Formaldehyde in Cosmetics!? Roundtable with Gabrielle Dwyer and Joe Zagorski PhD

0:10Gabrielle Dwyer: Welcome to the EcoWell podcast. This is a show about the science of cosmetics. My name's Jen and I'll be your host. Is formaldehyde in cosmetics something everyday consumers actually have to be worried about? There are so many scary headlines out there about this topic that have even led to ingredient bans in places like Washington State that now the cosmetics industry must comply with. What does the science actually have to say about this? To help me unpack the topic, this week's episode features the point of views of toxicologist Dr. Joe Zagorski and cosmetic chemist Gabby Dwyer. I thought these were the right perspectives to get at the whole picture for how it all works, which unfortunately rarely happens with the headlines you see.

0:57Gabrielle Dwyer: This conversation will give you a rundown of this topic as it applies to the specific cosmetic formulation context, that specific safety, the science that's out there, for better or worse, and lots more. Before the episode, I just wanted to quick thank all my Patreon supporters who've been supporting my Psycom efforts for so long, including this podcast. You've been a big part of my motivation that's kept this show on the air for so long. Thank you so much for your continued support. If you'd like to support my work on Patreon and it's accessible, you can find me at patreon.com slash the eco well.

1:35Gabrielle Dwyer: Other great ways to support this podcast is by subscribing to it on whatever platform you listen to it, writing a review for the podcast if you haven't already. Seriously, that is a huge help and sharing. And with that, here's the episode.

1:53Gabrielle Dwyer: and so this conversation is going to be a round table on formaldehyde in cosmetics i feel that some of the headlines and maybe some of the laws have maybe gotten out of hand so i thought that i should address this from two points of view that i think are relevant to help us understand what's happening. So we've got the chemist point of view with Gabrielle Dwyer. And then we have the toxicologist perspective with Dr. Joe Zagorski. I will just get right to it with my first question. And Joe, I feel like this one might be better directed to you. What is formaldehyde and where is it found?

2:40Joe Zagorski: Great question. So formaldehyde is a very, very small chemical. It's one carbon, two hydrogens, one oxygen. And it can be found most places you want to look. For instance, our bodies make it naturally as a part of something called one carbon metabolism. So essentially, as you're making things like amino acids, which are building blocks for proteins, or other things, carbons get shuffled around. And in that process, some formaldehyde is made. I mean, you can draw blood, you can detect it. Other living organisms generate a detectable amount of formaldehyde. If you eat a pear, for instance, you're going to be eating formaldehyde.

3:17Joe Zagorski: It is a pretty ubiquitous chemical that you can find a lot of different places from biological sources to industrial sources.

3:28Gabrielle Dwyer: And then coming to the cosmetics point of view, what is the relevance of formaldehyde in cosmetic formulations, how may it turn up? So formaldehyde is used in several different cosmetic applications. One of them is as a preservative, specifically formaldehyde releasers. This is important because it's used to preserve the product and inhibit microbial growth and extend the shelf life. So ensuring that the product is free from microbes and safe to use. it can also be used as a cross-linking agent for keratin and you you can find that application in different things but an example would be a keratin hair smoothing treatment for textured hair yeah and I feel like a lot of people focus on the latter application which is different which is different than the former and so that leads well to my next question joe if you want to add anything to what gabrielle just said by all means but my question is what are the hazards versus risks associated with formaldehyde in general and then specifically with cosmetic related applications especially when we're talking about those two scenarios that gabrielle just highlighted?

4:51Gabrielle Dwyer: What's the difference? And also, who is actually potentially at risk? And how high is that? Wow, this question is getting larger. How high is that potential that those individuals are actually going to have an adverse outcome?

5:08Joe Zagorski: Great questions. I will do my best to remember them as I go through.

5:13Gabrielle Dwyer: I can repeat.

5:15Joe Zagorski: If I miss one, let me know. So the only thing I think I would add to Gabrielle's is that adding formaldehyde donors is not the same thing as adding formaldehyde. A chemical that contains formaldehyde is a different chemical than formaldehyde itself. So when I explain this to people, I liken it to if you were to have a fender of a car, you wouldn't say that's a car, you would say that's a fender. Now that can be added to a larger structure. And now that is a car. That car contains fenders, but it is not a fender. It is now a car. And if you remove that fender again, now you have a fender. And so it's similar to formaldehyde containing chemicals where you have this larger chemical that does contain formaldehyde or the fender that can then be removed.

6:05Joe Zagorski: And now you have a fender or in the instance of cosmetics formaldehyde. That's really important because that is going to help dictate exposure. We can see hazards with any chemical. And so a hazard, if your listeners aren't aware, is just a potential negative outcome that could occur at some level of exposure or at some dose. It doesn't mean that that level of exposure or that dose is relevant in terms of everyday human life, it frequently is many thousands of times higher than you could ever be conceivably exposed. And actually, for most individuals, that is true for what we're talking about here.

6:47Joe Zagorski: Versus risk, where now we're talking about the likelihood that you actualize that hazard. So what's the likelihood that that negative thing happens? With formaldehyde, we're talking two general areas of hazard. One is what they refer to as skin sensitization, which you can develop something called contact dermatitis. You can think of it as like a red itchy rash. The other is carcinogenesis risk or the development of cancer. And for that, we're usually, in fact, pretty entirely looking at the nasopharynx or the upper airway. So we're looking at the nose to the upper parts of the lungs. And I know that sounds scary, but we're talking about levels of exposure, oftentimes hundreds of thousands of times higher than what you're exposed to in these cosmetic products.

7:38Joe Zagorski: And most of these cosmetic products are being applied to the skin or skin adjacent areas where we don't see that increased risk for the development of cancer. That's where we see things like the skin sensitization or the red itchy rash. And the reason I brought up the fender analogy first is because the way that these additives work in these cosmetic products is over time, they will release formaldehyde, which functions to inhibit things like bacterial growth. And there's actual noted harm if you don't have preservatives in these products, where people get very, very sick. There really is a noted importance of having some level of preservatives in cosmetic products and in many products beyond cosmetics.

8:26Joe Zagorski: But what's happening is that slow release over time means that the exposure to you as a person is extremely, extremely low. And your body is actually producing more formaldehyde than you would be exposed to in the product you're using. So I don't know if I covered all of the questions, but that's kind of a 30 ,000 foot view of what we're looking at here.

8:50Gabrielle Dwyer: Well, I just wanted to put a pin in one of the points that you had made because it'll lead well to the next question that I have for Gabrielle, and I'll say it up front, but then I have another comment and question. The comment that Joe made that I think is important is the slow release of formaldehyde over time because that is important when discussing the specific benefits that these types of preservatives have for the specific formulations that they're put in. And like this all gets really complicated when understanding the formulation context and like the need for a broad palette available in all that.

9:32Gabrielle Dwyer: But Joe, you brought up sensitization as a potential risk. And I just wanted to highlight, there was two recent risk assessments that were done on, it was specifically on DMDM hydantoin, which if my listeners don't know, it's a type of formaldehyde donor preservative. And it was specific to rinse off products. They actually analyzed the market to see where these preservatives were used. And And it was in these products because of compliance and safety requirements for products being used as per regulations. And so they found the two separate risk assessments that even in the worst case scenarios when it's used at 1%, the USA upper regulatory limit.

10:16Gabrielle Dwyer: And then assuming all the possible products one may use has that upper limit, which like that's like everything. the limit was safe with a wide margin of safety and this included with respect to sensitization the issue that they saw were people who had pre-existing problems but not for the general public there's another area when i see like the yuka app highlighting like ah these are bad for like a skin sensitization. But then they pull data that's not relevant to the general public. And then that creates so much confusion. There was also a derm in my comments when I recently posted my post about formaldehyde donor preservatives, highlighting this very issue.

11:04Gabrielle Dwyer: And she was saying like, this is a really big issue. When I do patch tests, a lot of people have sensitivity. Then I'm also asking, well, firstly, like what's your exposure as a dermatologist to people? Like when we're talking about the general public, who's going to a dermatologist? That's one question. Second question, like what is the relevance of a patch test? And so for reference, like patch that you're putting it on your skin and then occluding it, like putting something over it, but then think about how these preservatives are actually used. they're in wash off context. So what is the relevance to the general public for all of this?

11:46Gabrielle Dwyer: I'll stop talking, Joe.

11:49Joe Zagorski: Yes. So I run into this all the time. And it really, because what I do my day job, I work at the Center for Research on Ingredient Safety at Michigan State University. And so we look at ingredients and contaminants in consumer goods and products across the board. And that might be food, that might be beverage, that might be cosmetics, et cetera. What we see is, and what you're really describing is an over-focus on hazard, not asking the follow-up question of how much exposure do we need, for how long, in what population. There's a ton of nuance that is gone from the conversation frequently. And you see that in the Yuka app that you just talked about, that causes a lot of headaches because in a lot of senses, it's causing people to get unnecessarily afraid and worried about the things that they're using because it's pulling hazard data that may be hundreds or thousands of times higher than people would ever be exposed to, or it's looking at rodent data that isn't translatable to human biology, any one of these other things.

12:59Joe Zagorski: And so the patch test that you're talking about is a very good example of chemicals have what we refer to as a use case, which means that they need to be used in a very specific context that might be some of these wash off ingredients. If you're not testing it along the lines of what the use case is, which is in this case to be washed off, then you may be essentially getting like a false positive of sorts in terms of how much risk there really is. Because what you're actually doing is what we refer to as hazard identification, saying, is there some potential negative thing that could happen at some dose?

13:36Joe Zagorski: Losing the translation and the relevance of, okay, in what group, for how long, how frequently does it need to be dosed? Are we being dosed in that manner, et cetera? And so you're 100 % spot on in that the vast majority of individuals, We are talking about exposure levels that are completely irrelevant to actualizing that negative outcome, that hazard. There are some presensitized individuals that are outliers to that. And I'm not going to say that that doesn't exist because it does. Once you have been sensitized to a chemical, it takes much, much less of that chemical to result in that negative outcome, especially when it involves something like the immune system, which is very robust at responding a second time to something.

14:30Joe Zagorski: That's why things like vaccines work. You're 100 % spot on.

14:35Gabrielle Dwyer: And bear in mind, yes, people are sensitive to these ingredients. They're also sensitive to other ingredients. Yes. It's really hard to develop a formula that will be fine for everyone. One formula for everyone? I mean, maybe petrolatum. Maybe. But that's not super elegant. I don't know. Somebody probably reacts to it. People are going to react to things. But I feel that the reason we hyper-focus on formaldehyde is like the word and like the perception rather than nobody's doing this to like extracts that are like when we're talking about allergens in cosmetics, it's like, okay. Well, there's clearly some dissonance and then people don't understand the fact that formaldehyde is in natural.

15:26Joe Zagorski: I run into that all the time, especially with like heavy metals, for instance, where connotation to the public is everything. So if it is frequently the connotation is followed by the word poisoning, that's not going to go well. Or formaldehyde, people hear that and they think embalming fluid. And so they're saying, well, why are you putting embalming fluid in my X, Y or Z product? And it's like, well, because we're not. Number one, this chemical is used in so many different applications, but again, nuance is lost.

16:00Gabrielle Dwyer: Okay, so now we're going to come back to the cosmetic chemist's perspective. So can you explain formaldehyde donor preservatives, how they work, and where they're especially helpful? What kinds of products are they used in and why? So formaldehyde donor preservatives or formaldehyde releasers are a type of preservative that reacts with water in the product. And through hydrolysis, it releases formaldehyde slowly over time. And it's actually more appropriate for what we talked about before with the contact dermatitis because it's being released over time. It's also effective because it is volatile, and so you find that the product can be preserved really well because it's being released over time.

16:57Gabrielle Dwyer: Again, it comes in contact with water and releases formaldehyde. Therefore, the products that you'll find or the products that contain formaldehyde donor preservatives have a lot of water. This is important because certain applications with high content of water need to be preserved differently from products that have low content of water. They work very well. They're very effective at a broad pre-H range and they're broad spectrum preservatives. And so you have to take that into consideration on the formulation side. I'm actually looking into fully water-soluble preservatives to bring into the lab and it has been challenging because there are not that many that don't have this negative connotation to them the ones that are available which you know very few that don't have you know these issues when it comes to appealing to the market the ones that we can use are not as effective when you pass a certain pH range.

18:05Gabrielle Dwyer: And so it's very limited. And when you put the product on stability, the pH can shift. So we want to make sure that the product is preserved very well, even if there's a shift in pH. Pomoldahide donor preservatives are very good, again, at preserving the product across our wide pH range, which is very important on the formulation side. So it creates different challenges when we're trying to find these other water-soluble preservatives for these products that have a high content of water, a high percent of water. Another aspect, in addition to the fact that formaldehyde donor preservatives, that was a really good point about their water solubility and their pH range.

18:51Gabrielle Dwyer: And I think that's a point that a lot of people aren't thinking about when thinking about the alternative preservatives that are often lower pH, high pH products, it's not going to work there. Like sodium benzoite, as an example, people want that as like a natural option. But then yeah, thinking about the fact that it's in a shower environment, humid, the fact that it slowly releases formaldehyde over time can be specifically useful for that specific format. Joe, you've already alluded to the safety context of these preservatives. So I'm not sure if we need to go in more detail there, but do you want to add anything to what Gabrielle was talking about?

19:32Joe Zagorski: So I think she keyed in on something that I end up having to address very regularly, and that is the call for removal of ingredients and not understanding the complexity of the problem. And this is across the board of all consumer goods and products. What a lot of people don't realize is whenever we formulate something, I say we as if I'm the one doing it, but I'm not. Whenever something is formulated, there's a give and a take. We have to choose the best tool for the job. And that doesn't mean that every tool is without issue or concern. So then we have to take steps to mitigate those, to limit exposure, to do things like slow release of formaldehyde.

20:11Joe Zagorski: When someone just simply calls for remove it and replace it with chemical X, frequently people don't realize things like you may be switching to a chemical that's less potent. So if your listeners aren't familiar with the term potency, it's just the amount of chemical necessary to more or less get a job done. The less chemical you need to get the job done is more potent, more chemical is less potent. And so you may be switching to a chemical that is less potent, so you need more of it. But now you've thrown off the formulation of other things because by increasing the percentage of one chemical, by proportion, it decreases the percentage of other chemicals that need to be there.

20:49Joe Zagorski: The discussion is frequently framed as this, we'll just remove this puzzle piece, put in another one. And then it's like, okay, well, one, that piece doesn't fit there. And two, now we've changed the picture that we're trying to make. And so I feel like a lot of times that gets kind of lost in the discussion of we are using these tools for a reason, switching to just a different chemical that may be able to do the same job, might not be a one-to-one replacement, which means that we have to reformulate everything else or that it has decreased self-stability. There's a multitude of issues that can happen.

21:27Gabrielle Dwyer: So as Joe brought this up, like this palette limitation of preservatives amongst other things, for yourself as a formulator. What challenge does that present to you trying to then develop the best and safest possible product for the end consumer? There's so much complexity to the formulation, but then there's also like the manufacturing environment. Oh my gosh.

21:56Joe Zagorski: And shipping, and it's got to sit on a shelf, and then it's got to sit in a bathroom. I mean.

22:01Gabrielle Dwyer: The horror stories I've heard from contract manufacturers and the evolving microbes that are living in their environments that can be so problematic because they can't get rid of it because it's like in some of the like loops in the what they flush the water through. It's never really cleaned sufficiently. Like they have to close down because it's such a big problem. So it's yeah, nightmare scenario. So what does this pallet limitation present to you in terms of challenges for producing the best and safest possible product for consumers? So as I had mentioned, there would be like this narrow pH range, which means that now you need to input pH adjustment into your formula.

22:47Gabrielle Dwyer: Sometimes it doesn't need it because the formula is, you know, good as it is. But now we have to think about that. And when you do pH adjustment, you then have to think of production and ensuring that you're getting something consistent. So when I'm formulating, I have my own issues when I'm doing it in the lab, but I have to foresee how this formula can be developed or can be made on the production side and ensure that the process is smooth and that we can get something consistent. I need to make sure that when I'm doing stability, my product stays within a specific pH range so that the preservative I picked is effective.

23:30Gabrielle Dwyer: And that can be challenging because temperature can affect how a formula drifts in pH and things like that. So I just have to keep that in mind whenever I'm formulating. and different ingredients are sensitive to different pH. So then I have to consider not just the product as a whole, but if this extract prefers to be at a certain pH or if a different ingredient is also pH sensitive, it plays a part in when I'm trying to develop the formula. Also, I actually recently was testing a water-soluble preservative and I added some type of peptide to the formula that I was developing. I look at the formula the next day and it is now pink.

24:18Gabrielle Dwyer: That is a challenge because if marketing says we want this clear product, but the preservative I used or, you know, whatever ingredient is interacting with the other ingredients in the product don't agree or is creating a reaction and then it turns pink that becomes a problem I now need to figure out okay which ingredient is reacting with a different ingredient to change the color luckily it's not something that I had to make sure that it was finished really quickly this is just something that I've been working on on my own but it was really frustrating because there are these other preservatives that are effective but we can't use them again because of market preference.

25:10Gabrielle Dwyer: And I just now have to spend more time. Sometimes we don't have that. On the formulation side, we have to redevelop very quickly, you know, whenever we get challenges like that. I think that's a really important point. And I think if people aren't cluing in of what that impact is going to be for finished product consumers, let me spell it out for you. That longer time of product development or the use of preservatives that are just coming onto the market, their economies of scale aren't going to be on your side. It's going to be more expensive. That time costs money or redevelopment costs money.

25:52Gabrielle Dwyer: Whether or not the brand is going to put that on you, the consumer right away, it's a matter of time if they survive. If they survive, it is hugely costly for brands to have to continuously redevelop, especially when contending with diverse laws from region to region as we see specific to formaldehyde donor preservatives, which we'll get to shortly. That translates to higher cost and higher cost and drain with not a clear benefit to consumers. And maybe, I don't know, maybe it's a negative because if it's harder to preserve a product, then that might translate to more microbes. Microbes equal like most significant public health risk related to cosmetic products.

26:37Gabrielle Dwyer: I'm probably concerned. I'm going to read some headlines that have come up recently. The first one was from the Department of Ecology from the state of Washington. They conducted a study in 2024 and their commentary on it is they detected formaldehyde levels ranging from 39.2 parts per million to 1 ,660 parts per million among various body lotions and hair products. The highest level of formaldehyde were found in hairstyling gels and creams. Many of them were marketed towards black women with innocuous free of claims. They listed some products and then highlighted that the products contain DMDM hydandolin.

27:24Gabrielle Dwyer: Further concentrations as low as 200 parts per million can cause allergic reactions. And this study found that 24 out of the 30 products contain formaldehyde above this level. I guess there's a lot there to the toxicologist here, Joe. What do you think?

27:43Joe Zagorski: Yeah, so I'm familiar with what you are talking about. And I believe they looked at formaldehyde and formaldehyde containing products or chemicals, rather. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they necessarily differentiated between the two. And so, again, this comes back to the idea of they're not the same thing. A formaldehyde containing chemical is not the same as formaldehyde. And I think that I can't stress that enough. Number one. Number two, I believe the current industry standard, and you guys are the industry professionals on this, not me. So again, please chime in if I'm mistaken here, is that 2 ,000 parts per million is the acceptable limit in terms of sensitization.

28:30Even in their own analysis, they are saying that they are complying with industry standards.

28:36Joe Zagorski: I see this all the time, whether it's a different state or whether it's a different organization. You see this with certain consumer advocacy groups. They'll say it's above this number. And it's like, well, that number is below the regulated limit. So what you're saying is they're complying with safety in the law. But that's a different aside. I would say for, again, for the average consumer, I'm not concerned about sensitization there because we're below the standard for making sure that you're safe for sensitization. And I think it's important to also point out toxicologically, when we set levels, safety levels for things, we build in a buffer zone of sorts to make sure because there's billions of people on the planet, different people are going to react differently.

29:27Joe Zagorski: we refer to these as uncertainty factors. There's person-to-person variability. Sometimes you have to rely on animal models. Animals aren't people. I don't know if people know that or not. And so there's a level of uncertainty there of how well does that translate to human biology? There's sensitive populations of very young human versus a very old human. Their bodies react differently to chemical exposures. And so for each one of these, we frequently drop the threshold by a factor of 10. So you can very quickly see where the science might say the level of safety is at, let's say, 100 milligrams per kilogram body weight per day, which I'm making that up for this, but just bear with me.

30:13Joe Zagorski: And then you say, well, but there's person-to-person variability. And they say, okay, well, we'll drop it by 10. So now we're at 10 mgs per kg body weight per day. And then we say, oh, well, we had to rely on animal models, drop it by 10. There's sensitive populations, drop it by 10. And you can see here where now the level is set at such that we are a hundred or thousands of times lower than what the actual scientific evidence shows is a level of concern. I bring that up to say, even if we came up to a threshold for a brief time, or even slightly above a threshold for a brief time. The likelihood that something negative would happen is still pretty small because we built in this huge buffer to try to make sure everybody is safe.

30:56Joe Zagorski: In this case, we're not even at the industry standard of 2 ,000 parts per million. The vast majority of consumers, I have no concern on their skin safety from that. Whether or not there are sensitized individuals that may react, I can't rule that out as a possibility, but I would say that that's the exception and not the rule.

31:17Gabrielle Dwyer: I had the same thought when I saw the concentration that they listed. I mean, the products or whatever they quantify, whatever concentration they quantified for from all that in the products fall within the set range by the EU, which is, it should be 2000 ppm or below. also i would like to note that the eu launched a new law which is that if the product exceeds or the concentration of formaldehyde in a product exceeds 10 ppm there needs to be a label that says this product contains formaldehyde this includes free formaldehyde released from formaldehyde in cosmetic products. And so some of these products should be labeled contains formaldehyde.

32:12Gabrielle Dwyer: But if I'm remembering correctly, this study was before, like the products that they were analyzing, this was before that law. And I would just like to know that because they're paying attention to sensitized individuals and they put that law in place to inform or to ensure that consumers specifically or especially people who are sensitive or who have sensitive skin can make a more informed decision when they're choosing products so that's something that I thought of when I was reading this article there are regulations in place for safety reasons formaldehyde or, well, we don't intentionally put formaldehyde in certain cosmetics, but free formaldehyde released from formaldehyde releasers in cosmetic products have regulations, again, based on what they found.

33:09Gabrielle Dwyer: That's a good thing. What they found is below the threshold set by the EU. So that I thought that that was good. Yeah, I'm reminded by commentary from another toxicologist I often collaborate with Dr. Lyle Bergoon. Perhaps you know him, Joe.

33:27Joe Zagorski: Yeah, I know him. He did his PhD at Michigan State.

33:30Gabrielle Dwyer: Yeah. People assume that legislation or regulation is always driven by science. And like, it's just, that's not how it works. politics drive policy sometimes more than often more than the science and that's part of why you see divergent rules from region to region because a lot of it comes down to the sentiment of the public and what constituents are likely to want also bear in mind i don't know if i should even say this, but I've talked to legislators and like they also don't have a technical background. Yeah. And they're trying to, they're trying to do the best thing for their region. This confronts the issue of misinformation in this very noisy information environment for what is the impact here?

34:33Gabrielle Dwyer: Are we actually doing the things that we're saying we're doing? Or are we just like, like feeling like we're doing the things. I would like to think that people are creating these rules with good intention. So like right now, a really loud conversation is going to come up. I'm going to maybe bring up the next two headlines together because they're related, but it's around the fact that there is disproportionate harm based off of these studies to black people compared to other people this is the narrative and like I think I don't know about intentions but this seems like I don't know when I saw that understanding the context of this stuff like it just feels really predatory to then say that and then that's driving legislation or regulation and then it's like so then the legislators want to do the right thing but it's like yeah does any of this make sense and and then how does that leave the public feeling all there's been so many headlines recently about how oh my gosh this is getting to be like an unwieldy question and I feel like some of it I should come back to but there's been just so many headlines from clean beauty advocates talking about how cosmetics are killing black people in America specifically.

35:59Gabrielle Dwyer: And then it's clean beauty advocates that then in turn say, buy my product. I've got the solution. And that seems really, really icky to me. Okay. I'm going to stop talking about that because I feel like some of that we're going to have to come back to because that was a lot. And I need to say the headlines because these are relevant. Okay. The first one was, there was a new study on black and Latina women, they found that cancer causing, this is how it was framed in a headline, cancer causing preservatives in lotions, soaps, and cosmetics. This is a study title. Formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasing preservatives in personal care products used by black women and Latinas in environmental science and technology letters led by, I mean, like, I feel like we should maybe ask questions about who it was led by.

36:47Gabrielle Dwyer: That's my personal commentary. I'm sorry, back to what it said. led by Silent Spring Institute, they found that 54 % of Black and Latina women use products that contain formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, highlighting, like, honestly, highlighting the disproportionate exposure to these products marketed to communities of color. Of the 35 products tested, the most common formaldehyde-releasing preservatives found were DMDM hydanowin and diazodonol urea. Many of these products are used multiple times per week and are leave-on products, which contributes to longer-term exposure.

37:28Gabrielle Dwyer: Like, oh my gosh, the fear and sensation. Maybe I'll stop there. I won't say the second headline. We'll get to how this then translated to legislative activity. Okay, who wants to go first?

37:40Joe Zagorski: Do you want to take it first, Gabrielle?

37:42Gabrielle Dwyer: Sure. okay so if i'm remembering correctly the article was showing data specifically on products used by black women and latina women i'm i'm pretty sure that's what the article was showing if we really did want to you know show a comparison it would have been interesting to see products in general and then you could separate it that way these types of preservatives you know so formaldehyde donor preservatives are not specifically used only in products for textured hair these types of preservatives are used in all types of products so that's like the first thing this article I feel like is missing some information for us to make a definitive claim like that I also see a challenge again on the formulation side like how I mentioned earlier because if formaldehyde releasers in cosmetic products are banned in Washington state from the manufacturer side, we would have to reformulate to be compliant with Washington state.

39:05Gabrielle Dwyer: And so we don't make products to be compliant for one state. We aim for national compliance and even better global compliance. So I see a reformulation, a huge reformulation project for different manufacturers. That's from the cosmetic chemist side. That's what I see. because if it's banning Washington, then companies are going to have to find new formulas to be compliant. Also, were they using, I believe there were, there are two different articles. One was using WG and then one was using like the picture. Yeah, for this study, they just went and saw if products contain formaldehyde or that's it.

39:51Gabrielle Dwyer: And then they said, do they contain these formaldehyde donor preservatives? Formaldehyde donor – this is how it was framed. Formaldehyde donor preservatives are – well, formaldehyde is carcinogenic. Therefore, carcinogenic preservatives. Like we've already talked about this conflation. And then, well, we only looked at this population and X amount percentage of these – like to your point, like we only looked at one population. So then it was framed as in like the cosmetics industry is trying to kill this population or something. I think we need more information before we can make a claim like that.

40:32Gabrielle Dwyer: I just. And as we've discussed, these preservatives are fine. Yeah.

40:39Joe Zagorski: So from a tox perspective, I have a lot of thoughts about this.

40:44Gabrielle Dwyer: Also, if you have details on Silent Spring Institute, I don't know if you want to comment on that.

40:49Joe Zagorski: I will say that they are frequently very focused on hazard, as are the EWGs of the world, etc. They are very hazard focused because there is a nugget of truth in that excessive exposure to inhaled formaldehyde can increase the risk of some cancers of the nasopharynx and upper respiratory system. That's not what we're talking about here. There's a few things. One is that study, in my opinion, is dripping with confirmation bias because I'm not saying there was motive, because we're all biased in some way. So I'm not saying that this was intentionally framed because I don't know them. I can't say that.

41:34But what I will say is when you only look for the presence of a chemical, because presence

41:40Joe Zagorski: does not equate to harm. Detectable doesn't mean dangerous. When you only look at the presence of a chemical and then just say, who uses it the most? And then make the jump from there to they're at risk of cancer because of this. It appears, and I could be wrong, I don't know them, that they came to the table wanting to prove a point and not test a hypothesis, which is a real important caveat for science. We don't prove points. We test hypotheses. The levels of formaldehyde donors being within safety limits. One, we take into account hazards when we set safety limits. But two, route of exposure is important here.

42:29Joe Zagorski: And so transdermal exposure to these formaldehyde releasing preservatives is not where we see cancer risk. It is where we see like occupational, like people who work in an industrial setting with actual formaldehyde inhaling the fumes. And they do it day after day after day after day without proper personal protective equipment. They're conflating two different things that are toxicologically different. The hazard associated with transdermal exposure or skin exposure to formaldehyde is sensitization, not cancer. It appears as though it's not in good faith. I'm not saying that it isn't because again, I don't know them, but the way that it is set up, the data that is presented can't draw the conclusions they're trying to draw, if that makes any sense.

43:24Gabrielle Dwyer: Yeah. And like putting blinders on to confirm your opinion. That's like, if we had like a science versus pseudoscience graphic, pseudoscience, that's not how it works. Like scientists should be everyone's bias, but like trying to find truth, regardless if it agrees with our preconceptions, not trying to prove a point. I mean, that's kind of problematic.

43:47Joe Zagorski: The problem is those headlines get grabbed and they're scary. And we know that there's social inequality in the world. It's just a matter of fact. So now you can use the pre-existing social inequalities that exist that are wrong on every level and use them to help fuel this narrative. And the data just don't support it. I feel like when we have information

44:16Gabrielle Dwyer: like this presented to people. We can also miss the causes of some of the diseases that people bring up in articles like this. I think that we could, again, we could be missing something, and then we're not actually focusing on the problem. I really think that it's important to look at the end goal. Why do Black women get certain diseases more than, you know, a different ethnicity or Hispanic women? Whatever it is, we can be missing something if we're focusing on the wrong thing. Also, to make certain claims about a certain ingredient, we have to have research backing it up so before we can present it to the public the standard way you know in the scientific community is to perform several studies also you can't just have one paper and that says this and then you go along with it we have several peer-reviewed published literature and then we can say certain things that's one thing one you know note i had when i was reading through some of these articles it has to be vetted and it it has to have good science to back it up if that makes sense but yeah the main thing is that we really could be missing you know what else could be causing some of these diseases is this something genetic you know what is going on is it the environment?

45:53Gabrielle Dwyer: Is it stress? I think we should be looking, if we actually want to solve a problem, I think we should look at more factors.

46:04Joe Zagorski: I couldn't agree more. I mean, if you are pouring resources into a situation that does not require it, or the data doesn't call for it, you're not pouring them places that it does to distill down potential health disparities to formaldehyde containing preservatives and not looking at things like other potential chemical exposures or also just like healthcare availability. Are these people, we know statistically that women, especially black women are not listened to by doctors at the same rate as other demographics. And we know just from different socioeconomic groups are more likely to be in more highly polluted areas.

46:49Joe Zagorski: These are things that definitely impact health and life quality. And so if we're not pouring adequate resources where they need to be poured, then to your point, Gabrielle, we're looking in the wrong spot. And so headlines like this don't help.

47:08Gabrielle Dwyer: another headline from the guardian and this will oh well this i mean it makes me think of all like the dirty dozen stuff that so this was relevant to ewg it comes back to like i'll just say my thoughts that i was thinking of of the ewg's dirty dozen list they talk about how all these foods are toxic. And there's so many studies to show that it's like, it's more about availability of botanical variety. And there's been studies to show how like fear may reduce consumption of botanical variety. Like if people are wanting to, I forget the specific framing of the study that was done. It was like pre-COVID.

47:55Gabrielle Dwyer: If people are fearful of conventional foods because they feel that they have to have organic foods that may drive poor consumption of fruits and vegetables, which we know. We know that is good. We do not know that non-organic food equals bad. We just need to have fruits and vegetables. It's icky because then that narrative really, Like it's just they say things that are important to tie in with some of these narratives, but then to your point, divert attention from the actual issues at hand while creating like a whole host of new issues in terms of confusing the public and research dollars. Okay, the headline from The Guardian.

48:48Gabrielle Dwyer: Over 3 ,000 beauty products targeting Black women contain health hazards, study shows, based on EWG's full list of products marketed to Black women 2025 analysis. And then to comment from EWG's self-commentary, hazardous chemicals in cosmetics disproportionately impact Black women in their analysis. Ingredients deemed as hazardous included formaldehyde donor preservatives, parabens also, which if you've listened to this podcast, you've probably heard they're fine also. They say formaldehyde donor preservatives in cosmetics can cause lung toxicity and expose consumers to formaldehyde and known carcinogen.

49:36Gabrielle Dwyer: Man. Thoughts? There are other platforms that you can look at when you want to look into ingredients for your products. I recommend the Cosmetic Ingredient Review website if you want to look into what makes up the product that you're using. I saw in some of the articles that you were sharing that consumers or some people have a problem with not being able to read the back of the label if you're not a chemist like you can't understand it like those are the comments I would see and there are platforms out there that can help you decode your product to an extent again the percent for each ingredient is proprietary so So you can't know everything about the product, but there are regulations in place.

50:35Gabrielle Dwyer: Cosmetic manufacturers have a regulatory team and we have a micro team. We have a team to ensure that whatever we're putting out is compliant. So that's what I will say on the formulation side. And again, I just wanted to highlight other sources for looking into the ingredients in your products.

50:58Joe Zagorski: EWG doing its EWG thing. So again, very, very hazard focused and losing nuance whilst simultaneously making claims of malevolence against an entire industry. When I talk to average consumers, I really try to bring humanity back to the discussion. And I point out that people that I know and I love and I care about use these products. And people that work at these companies use these products and their loved ones use these products. When we all essentially live in the same consumer environment, the implication would be that I would be okay with poisoning my loved ones so a company could make money, which I think is, when you frame it in that way, is a little bit ridiculous on its face.

51:54Joe Zagorski: Additionally, just from an economic standpoint, a company doesn't want to poison the people buying its stuff, then they don't have people to sell stuff to. The logic of it kind of falls apart there, but to their claims themselves, frequently what EWG and... similar NGOs lose toxicologically is the adage of the dose makes the poison, right? So every chemical and everything's a chemical has a safe dose and a dangerous dose. And that varies chemical to chemical. Some chemicals are toxic at lower doses and other chemicals, even water is toxic at a certain dose. Oxygen's toxic at a certain dose. Arsenic's toxic at a certain dose.

52:46Joe Zagorski: But all of those are also safe at a certain dose. And they conflate detection and presence with toxicity, which is ridiculous. This is just another example of that. I mean, parabens, what parabens is a good example of is regrettable substitution, where parabens are extremely safe when used as directed, and then you replace them with a chemical that actually does in a sub-portion of the population cause skin sensitization issues. It's a great example of rushing to replace something that doesn't necessarily need to be replaced can actually result in harm. I get very frustrated with headlines like this because really what it's doing is it's fear-mongering.

53:30Joe Zagorski: The data are clear that for the overwhelming majority of individuals that use these products that don't have sensitization to formaldehyde, they're safe. You're not going to get contact dermatitis. But again, they're conflating inhaled exposure and increased risk of carcinogenesis from that in very chronic exposures, high dose to the low level exposures that you may be exposed to in these cosmetic products. And I frankly, I think it's wrong.

54:10Gabrielle Dwyer: It feels like often, and I don't think I'm incorrect with this feeling, that EWG is trying to corner the cosmetics into using their certification and other tools that could make them and their partners profitable, even if they are a nonprofit. I mean, have you looked to see how much people are making within the EWG? Like maybe look and maybe look a little into the business dynamics of like financial payment and what can make people, organizations a nonprofit. Like it's not necessarily altruistic just because it's a nonprofit. it. The commentary is spreading so much fear that is forcing companies to in turn adopt their certification or partner with them in some capacity.

55:04Gabrielle Dwyer: And we have seen it like, oh my gosh, all the big companies right now, because of the fear that has been put out there by the environmental working group, they're now, for some of their companies, partnering with them. Like, for example, it was big news when Revlon did it way back when. But since then, like the other companies have because this is what consumers are increasingly looking for because they are afraid. Fear is so powerful for things like this. And not only do they make money from from bullying the industry or bullying maybe is the wrong word, but like cornering them. They also have a donation.

55:47Gabrielle Dwyer: button. Oh my gosh, I forget the specific language that they had on their website, but it was like, help us make you safer. Help us make you and your family safer.

55:59Joe Zagorski: The implication there is you're not safe and you're not safe without them. Yeah. Specifically claims like that, and the dirty dozen is a very good example, can actually do tangible harm. The food example is a very good one where we know that a diverse nutrient-dense diet, of which fruits and vegetables are an incredibly important part, is an important aspect of keeping you safe. It just is. Whether it's from your natural exposure, because you do get natural exposure, to heavy metals, or if it is making it so you don't get diseases like rickets, or lowering your possibility of developing diabetes or getting colorectal cancer, all these things are really important.

56:42Joe Zagorski: When the implication is, if you are not eating organic, then you are going to poison you yourself and your loved ones using conventional food. And I know this isn't a food podcast. What you're doing is tangible harm because people that can't access those food sources, stop eating them. And so now you actually are feeding into the the health disparities, doing it whilst making money, whether it is the influencer or what have you. And so, yeah, I completely agree. And again, to go back to the paraben example, it's a great example of an ingredient that is important, that is safe, being vilified. And so voluntary removal, capitulation by some companies and replacement with a chemical that in a subset of the population, which is not insignificant.

57:33Joe Zagorski: And I can't remember the percentage off the top of my head. It's like 10 % or something like that. They end up with contact dermatitis. And so, yeah, I completely agree.

57:45Gabrielle Dwyer: And just to highlight that dynamic, I think it was in 2018, maybe, the American Contact Dermatitis Society labeled parabens as the non-allergen award of the year, or they received it. And so when we're talking about creating safe products for like, we have just removed potentially the best option for formulators to produce products for sensitive skin. Way back when I feel like maybe the conversation has changed a little bit, although I'm probably just in my echo chamber is probably the same, but the conversation in my little circle also like with the changes of Instagram, I don't think I see outside of my algorithm as much as I did two years ago.

58:32Gabrielle Dwyer: But like often people would be like, we're just making the cautious option by choosing paraben-free. And it's just such an up-to statement because it's like, that's not it. You're just making the ignorant option because we We have disproportionately more data for parabens because of like all the research, because all the noise. We have a lot of data for that and not so much data on that other preservative that we're switching to. So like, I mean, you should probably think about that. I'm just going to move on to my audience questions because they brought up some questions that like I don't know that much about some of these contexts.

59:14Gabrielle Dwyer: So this comes from Michelle Wong. Do the formaldehyde-free Brazilian blowouts, for example, the ones with glyoxic acid still produce? I clearly don't know anything about those. A great example of being able to pronounce something doesn't mean it's unsafe.

59:39Gabrielle Dwyer: okay so do the formaldehyde free brazilian blow ads for example the ones with word i can't say still produce formaldehyde at high temperatures um i'll answer yes these glycosylic acid based formaldehyde free treatments do release formaldehyde when the flat iron is applied to the hair. This is because when glycylic acid decomposes, formaldehyde can be released in the hair. The formaldehyde-free statement or label is because formaldehyde isn't directly added to the product. So I can see why consumers might think that's misleading. I feel like when things like that come out like oh formaldehyde free treatment and then we find studies that show that formaldehyde is released by a decomposition or heat then it becomes oh my goodness like we're trying to hide this and I don't think it helps when it when consumers are wondering about formaldehyde and wondering about the cosmetic industry and is it safe are all these products causing harm i just it doesn't really help but understanding chemistry does help it helps to pick different treatments based on what you're aware of so if a standard consumer doesn't know that glycylic acid decomposes into formaldehyde, then, you know, they might not have all the information about the treatment that they're trying to use.

1:01:25Gabrielle Dwyer: I have an unpopular statement. I would love to see class action lawsuits for claims like this. It kind of reminds me of PFAS free too, where people are starting to say benzene free, like, Like, oh my gosh, these things are ubiquitous in the environment. And with the right analytical power, you will find them. So you could look and it would be a really easy lawsuit to win. So for the brands, like maybe consider that. Especially if you sell in the United States. I went somewhere to talk to a company about some of this stuff.

1:02:01Joe Zagorski: And they were focused on heavy metals. And they wanted to say, you know, heavy metal free. And I was like, you can't say that.

1:02:08Gabrielle Dwyer: You can change it to like free of added. That's a different statement.

1:02:12Joe Zagorski: Or below the limit of detection. Sure. But you get a sensitive enough test, you'd be surprised what you can see. I mean, we can see things down to like parts per quadrillion. So, yeah.

1:02:27Gabrielle Dwyer: I also, I remember what I wanted to say earlier. It wasn't so much with EWG, but it certainly created an opening for EWG. It reminds me of a conversation that I had with Dr. Ricardo Dios, who's an adjunct professor at Red Girls University. And he's a retired cosmetic chemist. It reminds me of his statement around the double-edged sword of the ingredient list. and people misinterpret what an ingredient list will help them with. And like, honestly, when I look at the whole picture, I agree with his point that since it's been mandated, it's done more harm than good because now it's created, well, an opening for entities like the environmental working group to talk about these ingredients and nobody understands because they're not cosmetic handouts.

1:03:28Gabrielle Dwyer: Why would they? And so they don't understand their big words, their chemicals, people are so chemophobic and science literacy is a really big problem. They don't understand it in their sphere and therefore they can say this ingredient equals bad. So from the ingredient list mandate, the reasoning for that mandate was specific to like when we're talking about like what can ingredients do for you? The reason was around disclosure of allergens so that consumers could be more aware if they had allergy issues, then they could be aware of the ingredients that they have problems with. That was so distorted to then people are like, I can find products that are safer for me because this is a communication that's widely out in the media.

1:04:16Gabrielle Dwyer: I could also find products that are more effective for me That's not how it works at all. Dose makes the poison. It also makes the benefit. Also, I wanted to say this earlier to Joe's point. Like that's like a kind of like in pharmacology, that's how it all works. Just because you see something in there doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be harmful or not harmful. It all depends on the specific scenario of that formulation. Same thing goes for just because an active ingredient that has tons of evidence about it. just because it's in the formula does not mean that that finished product is going to be effective.

1:04:56Gabrielle Dwyer: It all depends on the formulation and it's on the brands to then prove that in the specific context of the formulation. Like there's so much to this conversation. It's like, it extends well beyond this. And so like prior to the ingredient list mandate, it was the law. Now, like there's issues, especially in the United States where it wasn't so painted, like so clearly painted out, especially to the smaller brands. But it was the law for the products to be safe. And so therefore, everything has to be truthful, including like safety stuff. So they had to prove it. I feel like the ingredient list has caused a lot of confusion on so many fronts from efficacy to safety, created an in for entities like this.

1:05:40Gabrielle Dwyer: And now the dialogue with social media has become is so noisy. People are so confused. And I feel like people would, if I said that, what I just said on social media, they'd get so mad at me. What do you mean? We can't know the ingredients that are in our formulas. I just like, honestly, I don't think it's that helpful for you. I truly don't. Unless you are somebody who has a specific problem, I don't think it's doing you any good. I think you should look to finish product proof. Okay. Stop talking.

1:06:11Joe Zagorski: Well, it also feeds into the dynamic of, oh, well, it's banned in XYZ, Europe, wherever. And it's like, well, actually, frequently, it's just different labeling laws. And so that ingredient is still there. It just doesn't have to be on the label in that location. And I see that in the food space and in this space. And I agree, it causes a lot of confusion. I think transparency in principle is great. I think that where we stand in terms of scientific literacy and understanding the amount of transparency that is present is often generating more chemophobia than alleviating concerns. Because, I mean, people don't know what the scientific name for vitamin B12 is or for vitamin C.

1:07:05Joe Zagorski: And they know what vitamin B and vitamin C are, but they don't know the actual scientific term. And so if you see that on a label, it frequently scares people. And it's like, well, no, that's a vitamin. I mean, I totally hear your sentiment on that. I just, I feel that I need to then add on to what I've said, because I completely agree with you.

1:07:26Gabrielle Dwyer: Like transparency is important. I'm sorry I came to the conclusion as I was just ranting and talking myself off of a ledger or something. Transparency is really important, but it needs to come with a concerted effort for good science communication, which is not something that the cosmetics industry has historically done. Yeah. And then like cosmetics industry especially has like shot ourselves in the foot so bad with free from claims, just getting on the bandwagon. We just haven't taken the time to explain things and we haven't invested in the way that we should have. And so that is important.

1:08:02Gabrielle Dwyer: We need transparency and we need that to come with science communication to help people understand because otherwise they're just not going to. Another question that I got from Sam RL, should we be concerned about the formaldehyde levels and hair straightening products? Now they talked about specifically the word I can't say. Oxalic. Oh my gosh, it's not that hard to say.

1:08:29Gabrielle Dwyer: There have been several reports of people suffering from severe kidney problems after getting these straightening treatments. The EU even issued a call for data last year. And I guess I'm going to also extend that to formaldehyde treatment products in general. Where is the actual risk here? Is it the people who are getting the treatment or is it the people who are treating the hair that are, this is a very leading question, that are exposed to it and inhaling the formaldehyde repetitively, like day in, day out for their job.

1:09:07Joe Zagorski: I can address this from the tox perspective. Formaldehyde exposure is very little formaldehyde. Free formaldehyde actually makes it to systemic circulation. It pretty much stays at the side of exposure because it is volatile and reactive. It will start to react with proteins and things around it. That's why, like, if you were to have a sensitivity of formaldehyde, put a formaldehyde containing chemical on your skin and you get contact dermatitis, that's why you get contact dermatitis and not an immune reaction somewhere else. Because the formaldehyde is reacting in the local spot of exposure. Just understanding the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion of the chemical itself, there'd be a difficult time showing straightening chemical applied to hair, which is either then absorbed through the skin or inhaled during the process of straightening, resulting in kidney damage.

1:10:05Joe Zagorski: Because the chemical, very little free chemical actually ever makes it to the bloodstream and to the kidney. This is a chemical that your body is making continuously. I don't foresee that being an issue from just the toxicological perspective. To your other point about different populations, there have been studies that have shown certain cosmetologists or professions in the beauty industry having a higher incidence of certain conditions, including cancer. Now, the connection depends on the study. It's not exactly cut and dry. This always happens. There are studies that have seen no effect. There are studies that suggest increased risk.

1:10:49Joe Zagorski: But to draw the through line to a single chemical isn't possible because they're not exposed to just formaldehyde and straightening products or leave-on products or nail glue or fill in the blank. They're exposed to many, many, many different chemicals. if that increased risk is scientifically consistent, being able to draw the through line to formaldehyde is not possible. Does that make sense? And the difference is somebody applying it all day every day has a much, much, much higher dose and what we refer to as a dose rate or the frequency of exposure. So they're getting what we refer to as a chronic exposure and frequently a high dose exposure, which those are more often than not the most dangerous combination of chemical exposures, exposures that occur over very long periods of time continually and at high dose, generally those populations are going to be more at risk versus an individual that goes in and gets a treatment done periodically, their exposure is exponentially lower.

1:11:55I don't know.

1:11:56Joe Zagorski: Did I answer the questions from the tox perspective or is there anything else? I think you did.

1:12:02Gabrielle Dwyer: Maybe I'm going to just also ask another question and then gabrielle if you want to comment on that i think this one is relevant am i at risk if i do a keratin treatment with formaldehyde in it once every three months this kind of extends the question that i just asked so i answer anything from before but also

1:12:21Joe Zagorski: if you want to comment on that as well from a uninformed point of view what's a keratin treatment

1:12:27Gabrielle Dwyer: A keratin treatment is a hair smoothing treatment. Okay. Formaldehyde is used as the cross-linking agent.

1:12:37Joe Zagorski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. My hair's not very long, so. My wife would probably have known that, but I would say every few months getting a treatment like that, I would personally have little concern because your exposure is spread out Formaldehyde is pretty rapidly metabolized. So metabolism is when your body actually changes the chemical itself. It gets metabolized into something called formate and then formate gets metabolized into carbon dioxide. And then your body gets rid of it. That process actually occurs pretty rapidly, which makes sense because if you have something that has the ability to interact with DNA or something else, you don't want it hanging around.

1:13:24Joe Zagorski: The periodic exposure of every few months getting a keratin treatment, which I just learned about, I would not be super concerned.

1:13:33Gabrielle Dwyer: Do you have any final take-homes that you'd like to leave with my audience? And or are there any comments that you'd like to insert here that we haven't had a chance to address that you think are important to this discussion?

1:13:48Joe Zagorski: I've done a lot of talking. I'll let you go first.

1:13:52Gabrielle Dwyer: Like we touched on so many things. It was interesting to hear the toxicology background of everything. I'm just working from, you know, the regulation side. side. So it was really interesting to hear that missing piece. And it's validating. I think I shared what I wanted to, which is sources that you can look into for ingredients. I think that's, I'm just trying to give advice that people may actually use. Sometimes I feel like cosmetic chemists or chemists or, you know, different scientists will come on and will say, this is the truth about products like this is not harmful sometimes I don't think it works but I think I shared you know alternatives that you could use if you're having a hard time understanding ingredients I also think that and I always share that products are personal sometimes looking for information on social media may not be the best it's it could be very individual.

1:14:54Gabrielle Dwyer: I think seeing a specialist, seeing an allergist, talking to your dermatologist, talking to a cosmetic chemist, I think where you find your information is really, really important, even when it's, you know, beauty. It's still science. And again, just like anywhere else, just like if you had a problem and you needed to go to a doctor, you wouldn't get medical information from someone who doesn't have a background in medicine or that's you know my recommendation going to someone who is an expert in that field I think it's really important to look at where you're getting your information even some of the articles or research you know that you'll review look who's doing the study I think and I think Jen you were saying that earlier It's really important where you're getting your information from.

1:15:53Gabrielle Dwyer: I know some of it may be scary, but just taking a step back and getting information from validated sources can help with fear mongering and misinformation. I just think that's really important. But yeah, I like to give advice I think people might actually follow, which is, you know, here's a source that you can look at. Again, sometimes I feel like when a chemist is like, oh, you know, this isn't bad or it doesn't really resonate sometimes. So, yeah, I try to share less and see what actually resonates with people. I speak to different people, family members. They're like, this, you know, is killing us off.

1:16:38Gabrielle Dwyer: and I'm like okay let's let's take a step back or like this is doing this to us and I'm like like a family member would say this person told me this ingredient causes inflammation so I would tell them okay if they actually know if they actually are an expert in the field then you should follow up with the question okay what specific inflammatory biomarker is elevated or are, you know, upregulated or downregulated when you eat this ingredient. And then they were like, oh my gosh, if they're not able to give you feedback on that, it means that they're not qualified to tell you something like that.

1:17:19So I take that approach, even with cosmetics,

1:17:23Gabrielle Dwyer: because that's, you know, I love it. That's what I do. I like chemistry. And I just decided, okay, I love cosmetics. I love chemistry. I want to do something that combines both. So So that's kind of my takeaway, just being careful where you get your information. And just taking a step back, asking some follow-up questions whenever you see something. It can help with the fear that you feel when you read certain headlines. I just wanted to jump in and say another resource that I have mixed feelings about them lately, but they have a nice resource from PCPC. They have cosmeticsinfo.org. That's another perhaps more consumer-friendly, layperson-friendly avenue.

1:18:06Gabrielle Dwyer: They source a lot of their information from CIR. They source their information from credible places and they've distilled it to, they've created a database that they're trying to compete with EWG. So if you're looking for that kind of easy experience of navigating the information, that could be a good place to go. The other thing that I wanted to say is like, this is something that right now I'm just like, I'm just constantly confronted with in my area of interest. Like people don't know who the relevant subject matter experts are. And you see this so much in this space. And so you'd think that a good place to ask about this topic, maybe, I don't know, many people would think, unless you really know about the layers of expertise, that a dermatologist is going to give me good information about these ingredients.

1:19:03Gabrielle Dwyer: And so in my comments, in my comments, this dermatologist was like fear mongering formaldehyde donor preservatives as something that the general public had to be concerned with. I wish more people within the scientific community, more people in the industry. I'm seeing this a lot in as I'm researching, like my research area is misinformation about stuff like this. expert-led misinformation is really important and not commonly appreciated by expert communities. Oftentimes people point blame to other areas. Like it's really frustrating to me when I see this from dermatologists who've said things about benzene.

1:19:44Gabrielle Dwyer: They're like, why are people afraid of their sunscreens? It's like, maybe you should have deferred to the relevant subject matter experts on benzene, which is not you, like a toxicologist or chemist who actually has experience in that area and they don't. And then they confuse the public and the public thinks that they're the relevant expert because they've talked on it. And so it's just, I would also recommend just to build on something that Gabrielle said is like, try to unpack, dig a little deeper on who the actual relevant subject matter expert is on that topic. Because like step one for finding truth in my book is that because then you can start to understand the consensus among relevant subject matter experts.

1:20:28Gabrielle Dwyer: But unless you know that, you're not going to be able to know. And then the other part is you had mentioned that it's not helpful for people to say, you don't have to worry about this preservative. You don't have to worry about this ingredient. It's fine. And then stop there. Like you need to fill those gaps in and also look to research on science communication because there's a body of research to show effective debunking strategies. I actually recently had a science of science communication eSummit, and I platformed somebody that who's been really active in that research literature, Dr. Steven Lewandowski.

1:21:04Gabrielle Dwyer: He has some handbooks on how to do it well. Look at his handbooks. And then think about that when you are trying to address some of this misinformation. So maybe it'll help. So people are afraid of these preservatives for good reasons. And so help them understand why that fear is misplaced. And then that can help steer them to better decisions. So that's just like building off of Gabrielle's comment. Like that is my recommendation to industry. This is how you can think about it. Don't just tell people they're wrong. Like explain it and explain it with empathy. Okay. I'll stop talking. Joe?

1:21:40Joe Zagorski: A lot of my takeaways are going to be maybe redundant at this point, but I'm a firm believer and exactly what you said, that experts should understand where their expertise ends and someone else starts. Because intentionally or otherwise, some of the most hard to address misinformation out there is misinformation from people that have letters after their last name. I have run into this, whether it's talking about microplastics and a pediatrician popping up and saying X, Y, or Z about exposure. And it's like, well, that's not correct. Not understanding how regulatory frameworks work. And so saying, oh, well, they can just put whatever they want in this product.

1:22:27Joe Zagorski: And it's like, that's absolutely not how this works. I completely agree on that. If you are getting information from someone who is not either being forthcoming about where their expertise actually stands and with what they're saying, take it with a very large grain of salt. I am not a chemist. I don't even play one on TV. And so if I'm giving you formulation information, you should probably consult the chemist who actually does product formulation for a profession. But if I'm talking to you about exposure thresholds and the toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics of a chemical, I probably know what I'm talking about.

1:23:08Joe Zagorski: But likewise, if you have a rash, one, I don't want to see it. Two, go to someone who can help you medically. And so everybody has an area of expertise. And when they stay within that, that can actually be helpful. But if someone is not staying within that, grain of salt. Two, understanding that detectable doesn't mean dangerous. We can detect minuscule levels of chemicals. Most chemicals will not hurt you at those levels. And understand that when we have regulated limits on things, we have built in safety to those limits, to understand that there are sensitive populations, that there are people that use things day in and day out, or there are people that use things not as indicated, and we want to make sure that they are safe as well.

1:24:01Joe Zagorski: That's incredibly important. And specifically on formaldehyde donating preservatives, that's not the same thing as formaldehyde. No one is adding embalming fluid to your products. Hard stop. It's not happening. The reason that they're there is actually to keep you safe, to make sure that you are not being exposed to potential harmful pathogens in the products that you're using. I'm a toxicologist. I always, you know, close with the dose maker. poison here. Your exposure is really low, does not rise to a threshold of toxicological concern. If you are experiencing a contact dermatitis, go see a healthcare professional.

1:24:43Joe Zagorski: Understand that maybe you do have a sensitivity to formaldehyde, but maybe it's also something else. A lot of times we try to draw causation because we see a low hanging fruit and that's not actually what's doing. The other thing is, and I would put this out there also to the professionals, not the general audience, because I see this frequently in my line of work with scientists, a little empathy goes a long way. These words that we deal with every day, day in, day out, formaldehyde, heavy metals, parabens, what have you, are not scary to us because we are deeply entrenched in the nuance, but not everybody is, but they are scary to them.

1:25:32Joe Zagorski: And so approaching it from the standpoint of, I hear you and I see you and I understand why you would have this concern, but let me help fill in the gaps and why you don't necessarily need to be concerned. And then they can take that information and use it, or they might not. But coming from a like even a righteous standpoint of righteous indignation isn't helpful. Treating somebody as though like, well, how do you not know this isn't helpful. But understanding that like this is a person who just cares about themselves and their loved ones and wants to make the best choices possible. And so let's try to to give them agency and empower them to make those choices.

1:26:15Joe Zagorski: That can be helpful. Those are the things that I would leave it with.

1:26:20Gabrielle Dwyer: Thanks again to Joe and Gabby for joining me for this conversation. I hope you enjoyed that discussion. Quick reminder, if you're not already subscribed to the podcast, please do. And if you haven't already, please give the podcast a review. If you enjoyed this episode, please share. And if it's accessible, you can also support the podcast on Patreon at patreon.com slash the eco L. Thanks again to all my Patreon supporters who've supported my science communication efforts over the years. That's all for this week. Thanks for tuning in.