Come on, how many of you read those long lists of ingredients on the back of your shampoo bottles? All those weird outer-space sounding ingredients, to be honest I lose the will before I get to the end of the list. But perhaps we should be a little more savvy in this department.
Plaintiffs wishing to pursue a class action suit against Johnson & Johnson and Wal-Mart baby bath products have been given the go ahead to proceed from a federal judge in New Jersey. It is alleged that the products contain a banned carcinogenic chemical.
Allegations do not go so far as to claim that Johnson’s baby shampoo and Wal-Mart’s Equate Tearless Baby Wash have actually harmed anyone, but do claim that three hazardous chemicals make up part of the ingredients of these products. However, of the three, only one – methylene chloride – has been banned by the FDA for use in cosmetics. The judge ruled that this gave the plaintiffs grounds to pursue the case.
There have been three other attempts to file such a case since the release of a report by the Washington based advocacy group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in 2009. The presence of these harmful chemicals in the baby bath products were not disclosed by either Johnson & Johnson or Wal-Mart. This assertion is not disputed by the companies but they continue to claim the products are safe and have never caused any harm.
Do you question every product you use, or do you assume that a product that has been serving American families for over fifty years must be safe? Have you switched to organic, natural products because of scares over chemicals?
