Cosmetics and personal care items women use every day are packed with a constellation of chemicals that health advocates say could be connected to a host of health problems.

The Personal Care Products Council (PCPC), the trade group representing 90% of the US beauty industry, says their products are “among the safest” regulated by the FDA, and maintains that fears of certain chemicals are overblown.

“The number of substances on a country’s restricted list is a misleading measure of the effectiveness of regulation in protecting human health and safety,” Lezlee Westine, the president and CEO of the Personal Care Products Council, said in an emailed statement on EWG’s analysis. “The materials cited as examples by EWG are not, and would never be, used as cosmetic ingredients because they are pesticides, narcotics, and radioactive substances.” (EWG’s list includes current cosmetic ingredients like formaldehyde, parabens and toluene.)

While PCPC supports regulatory reforms, Westine stopped short of endorsing the Personal Care Products Safety Act, a current legislative push to increase FDA authority. “We believe well-crafted reforms – grounded in science – will support the industry’s ability to innovate and further strengthen consumer confidence in the products they trust and enjoy every day,” Westine said.

Data on real-world chemical exposure is limited, and most safety assessments look at one chemical and one source at a time. “But we are not using just one product,” Leiba said. “Your exposure in just one day can greatly outweigh what this one company said was the low dose you had in your product, which is why we are concerned.”

Women, especially black women, have been found to have a higher body burden of certain chemicals found in cosmetics, including parabens and phthalates. Both are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which mimic human hormones. Of particular concern to researchers, they can have effects at very small doses and have been linked to numerous health issues.

“If you think about the chronic conditions that the world is experiencing now – like fertility problems, thyroid conditions, diabetes, ADHD – these are all heavily impacted by hormones,” said Carol Kwiatkowski, the executive director of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX), a not-for-profit research foundation focused on reducing harmful chemicals in the environment. “Prevalence rates are skyrocketing. We just don’t know what is causing it. It’s undeniable that environmental chemicals are part of the picture. And we just continue to ignore them.”

More than 200 possible endocrine-disrupting chemicals currently in use in cosmetics and personal care products have been identified by TEDX.