Episode 15 - Clean Beauty - Part One

Trina Belton  0:07  
Welcome back to our discussion on clean beauty. With myself Trina, Renee esthetician, Dr. Vicky Rappaport, dermatologist, Rebecca gad Berry, the cosmetic ingredient guru, and our fabulous overly educated consumer. Julie false. Enjoy part two of this episode

I have a question. Lots of countries regulate cosmetics. But why doesn't the United States do it? Is it because of big cosmetic companies are in cahoots with the FDA, or

Julie Falls  0:50  
we're regulated or regulated?

Rebecca Gadberry  0:52  
That's one of the biggest pieces of misinformation, it drives another thing that drives me nuts. It's not a long drive for me to be nuts. So this is a question that somebody had for me. So I would like to know the answer to that. Well, you've heard the FDA, of course, Food and Drug Administration. In the 1930s, the FDA started to regulate cosmetics. And what regulate means is that they put out a number of regulations or rules that we have to follow when we make cosmetics, which hasn't been updated since 1938. Right? Wrong. Have they updated it? Well, yeah. But they update it through something called a monograph. But the original definition of the FDA in cosmetics hasn't been modified since 1938. Right? Yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right

Trina Belton  1:47  
are the words and things were able to say in marketing. So and on our products

Rebecca Gadberry  1:51  
at Yeah. And it helps to guide us in what we can use, and what we can say. And in the FDA Cosmetic Act of 1938, which is an act of Congress. Okay, so you had to get all the congress people to agree. So those of us in the industry say, well, that's not going to happen these days. So we can't really modify it. Because you're not going to get anybody to agree on what a cosmetic is, and the base regulations that oversee them. There's two things that you cannot do when you sell a cosmetic in the United States. You can't miss brand it. In other words, you can't make claims for it, that are not true. And we know that that is violated all over the place spins every day, right all the time. And then you can't ask what did I want to say, you can't sell adulterated products. Now, the way that the Cosmetic Act of 1938 defines adulterated is that you can't use any poisonous or deleterious ingredients or components in your product. That word so deleterious to the person or the animal because it also covers cosmetics for animals, veterinary products, that word may have some deleterious. It's bad, it hurts you. Can't you just say it's bad, it's bad. But hey, we're Congress now. Okay, so now we have to say deleterious. But harm or damage? Yes, causing harm or damage?

Julie Falls  3:33  
It's a good word.

Rebecca Gadberry  3:34  
Thank you for looking at it.

Trina Belton  3:35  
So wait, what was that? What was that? How did we get to that word? What was the we were talking about regulating? So the FDA regulates things that they can't harm the you can't

add anything that will hurt risk

Rebecca Gadberry  3:48  
that will hurt the human body or an animal body, you can't use and that includes poisonous substances or toxins, okay, your toxins or causes injury when it's used in the way that it's recommended to be used. So remember, the Brazilian blowout sharp that was going on? You used it in the way that it should be used and it broke your hair off. That's deleterious. Okay. So that's like

Julie Falls  4:20  
a byproduct. And I mean, not like a reaction that was just a, like a side effect, but to be what its purpose raised for would cause harm, right. So interest,

Rebecca Gadberry  4:33  
so back in the 70s, I remember when I first got into the industry, in a formal way behind the scenes in the industry as a formulator. We were really concerned about bath products for little girls taking bubble baths, because the bubble bath material would get up into their vaginas, and cause problems like the talcum exactly well not like the talcum the talcum is a little different but Same type of thing. And it would get up into their private part irritating and irritate, and then they'd have irritation. So we had to go through the FDA put in a regulation that said, you have to put a warning on all bath products that you can't use this on children under the age of. So if you check your bath products, it should be their

Trina Belton  5:25  
interest.

Julie Falls  5:27  
That I remember my mother saying that you can't use Mr. Bubble in the bath. Right. And that destroyed Mr. Bubble. Yeah, because she said it's gonna hurt your vagina.

Trina Belton  5:35  
Yeah, my husband tried to buy that for Ella when she was like three. And I was like, what is that? Are you crazy? He's like, this is what we use. We're kids. I'm like, No, he's not sitting in that, you know, like the bubble bath bomb balls, that were like you could buy the 99 cent store. My daughter would come home with those. And I'd be like, No, you can't use those in the bath. I don't

Rebecca Gadberry  5:57  
trust them. No, but you could put it in the sink and watch the fizzies. Yeah. And not in

Vicki Rapaport  6:03  
that way. Yeah, like that. Yeah. Wash your hands or your feet. Yeah. All right.

Rebecca Gadberry  6:07  
So when you have a regulation, and you break that regulation, the FDA up until recently used to give you something called a regulatory letter. And a regulatory letter was a letter from the lawyers at the FDA to tell you the brand, that you have broken a regulation.

Julie Falls  6:30  
And you have to cease and desist or do you have to change or them changing flavonoids be all about dope sick? Oh, yeah,

Rebecca Gadberry  6:37  
take the ingredient out, stop making a claim. And if you don't do it, then there will be a judge that says that the FDA can prosecute you. So the FDA can't prosecute you directly, just like Congress can't prosecute directly, but they can get a judge to help them. As a matter of fact, in the late 1950s, the FDA started to say you can't use vitamins claimed vitamins are in a product because that's a nutrition claim. So you can't make a nutrition claim for a skincare product. So there was this guy down in Florida, who made Vitamin E contains vitamin A, D and E. He went to prison for a year. Oh,

Trina Belton  7:21  
yeah, we're making that claim for

Vicki Rapaport  7:23  
claiming there was a vitamin add in the skincare. Right? But it was there was vitamin A, but

Rebecca Gadberry  7:28  
you can't call it vitamin E, you have to use the you have to call it for a retinol for Diego calcif role for E tocopherol. This has changed and now it has relaxed, they're no longer prosecuting, but it's still in the regulations. Oh, wow. And what you're not allowed to do is if you you know the ingredient list that is highly regulated on a product. So if you say vitamin D or whatever, that's illegal, you have to put the chemical name in not the common name in the label. Right. Right now it's done all the time. And the reason is, is because Congress under funds, the FDA, something

Trina Belton  8:10  
I learned in your cosmetic chemistry class at UCLA was one time was that a lot of ways that people get around this, the big companies, the Estee Lauder is and these people is that they'll put a new product out they'll put a put a claim on the label that says it does this and in their advertising that you see in magazines and on everything that says it does something that they're not allowed to say and they know the FDA is going to give slap their hand. So they have their lawyers all set up, they have their new labels already, but they they bring the product out onto the market so that they can get a bunch of people to buy it and then once the FDA slaps her hand and gives them that letter, then they change the label right away and take all the rest off the market and it just this is the way

Rebecca Gadberry  9:01  
that based on the lifecycle of sales

Julie Falls  9:03  
they got a big big promotion in the beginning Yeah, and

Trina Belton  9:07  
then people came in buying it because they they don't notice those little details like

Rebecca Gadberry  9:11  
the ingredient of the product that came out about seven or eight years ago based on working with your genetic code.

Vicki Rapaport  9:17  
So if it's maybe too good to believe and too good to be true and a skincare maybe don't purchase it right away. Wait a you waited

Rebecca Gadberry  9:24  
two years or on the other hand asked for the studies. There should be clinicals there should be some way to prove that that product is working. Don't just go on blind faith,

Trina Belton  9:36  
but consumers don't do that.

Rebecca Gadberry  9:38  
Well we're talking about being

Vicki Rapaport  9:40  
a wise consumer and maybe now after these podcasts and now the world knows Rebecca they're gonna you know, look at things a little bit Watch out or seek you out.

Rebecca Gadberry  9:49  
My husband when I was doing an expo say remember this sell the elite products that were out with a Theo Pia Laughlin. I did an expos a in a big magazine at big national magazine about these these products and how bad they were and that people were winding up in hospitals because of them. The FDA didn't know about it. They the women would wind up in hospitals. And then amazingly, they would be healed within a few days. And nobody could figure out why. It's because they weren't using the product when they were in the hospital. So my husband would look under the car every day before. Make sure there wasn't a bomb. Yeah, generally dramatic. No, it wasn't millions,

Speaker 2  10:34  
hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, you're messing with their profits, man, you have a little fast what my target on your back.

Rebecca Gadberry  10:40  
And to tell the FDA, I remember I was on the phone with the head of the FDA who I knew personally, and I was telling him about this. And he said, Hold on just a second. So he went out and he got a whole bunch of people. And they were all in the office. When they came back on the phone. He says, Okay, could you repeat what you just told me? I've got 11 people in the office who need to hear. Oh, great. Now I really am gonna have a bomb under my car. Just

Julie Falls  11:07  
like a cellulite product or product. Your

Vicki Rapaport  11:10  
ears perked up? Yes.

Rebecca Gadberry  11:12  
But the problem was was that the ingredient got into the bloodstream? So when we were talking earlier, so yeah, we don't want ingredients to get in the bloodstream. Why is that ingredient Theatreland. And it was in asthma medication. Wow. So it opens up the waste airwaves in the lungs. So

Julie Falls  11:35  
curious the name of what that product, there were tons,

Rebecca Gadberry  11:39  
dozens of them. So and it was based on a study that was done at UCLA. And I won't go into the whole thing, because it's a story from 1993. But the issue was, was that it was causing heart palpitations, and heart racing tachycardia. In young women. Wow. And in older women, or men, they couldn't figure out what the relationship was. I knew the relationship because I had been studying it and I knew what the side effects were. But doctors were dealing with things individually, the FDA was not there. With the symptoms, they were dealing with the symptoms individually. So people would wind up in the hospital with these cardiac problems. Nobody thought, Oh, it's a product that's been put on the skin. And

Vicki Rapaport  12:24  
remember, when you are using a product for cellulite, you're putting it over large, large, large surface areas. So are the areas of fat and areas of fat. So lots of lots of bluffer. But, you know, so when you're talking about, you know, ingredients in general, and the most important thing is that it doesn't, if it's in low, low level, right, it's not necessarily toxic. But in high levels, or in big surface areas that are really getting absorbed, it could potentially be a problem. And

Rebecca Gadberry  12:51  
that's a lesson for using CBDs and product in bodycare. products as opposed to just facial products,

Vicki Rapaport  12:56  
right. And facial products versus Body Care is a whole nother episode. Yeah, yes.

Rebecca Gadberry  13:01  
I think we should do an update on CBDs. We should do an update to it. Yeah, yes.

Trina Belton  13:05  
100%, because we went in that going. I mean, it was pretty vague at the time when I was doing the research for that. Because people even when I call the companies who were making the CD, DT products, and talking to the chemist, they didn't even really, they're like, Well, I'm like how much you need to put in. I don't know,

Julie Falls  13:25  
they did the Wild West,

Rebecca Gadberry  13:27  
it didn't realize that you whatever you put in is going to oxidize if you don't stabilize it and protect it. So it really doesn't matter what amount you put in if it's not protected. And so, you know, now how much to put in and make a note about that.

Trina Belton  13:42  
I did after so first thing on the list, Kagan. Okay, so we have three more questions that I want to get to and then we have a question from Julie. But one is, is it true that fragrance is a way to hide toxic ingredients in cosmetic products? Well,

Rebecca Gadberry  13:59  
fragrance chemicals are probably the number one allergens used in a cosmetic. And there are over 6000 Different fragrance chemicals that can be added to a product. In 1977 When the fair packaging and labeling Act was passed by Congress, another act of Congress, the FDA was charged with regulating it or enforcing it. They said the industry said well, you want us to put all of these fragrance chemicals on a label. There might be two or 300 fragrance fragrance chemicals that go on the label, where do we have room for directions and for the rest of the ingredients etc. So the FDA made a deal. And they said okay, when you use a fragrance or a flavor, because the same thing happened with flavors. You can just use this catch all term of fragrance Is your flavor. And so

Trina Belton  15:02  
that's interesting. This morning, I was looking at my lotion, because there's a scent in there that I love. And I'm like, I wonder what they're calling it. And it just said fragrance. Yeah, I'm like, Well, how are they able to do that? I thought about that this morning. Interesting. And

Rebecca Gadberry  15:20  
there's primary fragrance categories like white flower, your green notes, there's synthetics like Chanel is a synthetic fragrance was the first synthetic fragrance on the market by the way, which is what made it so unique. But we're looking at all these fragrance chemicals. Some of them are allergens in the EU in Europe, we have to identify if there is an allergen that's in the fragrance at a level that's enough to cause an allergy to trigger an allergy. In the United States, you don't have to do it. But I can tell you as someone who is still formulating for brands in the United States, that when somebody comes to me and we talk about fragrance, we talk about excluding any fragrances that have any allergens in them. So it still goes on the label is fragrance. But we don't include the allergens now validates we just talked about the highlights also go in the fragrance group, because they help to disperse and stabilize fragrance chemicals and products. So you put it in with a fragrance, you automatically do that. So Tallinn is another one that goes in there and tell you ain is a formaldehyde donor. In other words, a few weeks after you put it in the product, it turns into formaldehyde. So it goes in the product is Tallinn, but when you put it on your body, it's a formaldehyde releaser. Why? Because the chemistry changes. And as the chemistry changes, the chemical evolves.

Trina Belton  17:04  
So are they so are they able to hide ingredients in the word fragrance? They can't, I can't

Rebecca Gadberry  17:10  
say hide. I can say if you were a conspiracist, or you were looking for you were suspicious of the industry. And you thought poorly of the industry practices, you might say they hide ingredients in there, coming from the chemistry standpoint, and coming from the industry standpoint, we don't hide anything in there. We put ingredients in there that we are allowed to use. Now in the state of California. As of I think it's next January, it may be sometime throughout the this year, but at least next January, we're going to have to declare what our fragrance chemicals are in fragrances to consumers who ask us that's great. And

Trina Belton  17:57  
so if if a consumer can get a hold of the chemist that makes it

Rebecca Gadberry  18:01  
actually no, we have to work with them on the website. So if you Trina or I

Trina Belton  18:07  
have to put it as my product line, right, I have to put it on the website if somebody asks well,

Vicki Rapaport  18:12  
so remember, you're asking this question about fragrance as if it's like this toxin, it's just a scent. And yes, there are fragrances that are very allergic, they have allergenicity and there are certain ones that as as chemists you kind of known not to put in Yeah, there are old ones and Balsam of Peru so old, so era, they're not doing these, you know if they want to sell a product and have the product be Reebok they're not going to put these irritating things in. So fragrance in general is beautiful. A lot of people buy products because of the way it smells. So and you know, when you buy good brands from good companies are putting they're going to choose a fragrance that hopefully will not cause an allergic reaction, right?

Rebecca Gadberry  18:54  
Think about what these essential oils are. They're the anti microbials of the plant. So if you use enough of them in a product, they're going to be anti life, anti microbial, anti microbe, anti biotic, they protect the plant so we don't want to use a large amount. We don't want to use certain plant chemicals that cause phototoxicity or browning of the skin. Things like lime

Vicki Rapaport  19:24  
okay my favorite DERM rash i Yeah, is it do you get a lot of like it for the patient but of course it's fascinating what is phyto photo dermatitis when you're you're you're in Mexico you're drinking margaritas and to me that's that's a photo. Okay, so say when you're in Mexico, you're drinking your margarita you squeeze lime or lemon or, or you're eating limes and lemons or your kid is eating lines and lemons and you get little tiny traces of the juice on your skin that you didn't realize and you didn't wipe it off. You're in the sun and Usually the sun burns you. That's where this the juice is. So the distribution is always very interesting. It's a streak. It's a, it's, and it's very easy to recognize that I had

Trina Belton  20:11  
a ways I called Dr. Vicky from the pool. I was like, I took a picture of it. And I showed her it was like this weird swirl on my body. And I was like, You were some disease, some animals eating me. I have bugs. I don't know what it is. It was annotating us. She's like, are you having a margarita? I said, Yes, I am. And then I did. I took my hand and went like this and wiped it on my leg. I didn't even

Rebecca Gadberry  20:37  
shake your hand for the burger, Rita and wife, you know, I

Trina Belton  20:40  
squeeze the lime. Oh. Lime on my leg. And so I didn't even think of course, it's citrus. And they're so easy

Julie Falls  20:49  
to figure out for Dr. Vicki Margarita.

Rebecca Gadberry  20:54  
Many clients in Mexico, this could happen. Could it happen in California or you?

Vicki Rapaport  21:00  
See a lot of a lot of moms within their own line. They'll eat their citrus outside, of course, it's always sunny and 70 in LA. And they have a rash on their mouth or their hands. And then yes,

Trina Belton  21:11  
it's in like an orange to like, yes, orange kids taking an orange, the orange and then wiping it on themselves. They could get the rash too. I mean, the and people

Rebecca Gadberry  21:19  
think that's vitamin C, but it's not the vitamin C and the citrus. It's the essential oil chemicals that are in there. Right.

Vicki Rapaport  21:26  
And that's when we're met. You might have heard, Rebecca said it's mostly from the skin those oils when you squeeze the skin, and those little oils come out almost like little. Yeah, that oil from the skin? Well,

Trina Belton  21:39  
I have told many clients that story. And I even had a client that showed me she was going to the dermatologist because she had that type of thing. And I was like, I know what that I know what that is. And I'm like, but I will double check with Dr. Vicky, I took a picture and sent it to you. But this was like five years ago. But anyways, do

Rebecca Gadberry  21:56  
you think our listeners would like to know more about phototoxic? Topical ingredients and drugs? Yes. Yeah, we could do a show on that. All right, there's a whole bunch of them. So

Trina Belton  22:10  
getting back to clean beauty versus green beauty. Let's round that up. Is that is that the same? No.

Rebecca Gadberry  22:20  
Clean beauty is more of a way of saying we don't use these ingredients. So our products are safe. Which we now know from our discussion that if you don't do the testing on your products, you don't know if it's safe or not. Now you can pretty much guess. And that's what most companies do. But if you want an absolute safety profile, or you want to know that your products were made in a clean way, so that they are sourced from other materials than petroleum. No, that doesn't mean clean beauty, that means more green beauty. And what green beauty is it's it's based on green chemistry, which is a concept that came out of Harvard in the 1990s. And there are 13 rules that you have to follow to produce green chemistry products. So matter of fact, UCLA, which is where I've taught for years, just opened a new department a few years ago for green chemistry, because it is so new. And what green chemistry is is it helps you or it guides the chemist in sourcing where your sources are, how to process them, how to use the chemicals, and how to recycle them. So it goes Cradle to Cradle instead of cradle to grave. And what we've done for in the entire history of humanity until green chemistry came along, is we went cradle to grave, we use the chemicals and then we disposed of them. In green chemistry, we use the chemicals, we use them ethically we use them safely. And then we recycle their use beautiful or we dispose of them in a safe way. That's really cool. So chemists can take that, that isn't clean beauty at all.

Trina Belton  24:11  
No. Okay. Okay, that makes a lot of sense

Julie Falls  24:14  
that in this particular place that we discussed with the clean, and they have their dirty list. And one of the categories that they're talking about is sustainability. So I think that that might fall under the green. It

Rebecca Gadberry  24:30  
could depending upon whether it goes far enough and I've written down as a as a topic for one of our shows is sustainability. What is sustainable actually mean? And who is actually being sustainable? It's one thing to say our products are sustainable. It's another thing to actually make sure that they are and doing everything you can to make a product sustainable. So if you say our products come from sustain To build plants, and yet you're buying palm oil from Borneo, where the orangutangs are endangered, that may be sustainable, but it isn't safe for the ragtag. So we have to take everything into account that's on green beauty. That's in green beauty. Right.

Vicki Rapaport  25:18  
And I think also green chemistry. Yeah. Is Trying To Make Green Clean beauty as such as as useful as the beauty that we're used to. So that doesn't break down. It doesn't turn it doesn't. It doesn't turn rancid. It doesn't turn colors, it lasts a long time. And that's hard if you're going to have like a really x with any

Trina Belton  25:39  
good chemistry. Correct. Whether they're green, but clean or regular? Yes, the

Rebecca Gadberry  25:45  
chemistry does is it handles the chemicals itself themselves. So how do you treat this chemical before it even gets into the product. And when we first came out, we I was the first one to introduce green chemistry into the cosmetics industry back in the early 2000s. And when we first started to look into this, there were no ingredients that conform to green chemistry, none. Now there's a whole bunch of them. So we can talk about that in that segment. And I think you might be surprised to learn how it's affected our industry,

Julie Falls  26:25  
right sounds like it's only positive. Oh, it

Rebecca Gadberry  26:27  
is it's very positive. But it's putting a lot of companies either out of business, or putting their products out of reach for them to produce,

Vicki Rapaport  26:39  
right, it's positive for the consumer, not necessarily positive for the profits or certain companies, right. And then just a quick comment on packaging, not skincare, but there's a deodorant that I love that's quote unquote, green. And it's actually a patient of mine. And it gave me tons of products. It's in the stores, it's at Target, I love it. And the one complaint I had because it's up, you push it up like a push pop, you push it up, it's just paper, it's paper packaging, you push it up. And it's just a little inconvenient. And so I said to him, I love it, love it, love it. But I will say the packaging is a little struggle. He's like that he's like, that's what you have to trade off for a little bit to get it in a place where we can call it green, clean wherever you want it, you know, and as soon as he said that to me, I said, you're absolutely right, where everything's so convenient all the time. It doesn't necessarily have to be always convenient. It has to be good. And I literally have to give up. Yeah. And I know I don't mind sticking my finger all the way up there and shoving the degenerate up because I know it's better. Deodorant.

Trina Belton  27:42  
Sorry, right. That's, that's true, because it over time we've had packaging become easier and easier. But it's it's not safe environment. Environment, all the plastics and things. But Okay, so last question of the day for our episode today, which has been so

Rebecca Gadberry  28:03  
because Julie gets to talk, yes. And then there's

Julie Falls  28:07  
a whole list of information about preservatives and parabens and actually do a preservative sick. I mean, it will the whole this whole this whole website on this clean beauty is so I mean, they really break down everything that you could, if you're buying a product, they're everything is broken down. I'm kind of impressed by it. But I'm reading this whole thing. They say fear of preservatives. And there, there are so many factors that weigh you know, sometimes they're saying things come in bulk. And so if you have a large, large shipment of let's say aloe vera or something, there could be a tight, so it's all very subjective. But what is subject I find that like, depending upon like, is it a bulk, you know, order and are things if they're in larger quantities? Could there be the possibility of of a of a, you know, comparison and that I see

Rebecca Gadberry  29:13  
as opposed to a smaller amount? I

Julie Falls  29:15  
think so I think it's kind of, you know, we can definitely address them. Yeah, but I think you kind of said there's so much variable so well, there's

Rebecca Gadberry  29:24  
variables. As far as a consumer is concerned, there's not a lot of variables as far as a cosmetic chemist is concerned. So I'm very happy to bring that forward and talk about it.

Julie Falls  29:35  
Yeah, I'd love to go through this. They have this filthy list and just it's so interesting.

Rebecca Gadberry  29:41  
I have an article that I've been working on called the dirty truth about clean beauty.

Julie Falls  29:46  
That's a good one.

I would love to kind of in another episode, take apart all these things and then have you dispute and give their your your opinion. Yeah, okay,

Rebecca Gadberry  29:56  
that'd be great. Great.

Trina Belton  29:57  
Maybe you could send her that the link So she can look through it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai