By Dr. Mercola
You may be mistakenly comforted by the perceived oversight by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over chemicals used in the manufacture of everyday products. For instance, the FDA prohibits the use of mercury, chloroform and nine other substances in your personal care products. However, once you know the European Union (EU) prohibits the use of more than 1,300 chemicals in their personal care products, you may not feel as protected — and you would be right.
The number of chemicals restricted by the FDA is even more ridiculous when you consider there are over 84,000 different chemicals in use in your personal care products and only 1 percent of those have been evaluated for safety in humans.1
The difference between chemical use in the EU and the U.S. is that in the EU manufacturers must prove chemicals are not a health hazard before they are allowed in products, whereas in the U.S. they can be added without mandatory safety testing and only removed after enough people have suffered to get the attention of watch groups or the FDA.
Women are at greater risk than men from exposure as they routinely use nearly double the number of products per day. Under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, products do not require FDA approval before being sold on the market.2 According to the FDA, the agency monitors safety reports on the products, although often the available information is limited and many consumers never report problems they experience.
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If there is enough information to support a claim that the product causes harm, the FDA may ask for a court injunction, request the products are seized, initiate criminal action or request the company recall the product. However, they do not…