The House Judiciary Committee of the Colorado House of Representatives has voted down — by a seven-to-four bipartisan vote — a personal care products protection bill, according to executives at the Washington-based Personal Care Products Council, which had vigorously opposed the measure as unworkable and draconian.
The vote ends the battle over this bill, although the industry group faces a flood of other proposals at the state and federal level. John Hurson, executive vice president of government affairs at PCPC, said, “I don’t expect this to change the environment in a wholesale way. But it may start the process of getting policy makers to focus on the science more so than in the past.”
He noted the bill originally banned in total the most minute trace quantities of elements thought to be carcinogenic or endocrine disrupters, even if the product was proven safe. These miniscule quantities tended to end up in the product as a result of the manufacturing process or were harbored in ingredients used in the formula. Just before the vote, the language was changed to allow trace elements permitted by the European Union, Hurson said, adding that the change sowed confusion and the bill’s defeat.
