Personal care products may contain many chemicals, some of which are potential carcinogens or endocrine disrupters and are linked to breast cancer. Product use is an important source of chemical exposure for women, but more information is needed about how chemical exposure differs among different groups to inform prevention. The Chemicals and Personal Care: Asian, Black, and Latina Exposure (CAPABLE) Project is a diverse coalition of community health organizations and scientists executing a multi-pronged approach to study racial/ethnic differences in personal care product use and chemical exposures. As one of the science partners, Dr. Paula Johnson spoke about CAPABLE's community survey results, product ingredient label review, and product testing, and how most products selected by community partners contained chemicals of concern.
Featured Speaker
Paula Johnson PhD, MPH, is Chief of the California Safe Cosmetics Program at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). The program investigates and informs the public about hazardous exposures from cosmetics and keeps a public searchable database of products containing ingredients linked to health harm. Dr. Johnson’s expertise includes exposure and epidemiological research on chemicals in consumer goods and methods for synthesizing streams of evidence of toxicity. She also has 10 years’ experience in product development and analysis for manufacturing industries. She holds a PhD in environmental health sciences from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in public health from San Diego State University. She was a research fellow with the University of California San Francisco’s Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment, where she helped develop the first systematic review methodology for environmental health, prior to joining CDPH.
This webinar was moderated by Sharyle Patton, Director of the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center. It lasted for 45 minutes and was be recorded for our call and webinar archive.