The hair and beauty products people in the U.S. use every day are not very well regulated. And those marketed specifically to Black women are known to be particularly full of potentially harmful chemicals. From hair extensions to dyes, relaxers, hot oil treatments, anti-frizz hair polishes, leave-in conditioners, root stimulators, and hair lotions, studies have shown consistently that consumers are not being made aware of the toxic chemicals they’re being exposed to. And now, Congress is poised to make these products even less regulated.
In January, the House of Representatives released a plan to amend the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), our nation’s bedrock law for chemical protection. It’s the law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to review chemicals used in the products we live with every day. The proposed changes could allow more chemicals to reach the market without review from EPA and, ultimately, hand regulators broader power to override scientific findings and existing health protections.
Tell Congress: Protect Our Families From Harmful Toxic Chemicals
Who oversees cosmetic ingredients?
Here’s where things get a little confusing: TSCA doesn’t actually cover cosmetics—or food, drugs, or pesticides, for that matter. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Beauty products in the U.S. live in a regulatory gray area, as companies are not required to test ingredients for safety or disclose everything a product contains before it goes on shelves.
TSCA does touch on many of the industrial chemicals, including petrochemicals, that end up in personal care products, such as ingredients and components of cosmetic formulations. TSCA also oversees materials that aren’t classified as cosmetics but fall into the realm of beauty, such as the plastics used to manufacture synthetic hair. This is why weakening TSCA would strip away oversight of the very chemicals that end up on—and ultimately in—Black women’s bodies every day.
“There’s concern that consumer products and specifically personal care products are being overlooked because FDA has no resources behind any of its regulatory authority over them,” explains Robin Dodson, Associate Director of Research Operations and a senior scientist at the Silent Spring Institute, who has expertise in exposure assessment and toxic chemicals in products used by Black and Latina women. She says it’s critical to have as expansive a view as possible of all the exposure sources to toxic chemicals, no matter which agency is in charge of regulation.
Robin co-authored the “Taking Stock Study,” in which researchers found that Black women have measurably higher levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in their bodies than other groups, in part because of their exposure through their beauty products. She connects these elevated levels to higher rates of pre-term birth, uterine fibroids, infertility, and hormone-linked cancers.
States are trying to take the lead
Even before Congress announced it wanted to weaken TSCA, several states, including California, Oregon, and Washington, began introducing and passing legislation to protect their residents in the face of rollbacks and a general lack of oversight on beauty products from the federal government.
New York Sen. Lea Webb is a sponsor of the Beauty Justice Act, a 2026 bill that tried to restrict chemicals in beauty products and establish a list of restricted substances—chemicals linked to cancer, infertility, miscarriage, asthma, and other serious health issues. Unfortunately, this bill stalled in the State Assembly in June.
“It is extremely crucial that we do everything possible to protect the health and well-being of our respective community members, whether it’s New York, California, and most certainly nationwide,” she says.
She does not want to see TSCA weakened. “We are continuing to see this unfortunate trend of deregulation happening at the federal level and cuts to essential programs that most certainly are weakening protection. And policies like TSCA actually help to protect our health. In New York, we are committed to protecting our community members at every level and through every aspect of life.”
The European Union does it better
Jasmine A. McDonald, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, says the U.S. government should be following the same guidelines to protect consumers as the European Union.
“The EU, I believe, takes a precautionary measure where they restrict like 2,400 chemicals, whereas the United States is more reactionary and they ban 15 chemicals. So there’s not a big oversight in the sense that you have to prove prior to marketing that the product is safe. What usually happens is that the product gets released and then it’s deemed unsafe, then something happens.”
That something was the subject of her 2022 study, “The Environmental Injustice of Beauty Products: Toward Clean and Equitable Beauty.” Her work speaks directly to why Black and Brown women are disproportionately impacted by the toxic chemicals in beauty products. “This increased exposure is considered to be based on societal norms or expectations—societal ideas of beauty, which are commonly Eurocentric, meaning long hair, light eyes, light skin, all of these things are considered to be traits of beauty. To obey this kind of Eurocentric view, there are groups that lighten their skin with actual chemical lighteners. There are people who straighten their hair with chemical straighteners.”
But ultimately, between TSCA and the FDA, consumers should be able to confidently buy products that are safe for them, which is why weakening TSCA would be a public health disaster. “We should be able to just go to the grocery store, pick out a clarifying shampoo, no matter what brand it is, and know that it is regulated to be the safest possible, and that’s where I think as a consumer, that’s what I want,” Dr. McDonald said.
“I want to be able to go get my nails done and not worry about if there’s certain chemicals in there. For women getting hair relaxers, there’s going to be some chemicals in there, but are there safer alternatives?” she says. Instead of amending TSCA to be friendlier to businesses, Dr. McDonald wants it to be even more protective of human health, especially for Black women. “I want to know that TSCA and FDA have said these are our standards for general safety, and if there are any concerns that we can’t make the product reliably safe, we are going to put a warning.”
Tell Congress: Protect Our Families From Harmful Toxic Chemicals