To the Editor:
There is an old saying that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. If it were ever true, it certainly isn’t today.  Millions of Americans are unnecessarily exposed to toxic chemicals in products they use every day.

The National Institutes of Health publishes a four-page newsletter called NIH News in Health. The August issue has an article titled “Probing Personal Care Products: Look Out for Harmful Ingredients.”

The second paragraph reads: “Personal care products, including cosmetics, are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But they’re not treated like drugs. They don’t have to be approved by the FDA before they go on the market. So companies don’t have to prove that personal care products are safe or effective before selling them, says Dr. Alexandra White, who studies chemicals and health at NIH.”

There are some exceptions to this policy — personal care products that prevent or treat health conditions, such as sunscreens and anti-dandruff shampoos — that must be FDA-approved before going on the market, but Dr. Ami Zota, an environmental health researcher at Columbia University, is quoted as saying, overall cosmetics “are one of the least regulated sets of consumer products out there.”

Tens of millions of Americans, including teens, and younger children, habitually use these cosmetics.  Some use five or 10 or more simultaneously. Who knows what all they are being exposed to and the negative and cumulative health impacts?

There are tens of thousands of natural and manmade materials and chemicals used in commerce and thousands more invented each year. The National Institutes of Health article discussed some of the dangerous materials. These include phthalates, parabens, PFAS, lead, triclosan, triclocarban, mercury, formaldehyde, and asbestos.  Some are endocrine disruptors, neurotoxins, or cause cancer.

My point is that Americans are foolish to allow this to continue. We should demand Congress enact laws to require that, before chemicals can enter commerce, they must be proved safe or almost certainly safe.  This is called the precautionary principle.

As it is now, victims are exposed, some get ill or die, and someone might try to determine why. Since people are exposed to countless toxic materials, it is often impossible to link a poison to an illness, shortened or ruined life, or death.

We should reverse the burden of proof and place it on the manufacturers and have them pay for safety testing. The federal government should hire inspectors and regulators to monitor compliance and impose criminal penalties on willful violators.

This is not an issue that should divide progressives and conservatives or Democrats and Republicans. It is a longstanding public health problem that we should unite to solve.

Tom Ellis

Albany