Beautycounter Safety Standards and Advocacy Work 101

As an integrative nutritionist I only affiliate with a handful of companies. Beautycounter is one because of its rigorous safety standards and its tireless efforts in Washington to get safer laws passed in the personal care industry at large. 

In my women-centered practice I am regularly bombarded with the ramifications of endocrine disrupters in food, home and outdoor environments, and personal care products. I talk to women suffering from infertility, PCOS and menstrual disfunction with frequency.

While it is impossible to control for all of the hormone disrupting agents around us, I’m a proponent of controlling what we can control. When I speak about Beautycounter’s personal care products, one of the questions I often get asked is, “Is Beautycounter really safer than conventional brands?” OR “I know you’ve done your research, why do you believe in Beautycounter?”

Here’s the answer:

Beautycounter is a Certified B Corporation, meaning it meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Because the beauty industry is so unregulated, brands are not obligated to screen for heavy metals, or a variety of known harmful contaminants. Beautycounter elects to screen extensively, however, and is transparent about its findings, never claiming perfection, but using the data to continue to refine products to be as safe as possible, while maintaining performance.

For example, Beautycounter tests every batch of product released to ensure that heavy metals are at acceptably low levels, and even sources its clay from Italy because U.S. clay proved to be too high in heavy metals. (Unfortunately, zero heavy metals is not a reality in our increasingly toxic environment. Beautycounter is transparent about this, and continues to work to ensure levels are as low as possible.)

*Note: When a brand claims they are metal-free, it may be because they have not actually screened for metals and are simply trusting the source of their ingredients. Any clay sourced in the U.S. (used for pressed powders, eye-shadows, blush, etc.) is likely problematic, "organic" or not. Clay from other regions may be lower in metals, but not completely devoid of them.

In addition, Beautycounter has banned the use of over 1500 harmful or questionable ingredients in its products, including several known hormone disrupting agents (AKA endocrine disrupters).

To put that in perspective... THE UNITED STATES ONLY BANS 30 INGREDIENTS.

Not only is Beautycounter stepping up to do a hellava' lot better for us than our government is where beauty safety is concerned, but it uses a portion of every sale to fuel its efforts in Washington and beyond to lobby for safer regulations in the beauty industry at large. Beautycounter is fighting for a world where women who CAN'T afford to shell out for cleaner / safer beauty products are still protected. That, I can get behind.

Recent win: Beautycounter led the charge to get the California Safer Salon Bill (AB2775) passed. As a result, all salon products in California have to disclose their ingredients. (Shockingly, they were not obligated to do this previously.) The bill has national implications because the California economy is so large… Manufacturers will NOT make two versions of products (i.e. one for California with ingredients listed and one for the remainder of the country without) but will instead make only one version for the whole country, disclosing ingredients.

Why is this so important? When we can see what ingredients are being used in products, we can put pressure on companies to stop using the unsafe ones! Additionally, salon workers statistically experience more chronic illness and miscarriage than the general population… Because of the Safer Salon Bill, affected workers will be able to tell their doctors what substances they have been exposed to and get on the road to healing faster.