“…too much is spent on awareness campaigns — walks, races, rallies — at the expense of research.”

Breast Cancer Industry Scams – Marie Claire http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/breast-cancer-business-scams?click=main_sr

And on what to watch out for “How clear is the charity about its long and short term goals? Be skeptical of breast cancer charities whose mission statement includes “awareness”. What exactly does that mean? How does it plan to make people more aware? At what point will it have satisfied its mission?”

http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/breast-cancer-business-scams-4

I learned that Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is not actually a non-profit organization itself.  I never realized that before.  I thought the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics was a registred with our government as a non-profit organization – not so!

When you try to make a donation to the CSC, you are taken to another non-profit organization: Breast Cancer Action.

“Your secure, tax-deductible online gift to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will be made via the Breast Cancer Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a project of the Breast Cancer Fund.”

It’s a little confusing because when you try to view the 2010 returns, half way through the forms turn into the 2009 forms.  So, some of the figures may actually be from 2009 even though the link states that they are the 2010 990′s!

http://www.breastcancerfund.org/about/financial-information/

The total revenue was $3,109,154 in 2009 with a total over the past 5 years of $16,378,945.
Jeanne Rizzo was paid $152,060; Janet Nudelman was paid $110,627; There are 29 employees of Breast Cancer Action.

Their Federal Policy Consultant is an Independent Contractor, Raben Group out of Washington, DC.  They were paid $136,000 in 2010.

They also spend $55,400 on Lobbying.

Here is where things are a bit inbred: BCA gave $33,658 to Clean Water Action and $8,034 to Commonweal; specifically to support the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics organizing of “Safe Cosmetics Legislation” in the Northeast, California and Nationally.
 
(They also gave $7,457 to the National Council of Churches, and $14,668 to the Mercy Foundation North, a nonprofit corporation sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy – food for thought if you have feelings about religion being mixed with stuff like this. Although the tax documents state that the money to the National Council of Churches is to “Support the NCC’s work on Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ Grassroots organizing of Safe Cosmetics Legislation in the Northeast and Nationally.”)

I am curious why Nuns on the west coast are being given donations to support CSC Safe Cosmetics legislation in the Northeast?  That seems really strange to me.

They also gave to the $7,500 Coming Clean Collaborative: “Support CC’s Leadership and Participation in the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and to support CC’s ability to devise media strategies and conduct outreach to media.”

And they gave $9.605 to Women’s Voices for the Earth to support their work on the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics’ grassroots organizing for Safe Cosmetics Legislation in Idaho and Montana and nationally.

“The Breast Cancer Fund’s current legislative initiatives include …bpa; a legislative campaign to ensure that all cosmetics sold in this country are safe and non-toxic; and support for a federal bill that will reform our broken chemical management system so that public health is protected.”
The campaign referred to above is the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics – identified in Schedule O by http://www.safecosmetics.org

So it really is not in any way transparent how much money gets funneled through the Breast Cancer Action organization to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics organization, because the Campaign operates under the name of many, many different organizations.
http://safecosmetics.org/article.php?list=type&type=34

“Key nonprofit coalition partners in the Campaign include the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow (represented by Clean Water Action and Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition), the Breast Cancer Fund, Commonweal, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth and Women’s Voices for the Earth.”

These partners represent millions and millions of dollars.  Maybe that’s what is meant by “grassroots”…but I don’t know…put it all together and you have quite a substantial forest!

On Monday, I was honored to engage Congressional officials in a discussion abut the impact of the H.R. 5786 on small beauty companies. I was joined in DC by Donna Maria Coles Johnson of the Indie Beauty Network, Leigh O’Donnell……

As, presumably, you consider me one of the “guilty” parties “attacking” (I prefer to think of it as “exposing”) Skin Deep, I feel obliged to make some form of response.

Firstly, I totallly agree with Sarah's position in reply to you regarding the “bias” of testing pharmaceuticals, but also, you need to accept that you are talking about two very different areas when you compare pharma and cosmetics. Cosmetics is not a “pure” science, and very few toxicity studies are carried out purely to enable the use of any specific ingredient in cosmetics. In pharma, the converse is usually true. Additonally, the pharma studies are carried out for two different reasons:

1) To establish the efficacy of the drug

2) To test the toxicity of the drug

It is (arguably) easier to manipulate the efficacy studies, whereas a straighforward toxicity study gives a result of varying degrees of usefulness, but usually based on a standard protocol, often internationally accepted.

In these standard toxicity studies (that also may be applied to cosmetic ingredients), there is no room for bias, irrespective of who provides the funds for the research, so your comment regarding this is a little wide of the mark. The only bias may be in the interpretation of the results, for example when organisations such as EWG focus solely on the hazard identified in the study, and totally ignore the concentrations required to cause health problems. (There I go again!)

With respect to my own “vested interest”, I have no commercial, nor career interest or advantage in exposing the sham that is Skin Deep – I could quite happily live out the rest of my life never mentioning either SD or EWG again, and it would not make a jot of difference to me or ,my career. My only real vested interest is the purely personal satisfaction I get from digging into the workings of Skin Deep and determining the logic of the argument (for OR against). There is also the great boost to my underfed ego when people contact me and tell me that I have done a great job (which doesn't happen anywhere near often enough, incidentally! lol).

Long may you contribute to this site, Anonymous – you seem like a reasonable person, and it is good to have reasonable discussion on here. If we all agreed all the time, it would be totally boring!

Thanks for your reply. I was simply making a statement that PCT was providing truthful information about EWG. I never made mention that you were stating we were publishing false information. I also did not state in any way that you did not support the truth.

You commented that PCT was constantly attacking the EWG and I gave you the reasons why we publish information on this site about them. Out of the 83 published posts to date, 3 are entirely about EWG and 7 are of the Skin Deep database. That amounts to 12% that we have dedicated to informing consumers about an organization that is out to change the cosmetic industry based on the lack of science.

I did not co-found PCT to increase sales in my company. We do not promote any product on this site, just information. Kristin and I do not take a salary and we have used personal, not business money to create this site. Not once do we ask for PCT readers to stroll on over to our business sites to make a purchase.

Again, you do have your opinion and for every 1 like yours, there is 1 like mine. We knew we would ruffle feathers when we started talking about EWG. I'm not going to exclude information about a non-profit organization, that pulls in millions of dollars each year to wage a scaremongering campaign to change the cosmetic industry, just because some people will have concerns.

Our goal is not to tear down the EWG. We simply are providing information about who they are and what their agenda is. The EWG has everything to do with the personal care products industry, so therefore, we will continue to publish information about them. As long as they are spreading misinformation to consumers, we will write about why their information is incorrect.

It's as simple as that.