Original subtitles

WOMAN IN FILM: Good morning, girls.

I'm going to talk to you this morning about the way you look.

Now, I've heard it said that we women attach too much importance

to our appearance.

But that isn't true.

After all, the way we look

exerts so much influence on the way we feel,

and on the way other people feel about us,

that it really is very important.

As a French chef might say,

it's the little touch of seasoning

that makes the dish just right.

♪

ROSE MARIE: One of the biggest cosmetic brands,

designer cosmetic brands, in the world,

their ex-formulator had contacted us.

He said...

"The cosmetic industry is destroying women's cells."

C-E-L-L-S.

Cells.

And I said to him, "Why don't you say something?"

He said, "I can't."

♪

DR. SMITH: This cosmetics issue is even bigger

than the tobacco industry,

because we're talking about thousands

of different chemicals.

STACY: The same chemicals being dumped

and running through the rivers that are toxic,

are running through our blood.

DR. LANPHEAR: For some of these chemicals,

millions of children will be harmed before we actually decide

whether it's toxic or not.

DR. ZOTA: Skincare, hair, feminine care products

have been associated with reproductive problems,

ovarian cancer, pre-term birth,

mercury poisoning, endocrine disruption.

JANET: The cosmetics industry comes back

with their own science, and they say,

"Oh, just a little bit of a cancer-causing chemical."

DR. ZOTA: You have no way of knowing

what's in your product.

DR. LANPHEAR: Wealthy, big corporations don't allow

regulations to happen, who allow people to be harmed.

SEN. KENNEDY: In cosmetics used

by women in this country every day,

125 ingredients suspected of causing cancer!

And the list goes on, and on, and on!

DR. MICHAELS: Chemicals are not like people.

They're not innocent until they're proven guilty.

♪

DR. CARSON: Unless we do bring these chemicals

under better control, we are certainly headed for disaster.

DR. BRODY: We don't want to wait 60 years

to find out that some chemical we use in hand lotion

is causing breast cancer.

♪

[birds chirping]

MEL: In '99, I started going overseas as a NATO peacekeeper.

Places like Qatar, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Afghanistan.

♪

MEL: Working with the military, and going into war zones...

I worked my way into intel.

I was put to work in a detention cell,

which is really the jail for the war criminals.

♪

MEL: I was called a counterintelligence screener.

♪

MEL: Interviewing and giving polygraphs.

♪

MEL: Evidence.

War crime evidence.

Looking for bad people.

Helping the country stabilize.

♪

♪

MEL: And everybody used to call me superwoman.

♪

MEL: Um...

I'm sorry, did I lose track...

of even the question?

♪

♪

MEL: The words just flow through my head right now.

Mm-hm.

♪

♪

[shower water flowing]

[shower stops]

MYMY: My name is Mymy.

I'm 24, and I'm from California.

MYMY: Basic one.

MYMY: It's kinda funny, actually.

As a little girl, I was always very girly.

My mom just likes to dress me up...

"You're a girl, you should look pretty.

"People are gonna judge you for how you look."

♪

MYMY: I looked up to my mom. I looked up to my mom.

I thought she was really pretty.

Well, that's 'cause I think my dad's really ugly.

[laughs]

Beauty is ingrained to our relationship.

And it was always creams, always creams.

Always, like, different moisturizers, sunscreens.

And I always grew up learning

you need to put these on your face to prevent wrinkles,

anti-ageing, have lighter skin.

There's a huge thing about having lighter skin.

Don't go in the sun; you'll get too tanned.

Make sure you put sunscreen on, so you can have nice skin

and people would like you more.

♪

MYMY: When I was younger, early '90s,

most of the people on TV were white female celebrities.

That maybe has skewed people's perception

of what beauty should be like.

And I was just never completely satisfied with how I looked.

Why don't I have cheekbones?

Why do I feel like my nose is too short?

Or why are my eyes so small, and not shaped a certain way?

COMMERCIAL: ♪ Is it true blondes have more fun? ♪

If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde!

MYMY: So I don't think I actively thought,

"I wanna look like this white woman,

"so I'm gonna dye my hair blonde."

I love makeup.

I love personal care products.

I've never even called them "personal care products."

You know, it's just like, oh, lotions, or sunscreen.

It's kind of just things that you grow up

being conditioned to thinking that you need.

That it makes us more attractive.

♪

MEL: I was never really sick for about 55 years of my life.

I'd had a bad fall.

I went to the doctor for... I thought it was my ribs.

They said, "There's nothing wrong with the ribs."

It was already stage four.

♪

MEL: I was officially diagnosed in May 2014,

ovarian cancer.

Told in March that I had no more than six months.

♪

[airplane roars past]

[inaudible announcement on PA]

DEANE: I had started having problems with spotting,

intermittent, between my periods.

I was 49 years old.

I knew I was probably not too far from menopause,

but it still didn't seem quite right.

DEANE: Hi. TAXI DRIVER: How're you doing?

DEANE: I went and saw the gynaecology surgeon.

He was sitting at his desk with a pathology report.

[siren wails]

DEANE: Being a healthcare professional,

I just took one look down,

and I could see "bilateral carcinoma."

This can't be right.

And the doctor said, "I didn't expect this,

"I'm really sorry."

Total hysterectomy and chemotherapy.

I pulled out all my textbooks, starting to look up

how do you treat ovarian cancer?

What did I do wrong?

♪

MARY: Ah!

[seagulls calling]

♪

MARY: I had surgery December, 2014.

Removed everything: the omentum, the ovaries,

the fallopian tubes.

SHAEDA: My belly started growing.

And it was the most uncomfortable feeling.

It got to a stage where I couldn't bend.

♪

BEVERLEY: I went to a hormone specialist,

and he said, "Uh-oh."

I said, "What does that 'uh-oh' mean?"

He said, "Are you feeling okay?"

I said, "I feel fine."

Because there's no warning with ovarian cancer.

CHANTAL: When you do get the symptoms, it's too late.

When they found it, it had spread everywhere.

It's like it's the end of the world, you know?

SHAEDA: The doctor put in a needle right through

the skin under my abdomen.

Greenish liquid poured out of me

into six one-litre bottles.

CHANTAL: The only thing came to my mind, is,

"I'm never gonna reach 50."

SHAEDA: And that's how it started.

BEVERLEY: "You're gonna have to have chemo,"

which my heart fell to the ground.

MARY: My normal life...

stopped that day.

♪

[traffic rumbles]

DEANE: In the handouts the doctor had given me,

there was a book from the Gilda Radner Association.

And in the back of the book,

there was different causation factors.

And I was reading through them, and I said, well,

I had children, so that's not a factor.

There's no cancer in my family.

At that time, I wasn't obese or overweight.

I had never used birth control pills.

I kept reading, and I said,

"Talcum powder."

What? Talcum powder?

COMMERCIAL: Ever since I was a little girl,

Johnson's Baby Powder has made me feel soft, fresh, and loved.

COMMERCIAL: Johnson's Baby Powder keeps anybody's baby

smooth and fresh.

DEANE: I picked up the talcum powder, baby powder,

Shower to Shower, looked over the labels,

and there was nothing even stated on the bottles at all

that there was any risk of cancer.

♪

DEANE: That's what I'd been using

since I was about 16 years old.

And never thought that there would be any danger in it.

♪

MARY: [coughs]

I used Johnson Baby Powder. And my mom.

The women in the house were baby powder ladies.

BEVERLEY: My mother used it on me as a child,

and as a baby. It was a nice smell.

It made me feel fresh; it made me feel good.

I felt clean.

SHAEDA: And I was using Johnson & Johnson

Shower to Shower and baby powder as a deodorant.

CHANTAL: I was putting it in my bed

before I would go to bed,

because I liked the smell of baby powder.

Yeah.

MARY: And I had no idea that there was something

in the product that could be harmful.

♪

[birds chirping]

[car locking beep]

MYMY: I think having makeup is just

like an extra layer of security.

If I was going on an interview,

I would want that extra layer, just to know that

I don't have to worry about my flaws showing.

[indistinct conversation]

MYMY: Even though maybe other people wouldn't see it,

there are just things that I would notice about myself,

and would make me more self-conscious.

[indistinct conversation]

[indistinct conversation]

MYMY: I think overall, makeup just boosts people's confidence.

MYMY: Oh!

MYMY: I really think that makeup has been

ingrained so much into our culture.

♪

MYMY: If you're in a group of friends,

and everybody put on all their products,

and you're the only one who didn't put on anything,

it's kind of awkward to be the odd one out.

[picture shutter sounds]

♪

MYMY: But face routine, so you said primer.

You said moisturizer, primer, and foundation.

EMILY: Yeah. Oh, I use this one, too.

EMILY: I went to an all-girls' high school,

so I think this topic was actually pretty common

at my school.

So when I do see, like, advertisements

for certain things, like, I just see they use females, and...

MYMY: Like, sexualizing females on commercials.

EMILY: Yeah, yeah.

EMILY: Cosmetic campaigns, like, they will take some

very influential person that a lot of girls look up to,

and they use that person to advertise for whatever product.

"I think this person's beautiful,

"and they're using this product;

"I'm gonna use this product as well."

EMILY: We shouldn't be telling girls to stop using products.

We should be telling the government and regulators

and companies to stop creating toxic beauty products.

MYMY: Yeah.

MYMY: I'm gonna be starting medical school in the fall,

at Boston University.

I wanted to work with Dr. Mahalingaiah

because she is a reproductive endocrinologist.

[audience applause]

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: It's great to be here today...

MYMY: A lot of Dr. Mahalingaiah's work

is on environmental exposures, and reproductive disorders.

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Today's talk is going to go over

trends in human fertility.

We'll spend a little time on definitions,

because that's really important as you're thinking about

study design...

MYMY: I look to her as a mentor.

In the past, she's looked at environmental toxins

or exposures on the prenatal period.

♪

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: One of my concerns is

stemming from the interconnectedness of

our environmental exposures.

Could we be exposing our gametes, the egg and the sperm,

or our embryos to potential toxicants

throughout the life course?

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Remember when I wanted to throw that out,

Avera? AVERA: Yeah.

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Why do you wanna keep it?

What colour do you like the most?

AVERA: I like a lot of them. I like the natural ones.

I like the, like, natural colours for your face, but...

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Oh, can you show me the natural colours?

AVERA: They're just like, they're like,

colours... the skin colours, but...

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Oh.

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: So I've weeded out a tremendous amount,

but this is what's left of my makeup.

This is supposed to make your skin

look bright,

and I also think that's probably

an oestrogen-type effect on healthy,

growing skin, that in addition to

other personal care products, the volatile organic compounds

that are off-gassing from nail polish.

[Avera's chatter]

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: Once populations have been exposed,

and discovery has been made about the associations,

we've already lost a generation to that exposure.

Which might be subtle effects at the level of infertility.

MYMY: Gonna keep that here.

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: It might be more devastating effects

in other aspects of development.

I think we should be concerned.

MYMY: I didn't start using products until college.

That's when I started having this...

benign tumour.

I have a small breast already, so on me,

the tumour was really apparent.

MYMY: My physicians would tell me,

"Oh, it's something that just happens."

EMILY: Yeah. MYMY: Oh, it just happened?

I'm unlucky. EMILY: Yeah.

There should...

MYMY: But maybe it wasn't because of luck,

it was something I used. EMILY: Yeah, there's a reason.

MYMY: Yeah. EMILY: It's illogical.

MYMY: So I finally got the tumour removed,

but it was just... It grew so large,

that now I have a really big scar,

and the more I talk about it, it seems like

other girls are saying, "Oh my gosh, I have this too."

EMILY: Yeah, like, "Oh, I feel a lump."

And I'm just like, "We're in our 20s!"

Like, this shouldn't be happening!

MYMY: Yeah. EMILY: Like, you know?

MYMY: What is it? And you're like,

"What is this caused by?"

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: In terms of our fertility,

when a compound has an endocrine-like activity,

or is an endocrine disruptor...

any substance that is synthetic,

that can act like an endocrine hormone.

And so the endocrine system has multiple different hormones.

The thyroid hormone that comes from the thyroid,

oestrogen and testosterone are well-known sex steroid hormones.

♪

DR. ZOTA: That action, that hormone interference can happen

on many different biological levels.

And we are finding that many of the synthetic chemicals

in personal care products can indeed interfere

with hormone action.

♪

DR. CARSON: In the words of Jean Rostand,

"The obligation to endure gives us the right to know."

♪

DR. BRODY: We have a "innocent until proven guilty" approach

to these chemicals, where we put them into use,

and then we find out later that they're risky.

Sometimes very risky.

We do know that some of the chemicals in everyday products

are oestrogen mimics, or they can distort androgen,

or affect thyroid.

Chemicals like phthalates.

That's affecting your hormone signalling system.

♪

DR. PLANTE: We're trying to figure out if some

endocrine disruptors can promote breast cancer,

or induce breast cancer, or have an effect

on the mammary gland development.

A lot of creams, like, that you're gonna put on your skin

have parabens.

DR. PLANTE: In some of the makeup you're gonna find

some parabens, and/or some phthalates.

So there are a lot of product that are using those molecules.

♪

DR. BRODY: We think all the hormone disruptors

are going to be relevant to all the hormonal cancers.

So that includes prostate, testicular, ovarian,

endometrial...

and to reproduction and growth.

So this is not just a women's problem.

♪

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: The industrial processes that make

some of the additives in something as benign as makeup

are the same kinds of processes that are in involved

in chemical warfare, and biological weapons.

DR. MAHALINGAIAH: So it's not like this a very light topic

that is just like, oh, makeup, and let's look beautiful.

♪

MYMY: I'm learning that all of these toxins can cause

reproductive harm, and effects on menopause,

and an earlier age in menopause.

And I'm 24 years old, and I know that

I want to have children later on,

but going into a career in medicine,

that's going to be delayed, and I hope that using these products

won't affect my decision to have kids.

♪

DR. CRAMER: No, there's no warning label on talc

regarding risks of ovarian cancer.

I had surely expected a warning label would be placed

on talc products after the International Agency

for Research on Cancer declared talc

to be a possible carcinogen.

But even then, no warning labels appeared,

and that's what's prompted me to get involved

in this litigation issue.

♪

DR. CRAMER: In medical school I was very much interested

in obstetrics and gynaecology as a speciality.

But I always had the intent to go on

to get a degree in epidemiology.

And when it came time to choose a thesis, that is,

epidemiologic study of some disease or another,

I chose ovarian cancer.

DR. NESS: Dan is the guy who I consider to be

kind of the grandfather,

one of the grandfathers of epidemiology,

which is my field.

And epidemiology, you know, I call us detective people.

He was one of the people who published way back

in the early 1980s one of the first papers

to link talc and ovarian cancer.

DEANE: Without him, I really wonder if this ever would have

been brought out at all.

But he'd been fighting it,

and showing evidence of it for a long time.

♪

DR. CRAMER: There had been some suspicion about talc

and ovarian cancer, but it had not been studied

in any sort of systematic way.

Well, first I should explain that we decided that we would do

a case control study.

We would interview women who'd recently been diagnosed

with ovarian cancer...

♪

DR. CRAMER: and we would ask them,

"A year before your cancer was diagnosed,

"what habits did you have?"

And we asked about the talc use.

And there was clearly an excess of women who used

powders after bathing or showering

in their genital area that translate

into an increased risk for ovarian cancer.

Talc is a mined product.

Magnesium silicates.

[talc rumbling]

♪

DR. CRAMER: And it occurs more frequently than not in veins

with other magnesium silicates, which can include asbestos.

♪

DR. CRAMER: The majority of women were actually using

Johnson & Johnson, but...

there's nothing unique about Johnson & Johnson

in terms of the talc. It's...

Talc is talc.

[keys clicking]

DR. CRAMER: Oh, here it is...

"Johnson & Johnson liability"...

And then here's all the plaintiffs.

And who they're represented by.

♪

♪

[birds chirping]

MEL: The last two years of a different chemo drug,

feeling the tumour stick out through your skin, I mean,

you could... if you put a few fingers here,

you could see underneath. It's like an iceberg effect.

Most of it is underneath, and now the tips are sticking out.

It's days at a time where you can't even just drink water

without vomiting.

MEL: When I was overseas on military bases,

I used the regular Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder,

and Shower to Shower.

WOMAN: Hmm... MAN: Yeesh.

WOMAN 2: Ha, ha, where's everybody going?

GROUP: ♪ Shower to Shower each day! ♪

♪ Helps keep odour away! ♪

MEL: I used it on the genital area,

and underarms, and in shoes.

I loved the scent for one thing.

It made you feel a little more confident.

It's just a frustration

that is on a level that, I don't know,

it just paralyses you,

that level of frustration to know you did this to yourself,

but I know it's not...

Logically I know it's not my fault.

What it boils down to, it's destroying lives,

when it comes down to it.

That's exactly what's happening. Lives are being destroyed.

♪

MAN IN FILM: Yes, sir, that's my baby.

No, sir, don't mean maybe.

She's probably never heard of Lenin.

Her unsuspecting countrymen have given her the vote.

Yes, sir, that's my baby now.

♪

MYMY: So this is called, "The American Chamber of Horrors."

And it talks about the dangers of the cosmetic industry

back in 1936.

And it's crazy, because nothing has changed,

or very little has changed since then.

MALE NARRATOR IN FILM: In the laboratory,

a scientist tests an eyelash beautifier,

which only recently came on the market.

He finds that this cosmetic

contains a coal tar dye.

This explains why women who use this stuff

are having the outer coatings of their eyeballs burned off,

and are becoming blind.

DR. ZOTA: The way we regulate personal care products

in this country hasn't changed

since the 1930s.

MAN: President Roosevelt has endorsed a bill

which should be front-page news to every consumer in America.

Its purpose is to protect you, as a consumer,

from the many dangers and fraudulent foods,

drugs, and cosmetics still to be found on the market.

♪

DR. SMITH: I don't think it's possible to imagine a worse

regulated family of products than cosmetics,

which is surprising, given how intimately

we use these products.

DR. MICHAELS: The FDA works very hard on drugs,

on medical devices, perhaps a little less well on food,

protecting people from dangerous materials in cosmetics

is not even in the back seat; it's not even in the car.

[indistinct conversation]

[distant siren noises]

REP. RON: Your experts said,

when a consumer asks, "Is this product safe?"

Your experts said, "I cannot say."

DR. KESSLER: I don't believe in saying everything is just fine,

everything is always safe. Everything is relative.

MAN IN FILM: In some cases, if the advertising isn't accurate

for things like cosmetics, deodorants,

and hair tonics and so forth, people might use the product

in ways that could injure their health.

MAN 2: Inaccurate? Aren't they actually lying?

COMMERCIAL: When you find a girl whose hair feels like hair,

she probably uses Ozon Fluid Net.

The hairspray that leaves hair feeling like hair.

It's the hairdresser's hairspray,

in the pink and grey can.

REP. RON: This industry, which any time you walk

into a store in this country,

is virtually asserting

that they can rebuild people

with new cells,

and all kinds of other very bold claims.

♪

JANET: The $84-billion domestic cosmetics industry

is regulated currently by about a page

and a half of federal law.

Really impressive, important,

influential members of Congress have tried.

Ron Wyden, from Oregon, Ted Kennedy tried,

and every time they've introduced legislation

that would require stricter regulation of the industry,

the industry has fought it back, and has said,

"We will do a better job of regulating ourselves."

SEN. KERRY: Would it concern you to know that young women

are using oestrogen in hair products conceivably

to straighten their hair, and that that may in fact

have an impact?

DR. ALDERSON: Without question, we would want to know that, sir.

SEN. KERRY: Well, it's in public domain.

It seems to me the FDA is putting its faith in an industry

to self police through a panel called

the Cosmetic Ingredient Review.

Surprise, surprise, the industry funded the panel of scientists,

and they've reviewed only 11% of the more than

10,000 ingredients contained in cosmetics.

DR. LANPHEAR: I'd like to be able to put myself out of a job.

That means that we're protecting kids.

And we're not having to use them to determine

whether this chemical or that chemical is toxic.

Which is not of course what industry wants us to do.

They'd just rather continue to use a product

without any regulation whatsoever.

DR. MICHAELS: What we're seeing now is there's a whole industry,

the product defence industry,

which is made up of for-profit corporations

that are run by scientists, who are consultants,

and some of these supposed think-tanks.

I mean, it's ludicrous.

The Indoor Tanning Association is out there saying...

Questioning the science around

ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer.

DR. MICHAELS: Something I've seen is that this

manufacturer of uncertainty

and trying to show there are two sides to every issue

around science degrades all scientists.

It makes it looks like scientists are just part of

a debating society, and they're like lawyers.

But science isn't like that.

Science is the search for the truth.

But hiring people to say something specific

not because it's the truth, but because it defends

a product, or it defends a corporation,

really does make it hard for all scientists.

DR. LANPHEAR: But the more unethical part of what we do

is use these chemicals before they've been tested for safety.

Did anybody ever ask you to sign a consent form

for using these products, because they didn't know

if it was safe? Of course not.

♪

JULIE: Labels do not disclose

what's in "parfum," "aroma," "fragrance," or "flavour."

Those catch-all terms can conceal a range

of potentially hazardous chemicals.

JULIE: The world operates with what's called

a post-market regulatory system.

That means that the product is put onto the market first.

It's not like you have to test the product first,

make sure it's safe, and then it goes on the market.

No, it goes on the market, and then if there are incidents,

that's when the regulatory system kicks in.

Nobody's testing to see if that eyeshadow

has in it what it says it has in it.

♪

RON: Let me ask you first, and I'd like to just go down

the row, whether each of you believe

that nicotine is not addictive?

JAMES: Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine

clearly do not meet the classic definitions of addiction.

[cartoon gunshot]

DR. SMITH: I think the best available science points

to that this cosmetics issue as being even bigger

than the tobacco industry,

because we're talking about

thousands of different chemicals,

most of which haven't been adequately safety tested.

♪

♪

DR. SMITH: There are really two pressing

pollution crises at the moment.

One gets a lot of media, and that's climate change.

And deservedly so.

[seagulls calling]

SMITH: I often wonder why this second pollution crisis,

this crisis of toxic chemicals

in the products that we use every day,

why doesn't this second pollution crisis

get more attention?

♪

MYMY: I met with Dr. Rick Smith.

He is an environmentalist,

and he's also done an experiment

and wrote a book about it,

called "Slow Death by Rubber Duck."

♪

MYMY: I'm starting medical school in the fall

at Boston University in the lab.

DR. SMITH: That's great. MYMY: [laughs] Thank you.

The lab that I was working in the past year,

a lot of our work is owed to your book,

and self-experimentation with toxins,

and seeing the effects on your own body.

DR. SMITH: So, are you gonna be doing an experiment on yourself?

MYMY: I'm doing an experiment on myself.

DR. SMITH: Okay. Alright, very good.

I mean, that's terrible, but that's... you know,

I mean, that'll be interesting.

MYMY: Yeah, so I'm... DR. SMITH: Yeah.

MYMY: gonna get back to baseline,

where I'll use no products, take off all my makeup.

DR. SMITH: Yeah.

MYMY: Stop using soap.

And then put on all the mainstream products.

DR. SMITH: Yeah.

MYMY: And take the urine test afterwards

to see my levels of phthalates and parabens.

DR. SMITH: So all of our experiments mimic daily life.

And we've done a lot of experiments with cosmetics.

We've looked at whether you can increase

the level of phthalates in your body,

the level of parabens in your body

just by using certain products. MYMY: Right.

DR. SMITH: Our bodies are pretty good at getting rid of them

on a regular basis. MYMY: Yeah.

DR. SMITH: We all have relatively high,

relatively constant levels of these chemicals

in our bodies all the time. MYMY: Yeah, yeah.

DR. SMITH: Which means that

we're being constantly re-exposed.

MYMY: Yeah. DR. SMITH: So we're kinda...

marinating ourselves unwittingly in these chemicals.

♪

DR. ZOTA: We wrote a commentary to talk about a phenomenon

that we call the environmental injustice of beauty.

♪

ZOTA: It's really trying to frame this problem

of disproportionate chemical exposures

among women of colour.

We further go on to talk about how each

of these categories of product use,

whether it's skin care, hair,

feminine care products, vaginal douches,

and feminine sprays, and feminine wipes,

use of baby powder in the genital area...

We also see differences in skin care products.

♪

DR. ZOTA: Skin lighteners are being used

by women across the globe.

♪

DR. ZOTA: There are cases in the medical literature

of mercury poisoning from skin care products.

♪

DR. ZOTA: This preference for Eurocentric beauty norms

can have really long-lasting effects on body image.

♪

DR. DARBRE: I'm going to start off this evening

by talking about personal care products,

and about breast cancer.

Breast cancer is not a new disease.

It was there in ancient Egypt.

It was recorded in ancient Greece.

But the rate of increase in breast cancer

is absolutely unprecedented.

DR. DARBRE: So this is where we actually grow the cells.

The human breast cancer cells.

And we're gonna have a look under the microscope

at whether they're growing,

and whether they're growing more with parabens

than without parabens.

I've tested all of them individually,

and in combination, and they can make human breast cancer cells

grow, and may be able to mimic oestrogen action

in breast cells.

DR. DARBRE: In 2004, we upset the world by showing

that parabens could even get into the human breast.

We then did a bigger study in 2012,

in which we found paraben in 158 out of 160 samples.

And furthermore, we didn't find one paraben,

we found five parabens in 60% of those samples.

Parabens are added to many products

to preserve them.

Body care products

and skin care products

that you can buy on the supermarket shelf.

I'm actually quite upset

by how much I've measured in human breast tissue.

♪

DR. ZOTA: One common adage is that the dose makes the poison.

That is not so straightforward with endocrine disruptors,

because sometimes you can have different effects

at lower levels. Sometimes more severe effects

than you can at higher levels.

In utero exposures are most often linked

with some of the most severe effects that we've seen to date,

as well as effects early in childhood.

[children laughing]

DR. JAMES-TODD: Children's bodies work differently.

They're smaller; they metabolize things differently than we do.

And their bodies are developing still.

So when they're exposed to these endocrine disrupting chemicals

in our personal care products, that has implications

for that child's future health.

What we know is that the children

who start their periods younger are at an increased of obesity,

cardiovascular disease, diabetes.

And so we really believe that childhood

could be a sensitive window of time

by which these exposures might be particularly deleterious.

MALE NARRATOR: Little girls like to look pretty.

But some of Mother's good-smelling cosmetics

might be poisonous.

Even simple things like perfume, or nail polish

can make you ill.

DR. LANPHEAR: Toxins can have a lifelong impact on children.

We've also discovered that extremely low levels of toxins

can impact brain development.

DR. LANPHEAR: Joel Bocken, who's a lawyer at UBC, and a friend,

he's written a couple books; one was called "The Corporation."

And he was interviewing me about how different

environmental chemicals impact children.

Going through this litany.

And after about five or ten minutes, he says,

"Wait a minute, stop, stop.

"You do this for a living, right?"

I said yes.

"You have kids?" Yes.

"Can you protect your own children?"

No way.

There's too many.

♪

DR. BOUCHARD: I've been studying the impact

of personal care products and also pesticides

on children's brain development.

A lot of chemicals out there are neurotoxicants.

For instance,

lead exposure is associated with ADHD,

so Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder,

which is now quite prevalent in the population.

It's not only chemicals, like man-made chemicals;

there's also natural elements, natural substances...

Like essential oils, for instance, are a big one.

[bee buzzing]

DR. BOUCHARD: An example is lavender oil.

It's being used in a lot of products,

and it's actually a pretty powerful endocrine disruptor.

There's been case studies published of boys

growing breasts because of use of creams or lotions,

or oil that were applied to their bodies.

♪

DR. DARBRE: Baby boys are very, very susceptible to exposure

to oestrogenic compounds.

In exposure either prior to birth, or just after birth,

can have profound effects

on hormonal control of reproduction in men.

♪

MYMY: These companies are telling you, "Yeah, it's gentle,

"it's safe," and then you learn ten years down the line,

"Oh my god, I'm infertile. Why am I infertile?"

Or "Oh my god, I have cancer."

Why? Where did this come from?

My family doesn't have cancer, no history of cancer.

There are questions that should be raised.

And we need to find answers.

ALAN: My name's Alan Smith,

and I'm a trial attorney here in Mississippi.

I saw a blog post from a lady named Deane Berg that said,

"I have suffered ovarian cancer.

"I have no risk factors

"other than I am a lifelong genital talc user

"that I learned from my mother."

And I responded immediately, "I've been looking at this issue

"for four or five years, and I will be more than happy

"to speak with you." So that's how we started.

WOMEN: Hi.

DEANE: We're looking for John Sloan.

RECEPTIONIST: Sure, one sec.

DEANE: I'm looking forward to speaking to the Canadian women,

because I want them too to have hope that they can fight this,

that they can live with it, and that we're in this together.

JOHN: Hi, I'm John. DEANE: Deane Berg.

JOHN: Nice to meet you, Deane. Thanks for coming.

We're the ones that actually speak with the...

ALAN: I always called her my Erin Brockovich,

because she was the ultimate whistleblower.

DEANE: Why didn't this ever come out to the public?

Why was there no notice put on baby powder?

And why isn't this talked about, then?

If this is one of the most deadly cancers for women,

why isn't this brought out in the public?

WOMAN: Hi, ladies. WOMEN: Hi.

WOMAN: Yeah, well, I can't hear anything.

[laughter] WOMAN: Hi, thank you.

DEANE: I went on the National Ovarian Cancer Alliance site,

and I just put on a blog:

"Has anyone else developed ovarian cancer

"from talcum powder?"

And then Alan Smith,

the lawyer that I ended up getting, contacted me.

And he said, "I think you'd be the good case,

"because they can't find anything against you."

We started the lawsuit,

and then Johnson & Johnson of course tried to fight it.

They tried to get it thrown out for this reason,

that reason, everything.

But the judge was a woman, thankfully,

and she stood behind us and said,

"No, it's gotta go to court."

DR. CRAMER: I first published my study in 1982,

and I did not contact Johnson & Johnson;

they contacted me.

Dr. Bruce Semple, who was the medical director

of Johnson & Johnson at the time

wanted to meet with me; came to Boston.

I think he spent his time trying to convince me that talc

was a harmless habit, and I said,

"Well, maybe you just should consider

"you may need to put a warning label on it,

"or you'll want to put a warning label on it."

I was contacted by a little magazine called

Cancer Prevention for Primary Care Doctors.

I wrote the little article about why you should warn

your patients about talc.

♪

DR. CRAMER: Well, that caught Dr. Semple's attention again,

and he wrote a letter.

They encouraged me to limit

the amount of public discussion of the topic.

♪

DR. CRAMER: I didn't have any further contact with them.

I think they kept track of what I was studying,

and my papers on the topic.

ALAN: We're talking about a product named "baby powder."

It's not just talc.

It's 99% talc, which is carcinogenic.

It has asbestos in it, which is carcinogenic.

It has heavy metals in it, which are known carcinogens,

and it has silica in it, which is a known carcinogen,

so I liken baby powder

as a delivery device of multiple carcinogens,

exactly like a cigarette.

SPEAKER: The senator from Massachusetts.

SEN. KENNEDY: A technique that has been used

to extract ovarian tumour material found talc particles

in approximately 75%

of ovarian tumours examined.

Subsequent evaluations have appeared to support

the contention of an association between talc

and ovarian carcinoma.

ALAN: J&J, I consider as the ultimate villain

in this situation, and I want to say clearly why.

After we filed Deane Berg's suit in South Dakota

in federal court,

I sent a request for production of documents.

My office was stacked with six, seven feet high

of papers all around my office,

and I went through every single piece of paper.

♪

ALAN: It was absolutely shocking internal material.

♪

ALAN: I'm talking about decades, going back to the 50s...

60s.

That they were seeking a replacement for talc

in the 60s.

And in the same document, they're admitting that talc

cannot be safely absorbed in the vagina.

And so they were looking for that replacement

because of that very reason.

They told no one.

And then I've seen them go and use their corporate influence

to prevent governmental regulation.

♪

ALAN: Not ever in tobacco litigation,

in benzene litigation, not in asbestos litigation,

has there been an email or a letter memorializing

a conspiracy to this scale.

They're going out and having side meetings

with certain officials at the FDA,

to prevent the FDA from regulating their product.

♪

ALAN: If that is not the definition of a villain,

I don't know what is.

TARA: With so much information available about

everything we come in contact with,

some true, and some not,

it can be hard to know what to pay attention to these days.

All of us at Johnson & Johnson

deeply sympathize with the women and families

impacted by this devastating disease.

At the same time, we are guided by the science

which supports the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder.

DR. NESS: Talc causes ovarian cancer.

Johnson & Johnson has known about this for decades.

And they refuse to do anything about that.

DEANE: So they put me through the deposition,

and then we met out in Rapid City,

the western part of South Dakota, and they said,

"Well, we'll offer you 800,000." And I said,

"Well, what about the warning label?"

I thought this was all part of it.

There was gonna be a warning label,

or the product would be taken off the market.

No, none of that.

And then I'd have to be silent, right?

I went out for a walk with my husband at the time, and I said,

you know, "We didn't do this for money."

I said, "What about all the other women that are out there?

"And if I just take money,

"what good is this gonna do?" It isn't.

So we went back in and they said,

"Okay, 1.3 million." And I said no.

I stood up, I said, "I'll see you in court in September,"

and walked out of the room.

♪

DR. DODSON: So, Silent Spring was founded over 20 years ago,

by breast cancer activists.

♪

DR. DODSON: We were founded as an institute

to try to study the links between the environment

and women's health.

♪

DR. DODSON: I test people themselves,

and really trying to characterize our exposures,

try to develop effective strategies

to try to reduce those exposures.

ALEX: Hi, there.

Hi Mymy, I'm Alex. MYMY: Hi.

I have a project here.

ALEX: That's great. MYMY: Hi!

DR. DODSON: Hi, Mymy, nice to meet you.

MYMY: Hi! Nice to meet you too.

DR. DODSON: So, thanks for coming to Silent Spring,

and I'm excited to tell you about our study.

MYMY: Yes.

DR. DODSON: Have a seat.

MYMY: Okay.

Basically I wanted to look at the chemical body burden

difference between using my normal

every-day products versus clean products.

So I actually just recently looked at...

Started looking at the ingredients in my shampoos,

and deodorants... Deodorant's a big one.

I keep mentioning it, but because I just use it so often,

and there's aluminium, and talc,

which I have read in studies that are...

That can cause breast cancer, ovarian cancer.

So if that's in my deodorant, then what else am I using,

and unknowingly causing harm?

What do you think is so key

to knowing our chemical body burden?

DR. DODSON: The key here is that it...

We're concerned about exposures

during certain time periods in people's lives.

Right, so when a woman is pregnant,

we're worried about the exposure that might happen in the foetus,

right, we're concerned about early life exposures

to children, because that can affect their development.

But also women, whom then might be of childbearing age.

DR. DODSON: Here.

You can take a urine sample,

and then put it back into the kit,

and freeze it, and then once you've frozen it,

you can then send it back to us in this shipper,

and we pull them all together,

and then we send them off to the lab

for the chemical analysis.

MYMY: Yeah, no, it looks pretty self-explanatory, too.

DR. DODSON: Yeah. MYMY: Thank you so much.

DR. DODSON: You're welcome. See you later.

MYMY: Bye.

♪

MYMY: So it's day one of my experiment.

I'm supposed to be doing a detox day,

so no products at all,

I just took a shower with no shampoo,

no conditioner, no soap.

It was the weirdest thing ever.

And I'm not using any toothpaste,

and my breath's gonna smell.

I can't use deodorant either, and it's...

80 degrees outside,

so I gotta remember to stay at least like

20 feet away from everyone.

♪

MYMY: So I felt really dirty all the time.

No, I can't use soap, I can't wash my hands.

And people would try to talk to me,

and I would just look really awkward,

because I'd back away from people.

♪

MYMY: But detox for 24 hours,

no use of any products.

And then after the detox period,

use your normal products.

♪

MYMY: I never thought about the volume of the products

that I was using.

Eyebrows, lipstick, shampoo, conditioner, shaving.

I lost count when I was using them,

but I think upwards of 27 products.

♪

MYMY: I'm actually gonna look at every single label

on every product that I've used.

Just make a full spreadsheet of which products have what,

and then create categories on which ingredients

show up most often.

If I do show a really high level of chemicals,

I don't know, parabens, phthalates,

I really want to look into what disruptions

does this cause in my endocrine or reproductive system?

If I can find enough data, if I can pool enough data

to show that these chemicals are very harmful,

then I would take it even further.

And really, tell the public,

"Hey, this is what we're doing to our bodies,

"and we need to stop."

♪

STACY: The stories we're hearing about today,

about chemical pollution, about toxic plastic waste,

about rising rates of cancer,

aren't just problems that are happening out here

that somebody needs to deal with.

But they're as close to us as the choices we're making

every single day, about the lotions

that we put on our faces,

and the bubbles that we put in the bathtub with our children.

STACY: So we started the Cosmetics Campaign

out of a concern about

a particular chemical called phthalates,

which is linked through a long body of research

to reproductive birth defects, and particularly,

impacts on the male reproductive system.

We found out in the early 2000s,

through the Centers for Disease Control,

they started to analyze urine of thousands of Americans.

Everyone is being exposed to phthalates,

but they found much higher levels

in women of child-bearing age, 20-40.

The researchers that I worked with had a theory,

it could be cosmetics.

So we sent 72 products to a lab... this was in 2002...

And found phthalates in most of them.

Two thirds of the products.

Then we reported that at a press conference,

we actually had a full-page ad in The New York Times.

The headline was, "Sexy for her.

"For baby, it really could be poison."

This was a bomb in the cosmetics industry.

Nobody had been asking here, in the United States,

about toxic chemicals in cosmetics.

SCOTT: Last week I got to spend a day on Capitol Hill

with a very brave little girl named Eliana.

Eliana lost all of her hair, even her eyelashes.

You can add pretty much anything to personal care,

in any amount.

And sometimes, as we saw with a popular shampoo,

sold by a celebrity hairstylist,

tens of thousands of women and girls

lost some or all of their hair, some permanently.

MONICA: And I was just very, very, very shocked

and disappointed that this company

that makes so much money off of this product

cannot be responsible for what they've done.

And it's... sorry. [crying]

My family has just seen the worst.

My hair falling out, and my husband...

I had to make a difficult decision for him

to go ahead and shave my hair off.

[crying] Sorry.

PAUL: I would say it was a pretty horrific experience.

There's a product called "Just For Men."

It's their product that's used for beards.

COMMERCIAL: "Just For Men" hair and beard care.

Be the better man you are.

PAUL: By the time I got to bed that night around 10, 10:30,

the mild itchiness had progressed

to an unbelievable itchiness.

I made the decision immediately, we've gotta go over to Emerg.

SCOTT: There are certainly acute risks,

short-term risks from using personal care,

whether it's hair loss, or burns,

or contaminated products,

or products with too much lead, or mercury.

SCOTT: But there are also chronic or long-term risks

that have been linked to cancer, or fertility.

[women singing]

[protesters shouting]

SCOTT: It's hard to imagine that there are rules that limit

what chemicals we can spray on food, or on crops,

but not the chemicals we spray on ourselves every day.

ALEC: So a large part of my job as a formulator

was to constantly do reformulations.

Once a certain dye was thought to be...

Even potentially to have toxicities,

they wouldn't wait for it to become a regulatory matter,

they would be proactive in reformulation.

But I see bath products, and shampoos, and 3-in-1s,

and a lot of bath type of products for kids.

Which I have two nephews and a niece that I love very much.

When I see their mother soaking them in this product every night

for hours on end, it does concern me,

because they're not just taking a quick shower

and washing it off. They're soaking in it,

and playing in it.

All women who wear any kind of deodorant, or some moisturizer,

is gonna have parabens in their system for the last 50 years.

But then the marketing department got a hold of this,

and thought, "We're gonna be the first product

"that has no parabens," so then they substitute it

with another preservative: methylchloroisothiazolinone.

And now it's proven to be toxic.

♪

ROSE MARIE: I never set out to be a makeup artist.

I was travelling all over the world, I've lived in Paris,

London, Berlin, Hamburg, New York,

Miami, all doing makeup.

I did a lot of Victoria's Secret,

and my big thing about that was these foundations,

the chemicals I'm using on the girls' skin.

These girls are like, 18, 19 years old, they're flawless.

ROSE MARIE: Open...

ROSE MARIE: And in my 30s,

I started feeling really, really sick.

I had problems with a lot of the makeup because it was burning

my skin when I'd do full body makeup on the girls,

and I'd take it off with a makeup wipe,

my arms literally would break out into a rash.

And I so I went and had really advanced bloodwork,

urine analysis, and hair analysis.

And when I picked that up from the lab, they said to me,

"Do you work in the cosmetic industry?"

And I was like... I was completely in shock, and I said,

"How do you know that?" And they said,

"'Cause we see a lot of these chemicals in cosmetics,

"and also people that do hair."

So I started studying all this.

I got so involved in that, people were saying,

"Oh my god, if you put this out, you'll never work again

"in the industry." But surprisingly enough,

it catapulted me to a higher level,

because I was a makeup artist who had something to say.

♪

♪

ALAN: It all started 17, 18 years ago,

back when my wife and I,

Karen, started planning a family.

You always think about your kids, your future kids.

And at that time, Karen's a biochemist,

was actually working in pesticides.

Myself, a microbiologist, I was working in pharmaceuticals.

You know, sometimes, it's a little bit of pesticides

that you're ingesting; it's a little bit

of the chemical floor cleaner that you're smelling.

It's a little bit of the cream that you're putting on,

or that... you know, an anti-perspirant

with chemical whatever, you know?

I just thought, "You know what, I got it."

So I quit, and I decided to do this full time.

ALAN: Bonjour, bonjour. [speaking French]

ALAN: I'm starting to feel like it's turning around,

that it won't be long, actually there'll be more people

using natural products than there are using chemicals.

♪

ALAN: What I found out was that these companies

that now were promoting, and were being very proud

to tell you that they care about you,

and that they weren't using parabens anymore,

actually went back to a preservative

that was actually very popular back in like,

the 1950s, called formaldehyde.

So they're using formaldehyde,

but they weren't naming it formaldehyde on the product.

Formaldehyde is a fantastic preservative,

I mean, it kills everything, right?

So companies develop these slow-release

formulations of formaldehyde.

And as such, they were able to give it a new name.

♪

So they can change a name, so they can dupe you

so that you won't know that it's formaldehyde in the products.

And that kind of stuff does happen; this is real life.

And it's still happening today, unfortunately.

♪

SALESWOMAN: What kind of stuff do you currently use?

MYMY: Okay, so, I do the whole thing.

SALESWOMAN: Okay. MYMY: I do...

I do the moisturizers; I've got Neutrogena.

SALESWOMAN: Okay.

MYMY: Um, a primer, face full coverage foundation.

SALESWOMAN: Okay.

MYMY: Any concealers; like, a setting spray.

SALESWOMAN: Yeah.

MYMY: I use anything on my eyes, face, lips.

SALESWOMAN: The works. MYMY: Yeah.

MYMY: I found different clean products

for every single item that I had.

And then I put on my clean products.

♪

MYMY: And then then do another urine sample

with the clean products.

MYMY: [phone beeps] Hey, it's Mymy.

I wanted to give you the other

chemical body burden test kit.

I can find a way to drop it off with you later.

Okay, bye, talk to you soon. [phone beeps]

♪

REPORTER: Today we begin with a possible health risk

involving one of the most trusted products, baby powder.

REPORTER 2: Deane Berg is one of the more than

20,000 women in the US who are diagnosed

with ovarian cancer each year.

DR. CRAMER: Alan tells me the story

that the lawyer for the defence said,

"You've got about a one in a million chance

"of winning this."

DEANE: One person versus

a humongous pharmaceutical company.

REPORTER: They became the first to file a talc lawsuit

against Johnson & Johnson, and its talc supplier.

ALAN: It was truly David versus Goliath.

They had 20 or 30 lawyers on their side, and it was me.

DARREN: The science, as the FDA sees it,

simply does not merit such a warning at this time.

DR. NESS: And they just keep coming back at us with,

oh my gosh, more and more crack legal teams.

They are really swift.

REPORTER: The FDA also did say, though,

the growing body of evidence to support a possible

association between genital talc exposure

and serious ovarian cancer is difficult to dismiss.

DARREN: God bless 'em.

DEANE: So it went to court in September.

And that was probably one of the hardest weeks I ever had.

BART: The truth, as we will show you

over the next three weeks or so,

is that Johnson's Baby Powder,

which has been sold to millions of people around the world

for over 100 years, are absolutely safe,

do not cause ovarian cancer.

There have been no studies saying that it does.

DEANE: They put up big poster boards

of women's internal organs.

And they talked about sperm going up the vagina,

and then it was how talcum powder couldn't do this,

because, you know, how could it ever get up inside of a woman?

DR. CRAMER: I don't think women need a lesson about the anatomy,

but just as sperm can track up, and just as the egg, fertilized,

can track down, it's pretty easy for a particle like talc

to track through the genital area.

DEANE: And they had slides of my ovarian tissue,

with purple spots where there was talcum all through it.

Johnson & Johnson had doctors that testified against me.

One doctor even laughed, "She's lucky to be alive."

BART: You are in fact going to learn in this case

that the hard science studies actually show

that talc kills cancerous cells,

and leaves normal cells alone.

DEANE: Finally the jury came back in,

and the Johnson & Johnson lawyers are sitting there

smiling ear to ear with their notebooks all open,

and they said, guilty.

The whole courtroom went silent.

And then they said, and reward to the plaintiff, zero.

♪

DEANE: I've never heard of a case where a person has been

found guilty in a civil lawsuit,

and then the plaintiff gets awarded nothing.

There were some men on the jury that I think didn't believe

a lot of it, and then the women that were there on the jury

made a deal with them to give a guilty plea,

but then no reward.

ALAN: Forget the money, because it was never about the money

to Ms. Berg.

Otherwise, she would've settled her case.

What was very important, and what was the...

Of ultimate importance to her was the public

seeing the verdict that 12 jurors unanimously said,

in her home state of South Dakota,

that Johnson & Johnson should have placed a warning

on their product about ovarian cancer,

and that her genital use of that product

contributed to cause her ovarian cancer.

DR. NESS: I believe that part of the reason

that Johnson & Johnson now is fighting this so hard,

is there are thousands of women around the country

who have joined in class action suits,

both here and in Canada.

I still remember my first case.

Her last name was Fox.

DR. NESS: She actually died fairly shortly before the trial.

♪

JACKIE: That's a big girl,

are you a big girl? GIRL: Yeah.

JACKIE: You wanna teach me how?

GIRL: Yeah. JACKIE: Alright!

You're gonna make it.

MAN: You counting? JACKIE: [laughs]

REPORTER: In a landmark decision,

a St. Louis jury ruled that Johnson & Johnson

must pay $72 million,

including 62 million in punitive damages

to the family of an Alabama woman

who died from ovarian cancer.

MARVIN: Her whole fight

was for... not just for her.

But so many other women.

♪

JOEL: Verdicts started to come out of the United States.

There was a $72-million verdict against Johnson & Johnson

in relation to a woman who had developed ovarian cancer.

We'd been approached by victims, women,

who used Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder

over a long period of time.

And these women had developed ovarian cancer.

JOEL: I know it takes a lot of courage to come forward,

and kind of talk about what's happened to you.

And so we really appreciate you being here, and sharing this.

CAROL ANN: As you said, Deane, it's embarrassing

to tell your story sometimes.

And one, for judgement of others, and two,

because you think, oh no, I did something wrong to myself.

I don't want any more people

to have to go through what we've just talked about.

I don't want anybody to have the option

to buy that on the shelf today.

♪

JOEL: Hello, Shaeda. SHAEDA: Hi.

JOEL: Hi, welcome. Good to see you.

SHAEDA: Thank you. JOEL: Please grab a seat.

♪

JOEL: But here we have this situation where

had J&J simply warned of this risk,

none of these people potentially would've had ovarian cancer.

DEANE: Stand strong.

You know, just look 'em face to face, and don't shed a tear.

And they will try to make you look weak,

that you're just complaining,

that this really wasn't as bad as it appeared to be,

and if we stand together as women, we can do this.

[inaudible conversation]

♪

CAROL ANN: Nice meeting you. DEANE: Nice meeting you, too.

Thank you for your story.

CAROL ANN: Oh, thank you for all of your support,

and being the pioneer.

DEANE: Oh, you're welcome. WOMAN: So nice to meet you.

Thank you so much for coming.

DEANE: I feel good as a women, as a whistleblower.

I opened this up to the public

to try to help prevent other women from getting

ovarian cancer and suffering the way I did,

and other women have.

I know I didn't get any money for it,

but as I said to my husband, I have my life.

I'm still alive 11 years later, after having ovarian cancer,

and no money can be awarded for that.

♪

DR. CRAMER: This is not a healthful habit.

It is a harmful one,

and you should not use these products.

It will get into the pelvic cavity,

it may cause problems,

and in some cases it will cause ovarian cancer.

JOEL: Historically, men run these large corporations.

And here we are promoting you know, as men,

this product to women, to use,

and for families to use.

♪

ALEX: Now, as chairman and CEO of this company,

I take this personally, and very seriously.

And I know that many of you do too.

Now, I want to repeat, reiterate, and reinforce.

J&J's Baby Powder is safe, and does not cause cancer.

Studies of tens of thousands of women,

and thousands of men show

that talc does not cause cancer,

or asbestos-related disease.

J&J's Baby Powder has never contained asbestos.

Regulators have tested both,

and they have always found our talc to be asbestos-free.

Now, at the end of the day,

this is about truth and integrity.

We are confident in the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder,

and we stand behind our products.

ALAN: They are putting blinders on

to all the devastation and disease that they're causing,

for the benefit of protecting a corporate image

of a mother and baby, and a product

that started the company.

And to me, that is the ultimate sin.

DR. NESS: How many more women will be impacted?

Well, millions.

While this drags on for ten years, more.

And J&J will keep it in the courts

as long as they possibly can.

♪

MEL: A few months ago, my doctor said

I had no more than six months.

I was told in around March or April.

And here we are, July.

I have such a love for children,

I wonder if...

this was the reason why I couldn't have any, as well.

My nephew, Aidan,

he's the love of my life.

I would have liked to see him grow up a little more.

The thing that hit me very profoundly was that

I started having days recently where the only thing

I was looking forward to is taking a strong sleeping pill,

and just sleeping at night, because that would be

the only time that I'm not hurting,

and not in pain, so what's the purpose of...

living if all you're looking forward to is

going to sleep in the evening?

What's the point

if you're not able to...

function, not able to serve,

not able to...

do anything?

I live on faith.

The name of my street is Faith.

♪

RACHEL: We have to remember that children born today

are exposed to these chemicals from birth,

perhaps even before birth.

Now, what is going to happen to them in adult life

as a result of that exposure?

We simply don't know.

Unless we do bring these chemicals under better control,

we are certainly headed for disaster.

DR. DODSON: Hey! MYMY: Hi!

DR. DODSON: Come on in! MYMY: Hi, how are you?

DR. DODSON: It's so good to see you!

MYMY: Yes, very good to see you.

DR. DODSON: Thanks for coming again.

So, how are you doing? MYMY: I'm good, I'm good.

DR. DODSON: Yeah?

MYMY: Yeah, it's been a good summer.

DR. DODSON: Good. You've been busy?

MYMY: Yeah, but I've gotta go back to school.

DR. DODSON: Yeah.

MYMY: I was just looking at this.

Who's Rachel Carson?

DR. DODSON: Rachel Carson was really one of the first

female environmentalists.

♪

DR. DODSON: She wrote this book, in 1962 it came out,

called "Silent Spring."

And that's how we're named.

She was really calling attention to the impact

of chemicals particularly on the ecosystems.

But as part of that she was testifying before Congress.

RACHEL: That's an indication

to warn the consumer

that he is buying and using a very hazardous substance.

So many people write to me, and so many people telephone me,

and say, "Well, I had no idea that this stuff that I was using

"was dangerous in any way."

DR. DODSON: At the time she was testifying,

she was actually battling breast cancer.

And so here's a woman who actually was

affected by breast cancer, and an environmentalist.

And so that's why we're named in her honour.

MYMY: Amazing. DR. DODSON: Yeah.

She's an inspiration.

[laughs]

Yeah, so we have your results.

You know, I think this is a great opportunity

to kind of walk through them,

ask any questions. MYMY: Okay.

DR. DODSON: We have the Day One morning,

Day One evening,

so that's your first day of regular product use.

Then we have Day Two morning, and Day Two evening;

that's the alternative product use.

So you can see here, right, if this is the 95 percentile

of most... of the national level,

you are above the 95th percent.

So you have higher levels than most Americans

in at least three of your samples here.

Your samples, actually, all four of them had higher levels

of MEP, which is a mono-ethyl phthalate,

which is one of the phthalates that's typically used

in personal care products.

Now, these are... and I'm gonna just show you kind of

the phthalates that we looked at.

So you can see the skewness, how quickly you can jump up.

You go from the morning sample, to boom,

to the evening sample. MYMY: Yeah.

MYMY: This was me putting on normally

what I would put on to go out.

♪

DR. DODSON: There was another day, right,

where you avoided parabens and phthalates for a couple days

but then kind of used different products,

or alternative products, right? It's not as much so.

Right, in fact, the levels kind of go down.

I think it's probably just almost like noise;

these are probably kind of equivalent.

MYMY: Yeah, this is good,

because this is the alternative products.

All the clean products are clean.

DR. DODSON: So you were able to find them.

MYMY: Yeah. DR. DODSON: Yeah, to be clean.

That's great. That's good news.

MYMY: My MEP levels were higher

than 95% of Americans, though.

Which is scary to me because I don't know what that means

for my body; I don't know if it's already done damage.

I don't know if I could reverse this damage.

Where do I go from here?

Fertility is my concern, cancer is my concern.

♪

MTMT: I mean, it scares me.

WOMAN: Well, it's nearly time for your next class,

so I must stop talking,

but there's one more thing that I'd like to say.

You will be prettier, you will be more popular.

Good grooming will pay dividends to each and every one of you.

[applause]

♪

DR. ZOTA: Let's try to change these beauty norms,

so that women don't have to choose between their health,

and trying to look beautiful

according to these arbitrary standards.

♪

[crowd chattering]

MYMY: This whole experiment, the prospects of it,

I think it will definitely cascade into something

a lot larger than just one person doing

a chemical body burden.

[indistinct speaker]

MYMY: Maybe by me speaking out, there will be a change.

ANNOUNCER: Michael No... Mymy Nguyen...

Filomena Ouanze[?]...

Abagail Olson... Ardeep Pulani.

MYMY: The current idea of beauty is socialized.

[crowd applause]

MYMY: And I don't want people to feel a lack of self-confidence,

or lower self esteem just because

they don't look like someone they see on TV.

♪

[laughter]

MYMY: I don't think it's wrong to dye your hair

and feel beautiful.

It's not wrong that people use makeup.

They just need a safer alternative to makeup.

♪

MYMY: We're gonna take pictures outside.

Alright! [laughs]

Oh my... oh my god!

MYMY: I should be confident knowing that I look this way,

but I'm not harming myself.

DAD: Three, two...

MYMY: No! [laughs]

DAD: Oh, that's a nice one, that's a good one!

MYMY: Sorry.

It's like, um...

[sighs]

Through this journey of mine too,

I never felt 100% happy with who I was,

and I think that is because I was so distracted

with how I look, and I was just like,

worried about what people said about me, or like,

what my image was like.

♪

MYMY: Find beauty in what makes you stronger.

Find beauty in what you worked really hard for.

I'm a hard-working woman, I can be influential,

and this doesn't have anything to do with how I look.

And if we could spark the conversation,

spark the revolution

against these toxins...

just taking back the power that we should be having already.

♪

♪

MR. KRISHNAMOORTHI: Today marks our subcommittee's

first hearing.

Today our focus is on a group of widely used

personal care consumer products

that contain potentially carcinogenic products.

Please rise; I will begin by swearing you in.

SCOTT: Since 2009, cosmetics manufacturers themselves

have reported using 88 chemicals

linked to cancer, birth defects,

or reproductive harm in both men and women.

MR. GROTHMAN: In both of your opinion,

is there any doubt in your mind

that the product that was sold

by Johnson & Johnson has a connection to cancer?

DR. MCTIERNAN: I believe

that talcum powder products

do cause ovarian cancer.

MR. GROTHMAN: Would common sense tell you that

when you're putting something on your skin

that there's the potential over time to have

something bad happen?

SCOTT: Most consumers assume

that FDA has actually reviewed

these products for safety

before we put them on our bodies every day.

At least 2,000 products contain talc

that are available for sale today,

of which more than 1,000 are loose powders,

or pressed powders,

that it only takes one fibre

lodged in the lung to contribute

to mesothelioma decades later.

MS. PRESSLEY: But I just don't know how the consumers can have

any true trust and faith here that they are safe

in the consumption of these products.

SCOTT: I wouldn't wait another day

to require a warning

on all these products.

MS. TLAIB: Corporate greed is a type of cancer

in our democracy right now.

I can't wait for this legislation to pass,

for people to stop dying.

Thank you so much.