Change is coming to your Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo, but it’s going to take two years for it to happen. In fact, your baby may have grown right out of using these products by then. Following the recent dust-up, the company will remove a chemical from its baby shampoos that is potentially carcinogenic, but it will take two years for the shift to totally take place, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The change isn’t just to shampoos, actually. The formaldehyde-releasing preservative, Quaternium-15, will be taken out of hundreds of J&J products, the paper notes. The nonprofit Campaign for Safe Cosmetics first raised its concerns with J&J about the chemical back in 2009 and the company began phasing its use out then. But it is still pervasive and the company promised to have it gone from its products in two years. 

CEO William Weldon told the group in a letter that “the company is making the effort even though the trace amounts of formaldehyde exposure pose little risk,” the paper notes, writing that a full bottle of shampoo has the same amount of formaldehyde as what a person would endure "by eating an apple or pear, in which it occurs naturally."

Nothing activates activists like products that could harm babies. Johnson & Johnson's signature baby shampoo sold in the U.S. contains trace amounts of two chemicals considered harmful and potentially cancer-causing, 1,4-dioxane and quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde.

Compounding the situation, the company produces versions of the brand without those elements according to a coalition of health and environmental groups led by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics that has been targeting the world's largest health care company on this issue for 2 1/2 years. 

"Johnson & Johnson clearly can make safer baby shampoo in all the markets around the world, but it's not doing it," commented Lisa Archer, director of the San Francisco-based Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, to AP (via USA Today). "It's clearly a double standard, something they can easily fix."Continue reading...