like it's a bunch of tiny moms and pops making and manufacturing these, these products. So they obviously do this internationally as well. So they have to comply with EU regulations. So that means that these products already exist. So it's not like they don't exist already. Right. Is that something that you've talked about before, that these products already exist so you just have to sell them now in our markets?
[00:18:19] Speaker A: As I talk about that all the time, because it literally doesn't make sense sense to me. It, it genuinely doesn't make sense to me. Like if you're already making a non toxic product here, why are you selling this one that has parabens here? And actually yeah, I, I have done like for some of our meetings, like I did a presentation where we looked at some products that are sold here and we looked at their ingredients and then we also looked at them like if you were buying them in the EU and we looked at their ingredients and there actually is a difference in the product. But it's the same exact brand, it's the same exact lotion, but it's just different. And that's why I was saying like when we pass it in New York, it'll be more cost effective to just sell them everywhere else in the US because why would you make a different product?
[00:19:03] Speaker B: But do you think that the idea that if this New York bill passes that it will lead to just kind of almost a de facto countrywide ban In a lot of different. Different places or are there other states that have similar bills in place?
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of different states have really great bills, actually. California, Washington, just to name a few. But yeah, states are making a lot of progress on banning like, individual toxics within the state. And I think that that like, sets up a movement. Like California passes a really cool bill. Okay, how can we make this better and pass it in New York State? New York State passes a bill. Bill. Okay. How can this. They make it better and pass it in their state? So I think that it does, like, move us towards this shift. Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: And if you're a really big company making these products, they're, you know, why am I making. Manufacturing different products at different states trying to figure out what can I sell in California versus what can I sell in New York versus what can I sell in the EU Versus, Whereas you might as well just go with the strictest policies and just say, this is what we're gonna. This is how we're gonna sell.
[00:20:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a great segue into. I think one of our last questions for you, Liz, which is what you alluded to a little bit earlier. What does the campaign look like this year for folks that are listening and, and want to get involved in advocacy? What is it? What does it look like this year? What are some of the advocacy efforts that you have planned? And what are the. Yeah, what's the strategy for this year to help move this bill forward?
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really excited about this year, actually. This is going to be. This is going to be out before our first member Advocacy Day for the first for. For the year. So this is me inviting everyone that's listening to our March 4th advocacy day. We're gonna meet here at the office at 6:30 in the morning. We're gonna eat breakfast, ride the bus all the way up to Albany, and we're gonna spend the entire day speaking with our legislators on beauty justice, also on New York Heat, which was one of our priorities this year. But we're going to be spending the entire day speaking with legislators advocating for this bill. We're going to eat lunch together, advocate some more, and then at the end, we're going to end the day at the State Museum and come back home.
So if you really want to get involved in the work that we do, I'd say yeah. Come to this advocacy day. Join our working groups. The Beauty Justice Working group and the Healthy Homes Working Group. Group are kind of doing a merger because we were working on similar things, but we Just decided to join efforts and so that's going to actually be be rebranding next month.
So like stay go on our Instagram on our website to like stay the most informed that you can. But yeah, we have so many events planned. This March 4th is not just our only advocacy days. We have one in May. We have an Earth Day advocacy day. Also planning different, different events in person events, summer things. So I'd say definitely follow us on social media and also subscribe to our newsletters, post a lot of what's happening with beauty justice on our newsletters.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Oh, new working group alert. New working group alert.
[00:22:15] Speaker C: Where's our sound effect?
[00:22:16] Speaker B: I know we need that, we need that sound but no, that's really good to know that. Also that there's some works that these, these two groups are combining forces as well. And yeah, a good way to get involved is to join these working groups again. Follow our newsletter. Look at our social media. We're always asking people to come up for lobby days, which are very fun as Liz laid out. And we also make sure we train everyone up too so you guys will know what to talk about and you guys become experts at talking to legislative and elected officials.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah, before our advocacy days, we always do like a member training where we go over the entire day, we practice conversations, we give one pagers and also when we're going into these meetings, we're kind of the experts because we're the ones that are presenting to them like what it is that we want passed. So definitely we train you. You'll be more than prepared.
[00:23:07] Speaker C: So before, before we wrap up, Liz, I just want to give you a chance to share anything else that you think people should know about. I know that there's some apps out there, some ways that folks can look into the products that they use and know what chemicals are in there. Maybe that's something to, to touch on. But yeah. Anything else that you think is worthwhile to share on the subject of beauty justice?
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah, there are a lot of resources that people can use to learn a lot more about their products. I'll. I'll name to my favorite and the one that I use the most is actually clear. Yeah, it's an app on your phone and it's also an extension on your computer. And I like it because like when you go on websites like Sephora or Amazon and you're looking at your products, it'll pop like, it'll be like a little pop up that'll show like the ingredients that are on it and it'll like highlight them based on like their toxicity. It'll talk about like their health impacts and then sometimes it'll also give you like non toxic alternatives. So that's like a great app that I use all the time. Also the EWG has a database where you can go in and like input the product and it'll like, it'll, it'll tell you like how toxic it is. It'll tell talk, it'll list like the ingredients as well. There's Yuka, there's a lot of different apps that are coming out actually and just resources that really people can you go to to learn more about toxics in our personal care products? Oh, I also shout out Mamavation. They're great. It's this website where they do so much product testing on so many different products.
PFAS isn't everything. PFAS is in bras, it is in cinnamon, it is in bed like mattress beds. It is in everything. And they do like incredible research.
So yeah, there's a lot of different resources online.
[00:25:01] Speaker C: Thank you Liz. Yeah, I, I know I have used the Environmental Working Group ewg. Their, their website as well. It's skin deep as a good database. But yeah, thank you for sharing those resources. We'll make sure to include links to as many of those as we can in the show notes for folks to check out. But thank you so much. We appreciate you being on the show again. So overdue. Glad that we finally made it happen and we can't wait to have you back on the show again. So thanks so much for joining.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and
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[00:25:41] Speaker C: Out WEAct on Facebook at react4ej. That's W E a C T F O R E J on Instagram x bluesky and YouTube. WeAct4ej. That's W E A C T4ej and check out our website we act.org for more information about environmental justice.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Until next time, bye.
