Today, Explained - Chems in your cosmetics

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

From lotions to hair extensions, the products that make us look good may also make us feel bad. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Photo by Edward Berthelot/Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Explain It to Me comes from Starbucks, vibing to the hook of your favorite song, stepping outside and immediately feeling the sun on your face, sipping a refreshing drink. Those are the moments that energize us. And if that third one sounds particularly enticing, you might be due for a new energy refresher from Starbucks. It's the flavors you know and love,

and now with a boost of energy. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. Made without sulfates, paraben, or dyes. Pairs, self, tough, filthy and free. Perfectly poorless. Totally natural. I have my laptop and charger and phone so that I can get some work done. A couple weeks ago, I packed up a tote bag and got ready for an all-day affair. Snacks, so I have some almonds.

Gonna get coffee and a breakfast sandwich on the way so that I don't get hungry. The weather warmed up, and it was time. to get my hair braided. Also, probably Tylenol because sometimes the braids are tight, and I get a little headache. My go-to styles changed through the years. Brandy inspired box braids in elementary school. Alicia Keys inspired cornrows in middle school. A little break when my mom finally let me chemically straighten my hair with a relaxer in high school. And then, in college, when I wanted to stop relaxing my hair, Senegalese twists. Today, I'm going with passion twists. What color you want?

Maybe like a brownish or a reddish. Or like a brown if there's that too. Eight hours, two sets of hands, and a lot of almonds later, I was ready for summer. Braids feel like a smart choice for me. The ends of my hair are tucked away safe and sound, no damage from heating tools, and none of the toxic chemicals from relaxing it. Right? A new study raises concerns about some hair again.

extensions and wigs. A Houston researcher is a part of a team that tested dozens of hair care products and found that over 90% of them contained harmful chemicals. And now some of those effects include birth defects and even cancer. I asked Zoe one of my raiders about the headlines. After all, she's hands-on with these products for hours on end. They always find something about our hair or our products to warn us and say it's bad. I mean, it hasn't killed anybody yet, so that I know.

I'm John Gwynne Hill, and this week, Unexplained It to Me from Vox, we find out about the chemicals inside the cosmetics we put on our bodies. Things like lotion, makeup, moose, and yes, even braiding hair. To start, I wanted to talk with a scientist behind that research. My name is Dr. Alicia Franklin. I am a chemist and an exposure scientist at Silent Spring Instinct. I study Black women's exposures to chemicals and the products that they use every day. The Silent Spring Institute researches environmental causes for breast cancer.

Their report with data on synthetic braiding hair came out earlier this year. And Alicia was the lead author. She says she got the idea for the study when she saw her colleagues looking into something that seemed totally unrelated. They were helping study participants swap out their couches. because they wanted to reduce flame-retarding chemicals in the indoor dust in the homes. And I grew up on the south side of Chicago, frequent in beauty supply stores. And anytime I bought my braiding hair, it said flame-resistant or flame-retardant or something of that nature.

And it just dawned on me, like, if they're trying to get rid of flame retardants from couches, why can we so intimately use these products in our everyday lives and like to the point where we're using braids and they're touching our scalp, they're touching our skin. And the study kind of grew from there. It went from just trying to understand like flame retarding chemicals to really want to do a full evaluation of the chemicals present in hair extensions just because that expanse of work and comprehensive understanding of that, just at the time hadn't been done yet. What kinds of products were you testing?

I tested human hair, synthetic hair, eyelashes. Eye lashes. Oh, my gosh. Not my lashes. Yes, the lashes. And we evaluated 43 hair extension products that we purchased from local beauty supply stores and online for those that we couldn't purchase. And we did find dozens of chemicals of health concern that were in the extensions. We found chemicals that were, you know, associated with cancer, birth defects, and reproductive harm, chemicals like flame retardants, organo-ten compounds, and thallates. Thalates are these chemicals that are a known hormone disruptors. And so phthalates are concerning because we do know in the literature that these chemicals can

lead to some outcomes, even at low concentrations. So thalates are particularly found in plastic. So we know that you're exposed to them, not just for braiding hair. It could also be the plastics from any other plastic you're supposed to. So whether that be the shower curtain, your food packaging, to clothing. And you said these chemicals are hormone disruptors. I've heard them called endocrine disruptors too. Explain what that is.

So an endocrine disruptor is a chemical or a substance that actually interrupts our hormones and our body's natural processes. So these are chemicals that in some cases they have very similar chemical structures to our body's natural hormones. And so sometimes the body will pick up these. chemicals thinking that they are a natural hormone, and it'll essentially get to a point where it's like there's some issue because it's not the chemical that the body actually wants. These are chemicals that are associated with things like obesity and cancers and different adverse health

endpoints. Why are they showing up in hair? What do they do for braiding hair? So it's a plasticizer, And what something like a thallate will do to the plastic is allow it to be more malleable, more like, you know, give it that braiding human hair like effect where it can move a little bit. And it's not like as soon as you break it, it just shatters. You know, it breaks and it's brittle. When you compare this hair to other beauty products, is there something about braids and extensions that's particularly concerning? or is this just one piece of a lot of stuff that's bad for us? The one thing that concerns me is if these chemicals migrate from or leach from the hair, we're talking about chronic exposure.

It's not like your makeup where you put it on today, and by the end of the day you're wiping it off, you're washing it off. Braiding hair, when I braid my hair, I'm not taking it out every night and then putting it back in in the morning. So you're exposed to a 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for however many weeks you decide to wear it. We know that our exposures are cumulative, and so they add up. And so it's not just the braids that we should be concerned with.

Like, it's the overall exposures to all of the products that we're using every day. And then people who get braids, that's some folks' primary hairstyle. And so we're talking about a product that, that just can be used so often and especially among a population of folks who are already overburdened by some of these exposures. We're having this conversation just days after I got my hair done. Should I be concerned?

Are braids something I should be avoiding altogether? What I always suggest is that you don't just consider, oh, I need to take my braids out. But if braids are a potential source of exposure, are there other ways of mitigating your exposure, which could be okay? Maybe instead of wearing the braids and then the edge control and the gel and the jam and the, you know, the loosest, I'm going to try to minimize the use of all of those products and maybe reduce it to one or two. Thinking about our makeup routines, isn't necessary to beat your face every day. Or can I do when I know I got my brazen something more, you know, lighter and less product buildup? So it's not necessarily about one product, one exposure, because we aren't just exposed to one chemical and one product in a day.

It's like we use multiple products with multiple chemicals in them and all of that kind of stacks on top of each other. Multiple products with multiple chemicals in them. And it turns out the Manhattan Project's to blame. That's next. Support for Explaned It to Me comes from Starbucks. There's a palpable energy to storytelling, and it's an energy we harness to bring you a special series like this one. With that in mind, it's worth remembering the little things we do in community to energize ourselves,

like sharing a cool, brightly flavored drink over conversation under the afternoon sun. It's a refreshing ritual that could be perfectly captured by the Starbucks' new energy refresh. It comes in great flavors. Mango dragon fruit, strawberry assayi, mango strawberry, plus a handful of tasty variations with lemonade or coconut milk like the pink energy drink. The point is nobody is immune to a little slump in energy, especially in the afternoon. The science is clear on that. The key is remembering there's always a path forward to feeling renewed and re-energize.

Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. I'm JQ. Back with Moore, Explain It to me. I'm Mariah Blake and I'm an investigative journalist. I've spent the last decade reporting on toxic chemicals. Mariah is also the author of the book, They Poison the World, Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. And she traces how these ingredients got into the products we use every day. There are a number of chemicals that are commonly used in cosmetics and personal care products that are known to be harmful.

formaldehyde, thallates, parabins, and what are commonly known as forever chemicals. The technical term for them is PFAS. So these are substances that are commonly found in cosmetics. Why are those chemicals in there? What do they do for the cosmetics? So they're used for various reasons in cosmetics. So some of them are preservative. Some of them make them go on your skin more smoothly.

in the case of Forever Chemicals or PFS, they're often used because they make cosmetics stay on longer. So that waterproof mascara, that foundation that stays on all day, most of those products contain PFS. That is the reason that they stay on your skin so long. And even, for example, dental floss, glide dental floss, dental floss that goes through your teeth super smoothly. that's because it has these chemicals. Dental floss? Dental floss. Also, tampons, period underwear, band-aids. Oh my gosh. It's not just like, hey, your makeup, hey, these things, you know, that some would say you don't necessarily need. But even the stuff that you do need, it's there. Oh, yeah. When did these synthetic chemicals first start appearing in our products? synthetic materials really had a boom after World War II.

So prior to World War II, there were a handful of synthetic materials that were used in everyday life. But Germany was actually the leading producer of chemicals and synthetic materials worldwide. And so the allied countries, including the United States, had a blockade on Germany. They were not buying German products. It is one purpose, one single objective, to choke the life. life out of German trade and industry. And that led to a shortage of the synthetic materials that the U.S. needed for war. And so the U.S. government ended up spending huge sums developing synthetic materials.

Overnight, America's heavy industry is converted to full-time war production. Pfeuase or Forever chemicals were actually developed by the U.S. government as part of the Manhattan Project. Wow. Yes. Okay, Oppenheimer. Killian Murphy stares intensely into camera. Exactly. They were needed to enrich.

uranium. And so after the war, these companies, like DuPont, had all of these materials, all these synthetic materials that had been produced with the support of the U.S. government, massive financial support, and they began marketing these same products to the general public. So poison gases became pesticides. House and garden bug killer for both indoors and outdoors. Chemicals like nitrate that were used for bombs. were then transformed into fertilizer that transformed our entire food system.

It takes a lot of plant food to nourish our nation's crops. And plastics, which had been used for all kinds of uses during the war, were used suddenly for every imaginable purpose. You know, they became shower curtains and hula hoops and washing machines and car parts. You know, almost everything we come into contact with is synthetic. Back then, was there a system in place to help regulate those chemicals? The main principle underlying the way we regulate chemicals and all kinds of materials in this country were first articulated in the 1920s.

So when they very first began producing leaded gasoline in the 1920s, and this is kind of wild, but the plants where they were producing them had massive problems with lead poisoning. So at least 12 died, dozens were hospitals. and this made national headlines. And public health officials and scientists began calling for this substance to be studied before it was produced and circulated. This is probably the greatest single question in the field of public health. It is the question whether scientific experts are to be consulted and the action of the government guided by their advice. Industry argued that this wasn't necessary, that the threat was only really to people working in these plants. And they found an advocate in this scientist named Robert Kehoe.

And Kehoe argued that there was really no point in keeping useful products off the market based on possible future harm. These are the prices that must be paid for the privilege and the necessity of living in a technological era. In the end, Kehoe prevailed. But more importantly, this principle that products should be presumed safe until proving, and otherwise, has become the underpinning principle of our entire system for regulating potentially toxic substances. So essentially, the FDA doesn't really have the authority to regulate chemicals in cosmetics and has limited authority to regulate chemicals in food.

In fact, the vast majority, and this is a fact that shocked me when I first learned it, but the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals in circulation in the United States today have never undergone any form of safety testing. Oh, wow. At least not that the public and regulators know about. So we are all essentially guinea pigs in this vast, uncontrolled chemistry experiment. So if chemicals are considered safe until proven otherwise, what if something's found to be harmful?

Is it hard to get pulled off the market? The threshold is so high that only 11 cosmetic ingredients have been restricted by the FDA since 1938. It's really almost impossible. For contrast, the European Union has regulated 1,400 chemicals in cosmetics, but they proactively test the ingredients in cosmetics for safety. For the first time in more than 80 years, consumers will finally know more about what's in the makeup and other personal care products they use. So in 2022, there was a law passed to modernize cosmetic regulation.

And that was really the first significant change to the way we regulate personal care products since the 1930s. Among the long list of provisions, it includes things like documenting and reporting of serious adverse events, following good manufacturing practices for all facilities, listing products and ingredients used in every formula. And it gives the FDA more power over things like recall, but it doesn't compel the FDA to review the safety of chemicals in cosmetics. or restrict those that are harmful. Wow. So the FDA still has really, really limited authority.

That law did require the FDA to study the effects of forever chemicals or PFAS in cosmetics, so how widely used they are and potential health effects. But otherwise, the FDA has basically the same authority that it did a century ago. And where do things stand now? What's the outlook for cosmetic regulation? in 2026. So in the absence of federal laws protecting the public from chemicals, states have stepped in and begun very aggressively in some case regulating chemicals and consumer goods and cosmetics. So so far, 17 states have adopted more than 40 laws, restricting toxic chemicals

and personal care products. And that's happening largely in response to ordinary citizens who are concerned about toxic chemicals, because the survey data tells us that this is an issue that concerns everybody, regardless of their political backgrounds. Nobody wants their children being exposed to toxic chemicals in the home. Nobody wants their body lotion to be exposing them to toxic chemicals. This is not a partisan issue. This is a human issue. Toxic chemicals may seem like they're unavoidable. Coming up, how to now. Navigate your bathroom vanity. This is advertiser content from Starbucks.

Johnclan, I think of you as the queen of answering questions. Oh my gosh, thank you. What question do you have for me today? Okay, talk to me about energy levels. Why is it that it's sometimes I feel total ways of exhaustion? So, like, you can't focus, you're falling asleep, that kind of thing? Exactly. And then at some points, I'm just totally fine.

Why is that happening? And is there anything I can do to help it? Yeah, so the peaks and slumps throughout the day. We have all been there. So that's mostly because of our circadian rhythm. It's basically the cycle our body goes through in a 24-hour time period. And it controls things like metabolism, hormones, and energy. So that's like the reason I feel tired before bed and well-rusted in the morning.

It's our circadian rhythm. It's a totally natural biological response. So when I want to just close my eyes and put my head down on my desk, what can I do about that? According to my research, one of the best things you can do is get up and walk around, get your blood flowing, maybe call up a friend and grab a coffee or a tea. That sounds really nice right now. You want to go do it? Yeah. Yeah.

Long story short, we all need moments throughout the day to refresh and Starbucks has you covered with their new energy refreshers, your go-to lift to help you stay energized throughout the day. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. This is explained to me. I'm JQ. And we're talking about the chemicals lurking in our cosmetics. Ami Zoda is a professor of environmental health studies at Columbia University. And she says that while the word cosmetics may make us think of blush and lipstick, it's way bigger than that. Maybe sometimes people just see this as like a women's health issue.

And it's not like an everybody issue, but it is, right? everyone uses some kind of cosmetics, whether it's soap or lotion or toothpaste. And also think about exposures to kids because even young kids get their hair straightened. We use lotion on kids. You know, you think about the toy makeup kids. Like I have an 11-year-old. When my daughter was 8 or 9, she started getting these toy makeup kids at birthday parties. And they were beautiful.

And I would have loved for her to be able to use them. but I'd take a look at the ingredients, and I'm like, there is no way. Almost everyone is impacted, and it's one of the most poorly regulated or under-regulated industries. How does cosmetic regulation work in the U.S.? Walk me through it? It's largely industry-driven and mostly voluntary forms of regulation. So FDA provides really minimal oversight, and they also have minimal funding. to actually make sure that the industries are really following the regulations that are there. And so most of the regulations and the type of testing the companies do is to make sure there aren't

like adverse immediate reactions like eczema or skin rashes and that type of stuff. The system of regulation is less effective at gauging long-term risk, like those that may, you know, lead to cancer or difficulty. in getting pregnant. It's mostly testing one product at a time and looking at sort of short-term effects. It doesn't really have a great framework for thinking about long-term risk from all the products we use collectively, something a scientist called cumulative impacts. You're a professor of environmental health studies and you write about, quote, the environmental injustice of beauty. Can you explain what that means? What do you mean when you say that?

Basically, the idea is to shine a light on the social and historical factors that drive what we find beautiful. Because beauty is a very old form of power. It's a gendered form of power. So it's one of the forms of power that were most available to women historically. And it's impacted by things like colonialism, racism, racism. sexism. And there is a hierarchy of beauty, like a pyramid, and it's really driven by Eurocentric notions of beauty that favor lighter skin, straighter hair, thinner bodies. Experience the power of instant white. Great and better and laugh long.

34 pounds down. For visibly fairer skin. No, Sempeg. Simply put, the closer you are to the top of that pyramid, the greater benefits you'll see, whether it's a higher likelihood of finding a suitable husband in South Asian countries like my native country of India, or in this country, you know, the greater likelihood of getting a certain job if you're a black woman and you wear your hair straight. When you look at the back of a bottle of shampoo and you see that list of ingredients, it can be like, oh my gosh, I need a PhD in biochem to read this. how do I understand what's going on there and what I should be avoiding? So there are apps that can help you do that.

You could use an app like Clearia, and there you could just take a picture of your ingredient labels, and it'll kind of give you like a sort of flag the problematic ones for you. Skin Deep is another one that will give you a score that kind of tells you sort of how hazardous your products are. And then there's like the campaign for safe cosmetics. And they have a nice list of some of the most common ones there, too. Okay, give me the example of one cosmetic and walk me through what I should look out for. Well, I'll just take lotion, okay? Because lotion is one actually that doesn't get enough attention.

But lotion has a lot of preservatives. And often it's the preservatives, right, that give it a longer shelf life. that often can be some of the stuff we want to stay away from. And there is a lot of different lotions. You know, you can have a lotion that has four products or you could have a lotion that has 50 products, including these formaldehyde releases. There's like formaldehyde itself, but then there's like these chemicals that can degrade or release into formaldehyde. Oh. And we have found that lotion because it like sits on your skin for a long time, you're not rinsing it off, is actually an important one. Or you can avoid foundations and stuff like that that are supposed to be super long

lasting. Well, if it's super, if it's really long lasting, that's often being accomplished through chemicals like the forever chemicals are added to make it being a, you know, to like really sit on your face for many, many hours. Okay. So sometimes the fact that my foundation slips, maybe not a bad thing. Maybe not a bad thing. You know, when we talked about, beauty justice. You know, really, it's also the right of people to be able to present themselves and use the products they want to use without having to risk their health, right? And so the goal is not to police everyone's behavior or the products they use, but to help give them tools. Companies respond to consumer pressure, right, and consumer demand. And so you have a lot of

power with your dollar. And either asking companies to make safer hair products, especially that will serve the needs of black women and other women of color, is, you know, in and of itself really powerful because federal policy just takes a really, really long time. And then also, I think, to have conversations, just everyday conversations about how do we kind of choose how to show up in the world, right? And so much of that gets shaped when we're, young and to sort of be intentional about having those conversations with, especially with the next generation. That's it for this week.

Special thanks to the folks at Anointed Hair Braiding. We want to know, what are you curious about? Is there something you want us to explain? Something you want to deep dive on? Give us a call and tell us about it at 1-800-6-18-8-55-4-5. or you can shoot us an email to AskVox at Vox.com. And if you learn something listening to this podcast, consider becoming a Vox member. It's another way for you to help us make the show and you get access to our Patreon with bonus content.

Head over to vox.com slash members to learn more. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Peter Ballin-on-Rosen. It was edited by Ginny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, and engineered by Bridger Dunigan. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye! Support for Explained It to Me comes from Starbucks.

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