Lawrence speaks out against alarmist cosmetic scares spread by "No More Dirty Looks"

By ACSH Staff — Sep 22, 2010

ACSH staffers offer a seat at the ACSH Dispatch table to journalist Lawrence Meyers for speaking out against the alarmist cosmetic scares spread by Siobhan O Connor and Alexandra Sprunt, authors of the book No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products and the Ultimate

ACSH staffers offer a seat at the ACSH Dispatch table to journalist Lawrence Meyers for speaking out against the alarmist cosmetic scares spread by Siobhan O Connor and Alexandra Sprunt, authors of the book No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics. Meyers specifically attacks the book s claim that no independent authority effectively evaluates what the cosmetics industry puts in their products, pointing out the strict and transparent regulatory system currently in place which does, indeed, include third-party review. He adds:

There s nothing worse than non-scientists eschewing readily-available scientific research in favor of village idiocy found on the internet, publishing their findings in a book, and metastasizing their contaminated thinking....the result is yet more scare science that blend of fantasy, confusion, cancerphobia, and intellectual laziness my high school math teacher referred to as stupidity.

Meyers even castigates by name the junk-science purveyors of the Environmental Working Group, and their alarmist spawn, the so-called Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Good work, Larry, praises ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross.