Pass the Beauty Justice Act to reduce environmental links to cancer

With only months remaining in the current New York State legislative session, time is running out to pass the Beauty Justice Act (S.2057A/A.2054A). If signed into law, it would prohibit the sale of personal care products and cosmetics in New York that contain harmful and toxic chemicals.

Such chemicals include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (commonly known as PFAS), phthalates, and formaldehyde. Last year, the Beauty Justice Act passed in the Senate but fell short in the Assembly. It needs to pass both houses before the legislative session ends in June, or the legislative process will have to begin anew in 2027.

Many of the chemicals proposed to be banned by the Beauty Justice Act are endocrine disruptors, meaning that they interfere with the body’s natural hormone function. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals have links to hormone-based cancers like breast (about 70% of breast cancer diagnoses are estrogen receptor-positive) and ovarian.

Between 2012-2021, rates of breast cancer in women in the United States increased yearly by 1%, and incidence for women under 50 was rising faster than those over 50. A common misconception is that breast cancer is a disease that is mainly due to family history, but only about 5-10% of breast cancer diagnoses are hereditary. What is causing the other 90-95% of cases, and why are rates increasing? Many believe that environmental exposures—such as exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals—are the cause.

This is where the Breast Cancer Coalition’s Advocacy Committee is setting its focus. Our committee is a robust group of survivor advocates and dedicated community members demanding better policies to protect our health. We support legislation that will address our community’s cancer burden with a specific lens on environmental exposures and their links to cancer.

As the executive director of the Breast Cancer Coalition, I see the impacts of cancer in Rochester and our region every day. Our region carries a particularly heavy burden when it comes to cancer. Out of 50 metropolitan areas nationwide, Rochester had the third-highest rate of breast cancer per 100,000 women. Monroe County ranks sixth-highest for breast cancer at all stages out of the 62 counties in the state. Rates of endometrial cancer (a type of uterine cancer) in New York have also increased in recent decades across all races and ethnicities. 

According to the Wilmot Cancer Institute, if the 27-county catchment area that the organization serves was its own state (a similar catchment area to the Coalition’s), it would have the second-highest rate of cancer in the country, trailing only Kentucky. This may be for a few reasons, says Wilmot, including an aging population, higher tobacco use, and more sedentary lifestyles, but this should be sounding alarm bells.

For our Advocacy Committee survivor advocates and members, the Beauty Justice Act is a step in the right direction in addressing our community’s cancer burden and the environmental exposures that are linked to the disease. Our committee comes to this work with lived experience and a desire to see an end to breast and gynecologic cancers. S.2057A/A.2054A confronts harmful chemicals in products that millions of New Yorkers use every day.

On average, women use 13 personal care products daily, which potentially exposes them to dozens of toxic chemicals through their skin—the largest organ on the body and one that is highly absorbent.

While the European Union has banned more than 2,500 chemicals from personal care products, the Food and Drug Administration has only banned 11. Passing the Beauty Justice Act would establish New York as a national leader in public health, following states like California that passed the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act in 2020.

As the bill’s name suggests, the Beauty Justice Act also focuses on racial justice as it pertains to environmental exposure to toxins. Women of color and femme-identifying people of color are particularly vulnerable to toxic chemicals in personal care products and cosmetics due to racist Eurocentric standards of beauty and targeted marketing practices that specifically advertise products to this demographic. The result is a disproportionate burden of exposure to harmful chemicals in communities of color.

It’s time to pass the Beauty Justice Act. The Breast Cancer Coalition’s Advocacy Committee was a strong supporter of the menstrual products bill (S.1548/A.1502) that banned many toxic chemicals from period products in New York, which was signed into law at the end of last year. It is important that we keep this momentum going with the Beauty Justice Act.

S.2057A/A.2054A has strong bipartisan support. Reducing our exposure to harmful ingredients in our personal care products and cosmetics isn’t political—it’s personal. It’s personal to me as a breast cancer survivor and to the thousands of survivors the Coalition serves every year. It’s personal to parents who want to protect their children from toxins when they put on their favorite makeup product. It’s personal to those who want to reduce their risk of developing cancer.

Passing the Beauty Justice Act would be a clear mandate from our leaders that would prioritize the health of New Yorkers. As a breast cancer survivor, a mother, and an advocate for those affected by cancer in our community, I hope we can see this bill across the finish line.

Christina Thompson is executive director of the Rochester-based Breast Cancer Coalition.

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