It was working as a reporter about a decade ago when Stacy Malkan began learning about problematic chemicals in cosmetic and personal care products. In 2004 she helped set in motion the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics after the "Not Too Pretty" report (pdf) highlighted the unsafe chemical ingredients linked to birth defects in about 70% of products. Her research led her to work as environmental health advocate in various capacities and to write Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, the book that serves as the basis of her visit to Aquinas College.

The Jane Hibbard Idema Women’s Studies Center and The Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College want to raise general awareness of the risky chemicals and the safer and sustainable counterparts that are available on the market. Most individuals are unaware of the potential danger in many apparently safe products. This is where and why Stacy Malkan comes in.

“Americans use about 10 body-care products a day containing more than 100 chemical ingredients,” she said. “It's important to know what's in the products we're rubbing on our faces, lathering in our hair and spraying on our bodies.” And unfortunately the facts of these products Malkan has to relate are not pretty. “Many of these products contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption, allergies, asthma and other health problems,” she said.

Malkan’s expertise runs deep. She has worked with an international environmental group following her discovery and interest in the issue as a reporter, as the communications director for Health Care Without Harm, and is currently the lead media strategist for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics as well as the author of the book responsible for bringing little-known, but very important, information to consumers. In her present position, she promotes her book and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition that works to create support for legislative regulations on the ingredients allowed in personal care products.

The campaign is endorsed by over 150 organizations and has obtained the signatures of over 1,300 companies to create safe products. Malkan’s book, as described on its website, “tells the inside story of the unprecedented research and advocacy efforts of the group of women who created the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and built a national movement to shift the $50 billion beauty industry away from harmful chemicals and toward safer products.”

The issue of safe personal care and cosmetic products affects everyone from the person whose only personal product is a bar of soap to those who use many daily. (To see how your products stack up to Malkan’s research, visit the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database created by the Environmental Working Group in conjunction with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics). Malkan’s findings are pertinent to business ethics, sustainability, biology and research, and to the choices consumers - of any gender - make in the drugstore aisle. College-age people, in particular, “have a tremendous amount of power to fix these problems,” Malkan said. “The companies, especially the big beauty companies, are paying attention to what young people say and do and buy.”

What does Malkan hope to do with her book and campaign? “We all have a role to play in creating the world we want to live in - a world where we all have a chance to live our fullest and healthiest lives. It's an exciting time to be alive,” she said. “There are many things we need to educate ourselves about right now so we can empower ourselves and protect ourselves. This is the bigger message that I want to share with students: you are going to be the ones to change the world.”

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012, Malkan will be speaking at the Keynote Luncheon fundraiser from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Wege Center Ballroom. Tickets for this event are $50 and can be purchased online. Proceeds go to the JHIWSC and Center for Sustainability at Aquinas College. Malkan will also be speaking in the evening at 7 p.m. in the Wege Center Ballroom. Admission is free and open to the public.