Thursday, May 27, 2010

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

This is an abridged article from Toronto Star of May 2010, "Secret ingredients found in perfumes" by Noor Javed

They make you smell like an exotic flower, but popular perfumes and body sprays may also be dousing you with small amounts of chemicals and trigger allergic reactions and disrupt hormones.
Toronto based Environmental Defence and Campaign for Safe Cosmetics in the US tested 17 popular fragrance products and found they contained a total of 38 secret chemicals not listed on the label. On average, each product had 14 of those chemicals.10 of them are known to cause allergies and 4 have a potential to disrupt the hormone system. Many of them are classified as allergens by the European Union, says Rick Smith of the Environmental Defence. "The problem is that they are listed under a generic name "fragrance" and Canadian laws do not oblige the cosmetic manufacturers to be transparent."
People with chemical sensitivities may suffer from nausea, headaches and skin reactions if exposed to strong scents. That's why they are limited even in staying in places with other people, such as theatres and street cars.

TASK: Check this website and discuss about your findings.


LANGUAGE TASK:

Find the past participles in the text and decide which of them are used as:
1. passive forms
2. adjectives.

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