(Chronicle) Hunting toxicants, by Véronique Badets

It is very tiring these days to protect your children. Monitoring their exposure to social networks and their addiction to screens is already a lot of work. Add the surveillance of cosmetics smeared on your teenagers’ skin and the house takes on the appearance of a police station.

I’m writing these lines a few hours after confiscating a “shimmering body mist” (a beautiful pearly pink, I admit). Gift given by the eldest to the youngest, and of which I had neglected to check the label. His crime? Around forty ingredients misclassified by a reference application including the controversial phenoxyethanol.

A few weeks ago, it was a “teeth whitening gel” (purchased on the sly in an Action store) that went in the trash. Mother wolf, I am zealous, while current European regulations protect the health of consumers rather well by banning by default the famous carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic substances (CMR) in cosmetic products.

But a deregulation project, known as Omnibus VI, is currently being discussed between Brussels and Strasbourg. In the name of European competitiveness, it would weaken the mechanisms for withdrawing and replacing these major public health offenders that are the CMRs. If this “omnibus” arrives at its destination as is, the hunt for toxic substances would become downright exhausting.