U.S. teens are taking action for safer cosmetics.
The California based and teen-led organization wants to “raise awareness about potentially cancer-causing chemicals present in cosmetic and personal care products used daily and to advocate for legislation and laws that protect our right to health.”
They’ve been doing this since 2005 and conduct school outreach programs and hold concerts to raise awareness. The teens also helped pass the Safe Cosmetics Act in California, the first of its kind, signed into law by governor Arnold Schwarznegger last year.
According to the Teens for Safe Cosmetics website, the average female teenager uses between 10 and 25 personal care and cosmetic products per day, which they say contains nearly 200 different chemicals. And 89% of the 10,000+ ingredients used in personal care products (available in the US) have not been evaluated by the Federal Drug Administration or any other notable institution.
Via Hugg; Teens for Safe Cosmetics
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Ben Nickell of GreenSteps asks whether Tony Blair is gambling with our future.
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As blizzards sweep across parts of North America, leading US politicians are meeting legislators from the EU, China, Japan and India to try and break the deadlock in the international climate change debate. The meeting is an attempt to agree proposals for a new world deal on climate change for the forthcoming G8 summit.
Back in 2004, in a speech on climate change to celebrate the 10th anniversary of HRH the Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment programme, Tony Blair said:
“The emission of greenhouse gases….is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long term. And by long term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence…There is no doubt that the time to act is now.”
So he seems to understand the scale of the problem. Tony Blair now faces the challenge of brokering a deal which the US will agree to and yet which is meaningful in the face of growing urgency.
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