Amy Robertson is about as natural as a Canadian can be.
Without a trace of makeup, her blond hair usually cinched in a ponytail, the former organic farmer and health-food store clerk from Vancouver scrupulously avoids preservatives and pesticides in her food. She was also tested last year by researchers collecting proof of toxic chemicals in the body.
But what she discovered shocked her -- her clean-living body was distressingly polluted with heavy metals and PCBs. If the 43-year-old is disciplined about what goes into her mouth, she is anything but when it comes to what she puts on her skin. Inspecting her herbal shampoo label for the first time, she finds cocamidopropyl hydroxysultaine and methyl cocoyl taurate, the stuff of chemistry labs.
"I've always said to the kids, 'If you can't pronounce an ingredient, we won't buy it,' " Ms. Robertson says. "But I have obviously not been that good with cosmetics."
Few have. While Canadians have become savvy about chemicals in their food -- scanning package labels and paying premium prices for organic produce -- little mention has been made of the chemicals that clean our hair and moisturize our skin day in and day out.
Yet some of the 10,000 ingredients in beauty products are suspected or confirmed carcinogens, hormone-mimicking chemicals or substances linked to birth defects. And in an age of increasing fear over chemical exposures, the $5.3-billion cosmetics industry is poised to become the new frontier for health and eco-minded consumers.
Under new federal rules that came into force late last year, cosmetics companies selling products in Canada are compelled to list ingredients on their packages -- a move that has brought this country closer into line with Europe and the United States, where, for some, checking the label on a lipstick is as routine as reading a cereal box.
Some cosmetics ingredients will also go under the microscope when Ottawa begins a massive safety review of thousands of chemicals in widespread use that was announced last winter.
And later this month hearings will begin in Ontario on a private member's bill tabled by NDP environment critic Peter Tabuns that would slap warnings on all cosmetics and other products containing known and suspected carcinogens.
Outside Canada, a law just passed in California placing the onus on cosmetics companies to disclose to health authorities the details of toxic ingredients linked to cancer or reproductive problems.
"The fact is, we're using so many different cosmetics and we're putting them directly onto our skin," says Madeleine Bird, a Montreal health researcher who founded a Canadian counterpart to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a U.S. coalition of health and environmental activists, last year. "We use them on our babies. It's a very intimate part of our daily lives and we want that to be as safe as possible."
But while even those in the Canadian cosmetics industry laud the move to list contents on packaging, many consumers are discovering that these labels are hardly founts of information. Ingredients are listed by unfamiliar Latin names that obscure even benign substances -- shea butter becomes butyrospermum parkii.
Unless shoppers splurge on an $1,100 dictionary to cross-reference ingredients, they are left no wiser than they were before the new rules. This is why the Canadian Cancer Society is tossing around the idea of a colour-coded logo that would flag possible carcinogens. The Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control committee also has product labelling on their agenda.
"When you pick up something at the grocery store, it should immediately tell you something about what's in that substance [so] you can make an informed decision," says Heather Logan, the director of cancer control policy at the Canadian Cancer Society. "We don't have that yet."
