Opinion: How Wellness Became Toxic

Late one night in the middle of the pandemic, my phone lit up and I felt a pit in my stomach. I should have been sleeping — I was newly postpartum and sleep was in short supply. But the social media culture wars were becoming as toxic as the harmful chemicals I’d spent my career trying to eradicate. An influx of notifications could only mean one thing: a viral post about toxic chemicals in products and their potential health effects.

I’m an environmental health expert with 20 years of product safety experience in both public and private sectors; in 2020, I was the head of mission for Beautycounter, leading all things ingredient safety and advocacy. Colleagues had tagged me in posts from several so-called experts stating that clean beauty was “anti-science” and that “low doses of phthalates are safe.” I took a deep breath, knowing what happens when you try to distill decades’ worth of science about ingredient safety into 60-second TikToks or IG reels. It usually ends with online takedowns fueled by dogmatic allegiances.

Over the last several years, I’ve started to notice cultural factions forming, camps which I call the “Perfectionists” and the “Dismissers.” Perfectionists are a mix of strange bedfellows: mostly-urban left-leaning women, who are obsessed with a curated version of clean living at all costs along with crunchy mamas, a newer faction of politically conservative moms that led to today’s Make America Healthy Again crew alongside Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dismissers are those who, on the surface, seem to be working to help advance scientific literacy through social media and podcasts, yet oddly decry any caution about toxic chemicals in products as “fear-mongering” and often don’t have relevant degrees in environmental health. They leverage the endless fodder of overstated claims (“all chemicals are toxic!” “if it’s all-natural it’s alright”) swirling around the internet to prove their point.

The us-versus-them nature of consumer safety is odd to witness knowing the history of a once-bipartisan movement that started with conservationist Rachel Carson in the 1960s, continued by activists such as Erin Brockovich in the 1990s, and has spanned decades ever since. Environmental health is a robust field of science that has, until recently, united many of us around common sense issues like banning asbestos from makeup, tackling air pollutants linked to asthma, cleaning up Superfund sites near children’s playgrounds, or addressing occupational exposures for fashion industry workers who dye or treat textiles.

Misinformation and black-and-white thinking — whether it comes from “Perfectionists” or “Dismissers”— has set us back bigtime. People are shrugging off clean beauty or dropping their support of fashion brands moving away from toxic chemicals, assuming brands are using the clean movement purely as a marketing ploy.

Yes, there is greenwashing afoot, with some companies jumping on the “nontoxic” bandwagon without standing behind their claims. But lumping all companies into the faux-clean category, or viewing any company who promotes safety or sustainability as “preachy,” harms progress, especially for groups that bear a heavier burden. I’m talking about fenceline communities, those living near chemical production or waste incinerators who are getting exposed to the most toxic chemical pollution and can’t afford to protect themselves. I’m talking about workers like professional salon and nail technicians who are exposed daily to toxic chemicals in their jobs. And women of color, who are more likely to be marketed to and use products that contain some of the highest hazard ingredients. Many of these groups overlap.

Hard-won safety regulations that my colleagues and I have spent decades to pass are also being rolled back.

This month, US president Donald Trump granted two years of regulatory relief for 53 petrochemical facilities which emit benzene, mercury, nickel, arsenic and lead. The already chronically underfunded Food and Drug Administration which oversees the minimal regulations that exist for cosmetics and supplements, has had approximately 4,500 staff fired.

How do we get out of this mess? We need an urgent, bipartisan and unified strategy, because the consumer and social media forces warping our thinking aren’t going anywhere. Perfectionists will continue to overstate the science and fearmonger. Dismissers will continue to repeat chemical industry talking points. And some companies will continue to greenwash.

No, you don’t have to run for office (though I won’t stop you if you’re so inclined) nor do you have to fear everything in your home. “Cleaning house” is a much larger call to action than tossing out expired makeup or PFAS-treated cookware. It’s about our willingness to clean up the halls of Congress, our social media feeds, and ideological politics so we can stop worrying about unnecessarily polluting ourselves, our families, our communities and our planet.

A simple place to start is to ask your members of Congress to support the Safer Beauty Bill package, a suite of legislation designed to address remaining safety and transparency gaps in cosmetic safety.

Put down Instagram and pick up the phone.

Lindsay Dahl is a nationally awarded sustainability leader and activist. She is the author of “Cleaning House: The Fight to Rid our Homes of Toxic Chemicals” published by Dey Street, a division of Harper Collins. She is currently the chief impact officer at supplement brand Ritual.

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