by Alison Bernstein and Kavin Senapathy
Just this past October The Environmental Working Group, an NGO best known for its annual list of “Dirty Dozen” fruits and veggies that they advise choosing organic to avoid pesticide residues, launched its “EWG Verified” program. Based on its “Skin Deep Cosmetics Database,” which combines product ingredient lists with toxicity and regulatory databases, the program provides a seal of approval at the point of sale on products ranging from baby lotion to bronzer, and aims to be the “gold standard in the health and wellness space.” But like its Dirty Dozen list, which has come under fire for less-than-stellar methodology, EWG’s new “Verified” program heaps on the fear while missing the mark on science.
While the largely organic industry-funded organization claims to empower consumers to make smart choices, the EWG has instead become a symbol of fear-based marketing; a touchstone of irrational aversion to chemicals, sometimes known as chemophobia. Though everything is composed of them, the word “chemicals” has come to represent the toxic, the synthetic, and the fear of potential effects of exposure to a substance, no matter how small or unlikely.....
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