Stop and think: how many beauty products did you use this morning" Did you have a shower, wash your face, apply makeup, spritz on some perfume" And if you added up the ingredients lists of all those products, how many chemicals did you come into contact with before you even walked out the front door" Filmmaker Phyllis Ellis wants you to question what you?re putting on your skin.
When it was released in the US in October 2019, Toxic Beauty ? a documentary on the potentially harmful chemicals inside cosmetics ? caused quite a stir. It even led Vogue to ask the question: are skin care products the new cigarettes"
Over the course of 90 minutes, Toxic Beauty speaks to a whistleblower, her lawyer, world-class scientists and cancer survivors to understand what happens when personal care products go wrong. For the most part, Johnson & Johnson take centre stage, thanks to nearly 16,000 lawsuits from consumers claiming its talc products caused their cancer. What you decide to put on your skin is entirely up to you. However, Phyllis Ellis, the woman behind Toxic Beauty, asks you to read the ingredient label before your next purchase. Here, she shares why:

Gritty Pretty: First of all, I want to know how Toxic Beauty came to be ? do you have a background in the beauty industry"
PHYLLIS ELLIS: No, I don?t have a background in beauty at all. I was working with a company [White Pine Pictures] that had been developing a green reality show focusing on fashion an...