InterviewJessica Alba wants to make sure that we regulate chemicals and protect our children.

You might have seen Jessica Alba kill a bad guy with a stiletto heel in the gory action flick Machete. You might also have spotted her on the cover of Maxim (twice). But fewer people probably caught her on C-SPAN lecturing Congress about the urgency of passing laws to regulate the chemicals in the products we buy. A staunch environmental advocate, the 31-year-old star recently launched the Honest Company, which makes nontoxic, ecofriendly baby gear. She took some time to answer our questions about her commitment to safe chemistry.

Q: Why did you go to D.C. to lobby for the Safe Chemicals Act last year?

A: Basically, it’s legislation that hasn’t been reformed in more than 30 years. It’s about regulating chemicals in everyday products. There are more than 80,000 chemicals in the U.S. marketplace right now — only five have been banned. In Europe, 1,100 are banned because they’re not safe for humans. When they’re creating and selling new chemicals, companies aren’t thinking about how they affect people’s health — it’s about their bottom line.

Q: You had asthma as a kid, right? Does that make you worry more about air pollution?

A: I grew up with asthma and allergies, among other health issues. That forced me from a very early age to look at my environment in a different way. I don’t take things at face value. I don’t automatically trust the conglomerates. I question processes, I question ingredients, I look for a better way. I always try to find a more natural and holistic approach before just slapping on a Band-Aid. Better to prevent something bad from happening in the first place.

Q: We assume that you’re the only woman who’s topped Maxim’s “Hot 100” list and also testified before Congress about environmental legislation. How do you walk that balance?

A: [Laughs] I don’t know. I don’t even really think about it in those terms. The marketing I’ve done to promote TV and film has been wonderful because it’s given me a platform to be able to speak about things that are important to me.Q: What’s the main message you try to deliver about the environment?

A: That there’s a cause and effect to every action you take. So all of your purchasing and consuming choices are going to affect the planet and the people around you in some way, be it positive or negative. Just being a thoughtful, conscientious consumer is the first step.

Q: Do you get overwhelmed thinking about how many chemicals kids are exposed to?

A: I felt overwhelmed as a parent at first. But now I know that there are steps we can take. You can really change the health of your environment by doing anything from buying fresh, organic food to choosing the paint and carpeting in your home. Just understanding the quality of those products and what the potential hazards are. I’ve taken steps to eliminate as much that’s hazardous as I could from my home. So I feel great about the environment now that I’ve been able to create for my family. I know it’s possible.

Q: What else do you do to go green in your personal life?

A: I spend time outdoors with my kids. I have a nontoxic turf lawn instead of grass so we don’t have to water it. We have all energy-efficient appliances in our house, and most of the materials that we used to build it — probably 70% of them — are upcycled. I bought them off Craigslist or at flea markets or vintage stores. With the rest, I made an effort to buy sustainable materials, bamboo flooring, recycled glass tiles, things like that.

Q: Are people surprised to see a Hollywood actress buying things from them off Craigslist? 

A: I don’t go and pick them up [laughs]. I don’t even think that’s safe for a girl by herself to go to a random address and go pick something up. No, I have a family member — a guy, obviously, my husband or someone — go and pick up a piece here and there.

Q: You’ve said that your favorite place in the outdoors is Franklin Canyon Park in Los Angeles. Why that spot?

A: I like any piece of nature in urban environments because it feels like you can get a break from the hustle and bustle of the city. You can just escape and quickly be surrounded by nature. One of my favorite places in New York is Central Park, for that same reason. In L.A., Topanga Canyon is another really great place, and so is Malibu Canyon.

Q: What made you want to start the Honest Company? 

A: Frankly, I needed a company like it. As a parent, I think there’s a lot of confusion in the marketplace around what’s eco, what isn’t, toxic chemicals and how they affect the health of your family. There’s just so much information out there that there needed to be one company that’s done all the research and finds the formulations that perform best.

Q: How does the Honest Company work?

A: It delivers nontoxic products straight to your door, everything from laundry detergent to bubble bath to diapers and wipes. We also have what we call an “essentials kit”: Out of 16 items, you get to choose five, and that’s what you get delivered every month. Ninety-nine percent of our products are made here in the U.S. Our diapers are really the best on the market — they’re made from plant-based materials, are completely nontoxic, and have the cutest designs. We really wanted to innovate the diapering space. It was important for me as a parent to make sure that everyone could get these products delivered straight to their door.

Q: Do you have Hollywood mom friends who’ve signed up to use the service?

A: Yeah, quite a few!

—interview by Orli Cotel / photo courtesy of the Honest Company

This post originally appeared in Sierra magazine.

Sierra is the magazine of the Sierra Club. Our motto: Explore, Enjoy, and Protect the Planet. Follow Sierra magazine on Twitter.

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What we don’t know about beauty products will kill us.

I thought that I was in the clear. That I dodged some bullets. I had two healthy pregnancies, during which I tried to do all the right things: I avoided gas stations and mainstream cleaning products. I didn’t color my hair, polish my nails or smoke.  Now nine years later, I have two healthy and thriving little girls, and we try to create a healthy home together.

But then I found myself at the 20th Anniversary celebration of the Breast Cancer Fund in May. The Breast Cancer Fund fights to get scientists, the medical establishment and policy makers to pay as much attention to the cause of breast cancer as the cure. During the evening, I was reminded once again how vulnerable women are to environmental exposure to chemicals, how our breast tissue is particularly sensitive. And most importantly, how puberty is a crucial window of vulnerability for girls, opening up channels of influence to chemicals much like those months in-utero. Only now our kids are older, a little more out of our grasp and control than when they were babies. Her speech shook me to the core. Suddenly, it feels like that bullet is coming right at me again.
My older daughter is on the cusp of puberty at 9 years old, my younger just a few years behind. All of those potent feelings I experienced during my pregnancies and their babyhood came flooding back. The momentary and false sense of control – if only I can buy the right sunscreen/feed them the right foods/clean with the right products, I can avoid unwanted exposures to environmental toxins like mercury, bisphenol A, phthalates, or flame retardants.  But now we know that exposure to these chemicals is beyond the control of any of us alone.

We as a society, for reasons complex yet unfolding, are foisting young girls into the turmoil of puberty long before they are developmentally ready. In 2010, researchers at Mount Sinai Medical Center published a report on the effects of chemicals found in products we all have at home, like nail polish, cosmetics, perfume, lotion and shampoo. The results show a direct relationship between use of these products and early puberty development in girls. Studies have also linked early onset puberty to common household items, and foods like dairy and fish.

If only we collectively decided to honor their bodies’ natural trajectories and let them remain little girls for as long as was meant to be. Now, history is apparently a moving target, as implied by the title of a recent New York Times magazine article on the topic of early puberty: Puberty Before Age 10: A New Normal? An article that unfortunately failed to mention any solutions to the problem of early puberty, like changing the way our country regulates the use of chemicals.

Which brings me to policy change, which is more imperative than ever. We know that changing our personal eating/cleaning/makeup/chemical use habits will only get us so far.  As consumers, we should push the personal care, household products, and agricultural industries in the right direction. But at the same time, our legislators need to act to reform the outdated and broken 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act and pass the new, updated Safe Chemicals Act of 2012, which focuses on children’s health as a benchmark for chemical safety. Authored by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and co-sponsored by 16 Senators, the Act will increase the safety of chemicals used in consumer products, and protect those most vulnerable to chemical exposure, like women and children.

Take action today to let your elected officials know there is strong public support for changing the way we regulate chemicals in the United States.

Lena Brook has advocated for environmental health and justice for over ten years with organizations like Clean Water Action, Health Care Without Harm and Physicians for Social Responsibility. She’s currently a strategic communications consultant with HavenBMedia in San Francisco. You can follow her on Twitter: @Lena_Brook

Image: J Ronald Lee, Lena Brook

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It’s the end of June already, and the earth’s half-spin around the sun has brought us ladies plenty to wring our delicate little hands about. From Iranian clerics blaming earthquakes on our breasts to oil spills wreaking havoc on our pregnancies, 2010 has made us reach for the smelling salts on numerous occasions. Here at EcoSalon, we’ve covered women and the environment with vim, bringing you celebratory communiques alongside melancholic missives. Below, you’ll find a roundup of the news in 2010 thus far. If the past six months are any indication, the rest of the year will be a doozy. Feeling faint yet?

• Is GINK the new DINK? It used to be that childfree couples were called DINKs – Double Income, No Kids. But the great American greenwash has influenced reproductive choices as well, with an increasing number of couples citing the environment as a reason to go kidless. A recent study by Oregon State University added fuel to the fire, revealing that not having kids is 20 times more environmentally friendly than any other day to day green task, like recycling. Lisa Hymas of Grist coined the term GINK – Green Inclinations, No Kids – to describe childfree tree huggers like herself.

• Condoms came under attack earlier this year, with women’s health writers and scientists bemoaning the prophylactic’s sorry environmental record of sullying our beaches and clogging up our landfills. While greensters wondered whether condoms are biodegradable (likely not – their decomposable latex is mixed with human-made chemicals), we asked another question: why have this conversation in the first place? Condoms, as a blogger at EcoGeek noted, are “the single most important environmental innovation” ever, curbing environmentally-catastrophic population growth.

• Congress attacked killer chemicals this spring when members of the House and Senate introduced versions of the Safe Chemicals Act, a bill meant to fortify a toothless, decades-old law against allowing dangerous chemicals in household products (we all know how well that one worked…hello bisphenol-a). Uteruses in America rejoiced at the news: the Safe Chemicals Act is a boon to women, whose reproductive systems have been under siege by infertility-causing chemicals in water bottles and other plastics.

• In April, an Iranian cleric asserted that women who don’t cover up cause earthquakes. His declaration–meant to dissuade Iranian women from unveiling–ignited a response in the U.S., when blogger Jennifer McCreight organized a Boobquake, a day in which women wore low-cut tops without tectonic incident to prove the cleric wrong. But what could have been a bold political stunt turned into a ho-hum protest, with men egging on their breast-baring peers while feminists complained that the plight of Iranian women became fodder for a Girls Gone Wild spectacle.

• As if the earthquake itself didn’t cause enough damage, sexual violence rates spiked in Haiti in the months after the disaster. According to an article in Women’s eNews, aid workers in a major Port-au-Prince refugee camp fielded daily reports of rape, prompting the United Nations to send a special unit of 130 female Bangladeshi soldiers to address the violence. Lamentably, the post-disaster rape crisis was not unique to Haiti alone; many Hurricane Katrina survivors were similarly re-victimized.

• On the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, we noted that the pill’s invention by women’s rights crusader Margaret Sanger initiated the era of modern family planning, allowing women to choose the number and spacing of their children – a boon for their health and the health of their babies alike. But while the pill has done its part to keep our skyrocketing population in check (if you think things are bad, just imagine the world without it) its environmental record isn’t spotless – the hormones in the pill, excreted into waste water through urine, cause fatal mutations in fish populations.

• When a Houston tanning salon called upon the spirit of Coco Chanel to promote its new earth-friendly false tanning beet spray, we called foul. As legend has it, Chanel sparked the tanning craze in America when she stepped off a boat in Cannes with perfectly bronzed skin. Though Coco was a pioneering designer, breaching the boundary between menswear and womenswear, the tanning trendsetter didn’t galvanize women to leave the drudgery of housework in order to bask in the sunshine. Rather, Coco inadvertently created another unrealistic beauty standard.

• While much of the initial news surrounding the BP oil spill focused on the disaster’s effect on wildlife, we asked about its impact on human livelihoods. Coastal Women for Change, a community organization that sprung out of the post-Katrina haze to bring attention to the need for improved childcare in Biloxi, Mississippi, has stepped up after the spill by serving as a conduit for information from the Environmental Protection Agency to the local fishers. The biggest challenge? Getting fishers of different ethnic and economic backgrounds to rally together for their interests.

• Last year, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn published their book Half the Sky, a groundbreaking tome arguing that international aid is more effective when directed toward women. While Kristof and WuDunn described women as the gatekeepers of health and well-being in their communities, they left out one green detail: the fact that women also hold the keys to conservation. In Indonesia, the Environmental Ministry has begun offering classes on water conservation to women in rural areas who are responsible for fetching and distributing water to their families.

• Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but we all care equally about the earth, right? Wrong. According to several articles this year, men and women display their green pride differently, with men working for big picture sustainability while women, ever the quibblers, take on recycling and composting projects. We pointed out the ludicrousy in this theory, noting that a handful of anecdotes don’t constitute a trend. With all this talk about men, women, and their green differences, we lose sight of the why we should go green at all.

• As if the oil spill wasn’t dangerous enough, the chemical dispersants used to clean it up could spell health risks for pregnant mothers and their unborn children. According to information recently released by the Environmental Protection Agency, chemicals that caused health problems in the cleanup workers on the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill are being used again today. Pregnant women have been advised to stay as far away from the contaminants as possible – a tall order for those women who actually live in the Gulf.

Image: xjyxjy

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Five years ago, a group of women’s health advocates met with scientists in California to discuss creeping infertility rates among men and women. Between 1995 and 2002, the number of couples having problems conceiving had grown from 6.1 million to 7.3 million. That meant that one out of every eight heterosexual couples was infertile, according to Center for Disease Control data.

Women’s health advocates and scientists had long known that environmental contaminants like cigarette smoke and mercury were major culprits when it came to diminished fertility. But what brought the two groups together for the first time was alarming evidence that commonplace material, such as plastics, could damage the reproductive system.

Sounds like old news, right? We’ve all fretted over bisphenol-a, a chemical found in plastic bottles that caused hormonal changes in animals in lab tests, and we all kvelled when in 2008 Nalgene opted to stop using the plastic in its camping wares. But while our attention has shifted to the next environmental catastrophe du jour, those pesky chemicals haven’t gone anywhere.

Last week, lawmakers in both houses of Congress introduced the Safe Chemicals Act, a bill meant to up the ante when it comes to chemical testing in the United States. If made into law, the bill will fortify the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, a weak attempt at federal regulation. As RH Reality Check contributor Jennifer Rogers notes, the “TSCA was already outdated before it was signed into law. Many dangerous chemicals were ‘grandfathered in’ under the new law and remain in use today. Many new chemicals remain unregulated because the legislation was limited in scope.”

According to EHS Today, a trade publication for environment, health, and safety workers, the TSCA’s greatest weakness is its inability to stop dangerous chemicals from entering the market. “Under current policy, the [Environmental Protection Agency] can call for safety testing only after evidence surfaces demonstrating a chemical is dangerous. As a result, EPA has been able to require testing for just 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals currently registered in the United States and has been able to ban only five dangerous substances.”

The new bill would require manufacturers to provide information to the EPA about chemicals currently in circulation as well as those headed for the market. And while some environmental groups want even stricter regulations, women’s health groups say the bill is a small, yet serious step, toward curbing infertility due to pollutants. We’ll drink (out of a glass bottle) to that.

Image: Michelle Schantz (Schantzilla)

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