Amid the tax fights, the transportation fights, the education fights, and the seemingly never-ending health care fights, there’s one bill at the Colorado legislature this year that could hit Colorado women where it counts: our faces.
The Colorado Safe Personal Care Products Act is a wolf wrapped in sheep’s clothing for the tens of thousands of Colorado women who, like me, use products “intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering a person’s appearance.”
It bans the sale of any personal care product that contains a chemical identified as a “potential” cause of cancer or has “some” reproductive toxicity, yet there is no mention of specific dosage levels. Too much of even the most innocuous ingredient can be harmful. After makeup and cosmetics, one of my favorite things is chocolate, yet too much chocolate causes Theobromine poisoning and death in humans.
Many of the carcinogens this bill covers can be found in trace amounts in our environment and are present in everything around us, including cosmetics. One chemical that could be banned by this bill is titanium dioxide, which is in many of the lotions and in the base I put on my face every morning. It’s also the main ingredient in sunscreen. Ironically, I use lotions and makeup with titanium dioxide to prevent skin cancer.
Ostensibly, HB 1248 will prevent any cosmetic or personal care product from being sold to Colorado women that contains ingredients that could cause cancer, but in reality it is merely another swipe at our freedoms for the benefit of lawyers. The bill allows lawsuits by people who haven’t been harmed or even purchased the supposedly dangerous product, and by adding attorney’s fees and costs, HB 1248 increases the incentive for an attorney to file suit against the cosmetics industry.
The cost of defending such a suit could shut down many of the small, entrepreneurial cosmetics manufacturers in Colorado. Creating a new practice for attorneys doesn’t make Colorado’s women safer. Not once has one of my girlfriends been checked into the emergency room for lipstick poisoning.
This entire piece of legislation is built on the assumption that women don’t have the good sense to decide what we do and do not want to put on our bodies, and that the government’s role is to protect us from our own choices. Well, legislature, to you I say, “If you increase the cost and decrease the availability of my makeup I may have to resort to eating a lot more chocolate to make myself feel better — at least until you pass a law banning chocolate, too.”
HB 1248 will hurt Colorado women to line the pockets of lawyers.
Kelly Maher is deputy director of the Colorado Civil Justice League.
