According to reports from the Associated Press, J&J hopes to remove all quarternium-15 from its baby products within about two years, and even sooner for baby shampoo. Alternative preservatives are being developed and versions are being tested.
As for 1,4-dioxane, J&J is working with their supplies to reduce the traces of 1,4-dioxane to less than four parts per million, when already most of their product fulfill this standard. Over time, J&J hope to remove all 1,4-dioxane from their products.
Johnson & Johnson is supportive to parents needs thus keeping their products safe for babies and children is important. Last year, Johnson & Johnson removed all phthalates, another dangerous chemical, from its baby products. Over time, Johnson & Johnson products will be free of mos dangerous chemicals, or at least in trace amounts.
The frustrating part of all this is that the baby products giant has had to be almost forced to do this through the boycotting and activist actions and that is a question more people should be asking. Why would they have to be protested and boycotted to remove such dangerous cancer-causing chemicals from baby products? Why did they feel they had to put them in there in the first place? And why is it going to take upwards of two years to remove them?
These are questions that Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) should be required to answer, but some people are applauding the baby products company for agreeing to take these chemicals out and other baby products companies are going to be following suit, which would be expected.
The question that still remains, why were these chemicals in there in the first place? And even more importantly, why did it take activists boycotting and protesting Johnson and Johnson for two years before they decided to do anything about it? These protests have been going on since 2009.
In a world where people are trying to live green, save the environment and have healthier lives, it seems they wouldn’t have to be dragged, reluctantly, to do something about this. Wouldn’t it have been a smarter move to jump in ahead of all the protests and boycotts and show that they did truly have a concern for human and environmental safety? You would think so, but apparently Johnson and Johnson didn’t think so.
The downside is that as the chemicals come out, they will more than likely go up in price, but this isn’t an unexpected result of having safer, natural products. Walk into any health foods store and you’ll see much more expensive products on the shelves. We’re paying for safer and healthier products and that’s fine, but it isn’t exactly surprising that some people don’t make the switch to green living simply because they can’t afford it.
Johnson and Johnson is doing what it should have done all along, what it should have done a long time ago. And that is a good thing, but I think that the pats on the back this baby products giant are getting for doing this are a little over rated. They shouldn’t have had to be forced to do something of this magnitude and these upper level people congratulating them on a job well done, seem to be overlooking that. People would have much more respect for this company, had they come out on their own and made an announcement that they were removing cancer causing ingredients from all their products in the interest of health and safety, years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment