The Honorable Lamar Alexander United States Senate
455 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4206
The Honorable Patty Murray United States Senate
154 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-4704
Dear Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray,
The undersigned personal care product manufacturers, and health and consumer organizations, urge you to build upon the successful bipartisan passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act by similarly modernizing the regulatory framework for the personal care products industry.
Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced the Personal Care Products Safety Act, S.1014, which would modernize federal oversight of personal care products. The bill offers common sense reforms that were carefully negotiated among numerous stakeholders, including industry, public health and consumer organizations. This bill has garnered support from industry leaders as well as influential health and consumer organizations.
The Personal Care Products Safety Act strengthens FDA authority to regulate personal care products, addresses questions about the safety of certain ingredients, creates guidance for manufacturers, and would set a national standard for cosmetics oversight.
Each year, FDA would review at least five ingredients to determine their appropriate use in personal care products. The bill would require cosmetic companies to register their manufacturing facilities and products with FDA. It would also require cosmetics companies to report adverse health incidents and give FDA authority to recall dangerous products. Additionally, FDA could require specific labeling and warnings for products that contain ingredients not suitable for the entire population. User fees from companies, totaling $20.6 million a year, would fund the regulatory program.
These commonsense provisions are long overdue. There is no other class of products on the market today that are so widely used by consumers with such few mandatory safeguards. Although men, women and children all use personal care products every day, the federal laws designed to ensure the safety of these products have remained largely unchanged since the late 1930s.
On behalf of our companies, organizations, and the consumers we serve and represent, we urge you to quickly move S.1014, the Personal Care Products Safety Act.
Respectfully,
Au Naturale
Babo Botanicals
California Baby
Earth Mama Angel Baby
EO Products
Hain Celestial Group, Inc.
Johnson & Johnson
Juice Beauty
L'Oreal
Madison Reed
Procter & Gamble
Revlon
The Estee Lauder Companies
Unilever
American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists
American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association
American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network
Endocrine Society
Environmental Working Group
The Gerontological Society of America
Good Housekeeping Institute
March of Dimes
National Alliance for Hispanic Health
National Coalition for LGBT Health
National Psoriasis Foundation
Vietnam Veterans of America
Veterans Health Council
Wellness Warrior
Women Against Prostate Cancer
