Science Has Given Us the Power to Undermine Nature's Deadliest Creature: Should We Use It?
Lurking among the swaying palm trees, sugary sands and azure waters of the Florida Keys is the most dangerous animal on earth: the mosquito.
While there are thousands of varieties of mosquitoes, only a small percentage of them are responsible for causing disease. One of the leading culprits is Aedes aegypti, which thrives in the warm standing waters of South Florida, Central America and other tropical climes, and carries the viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
Dengue, a leading cause of death in many Asian and Latin American countries, causes bleeding and pain so severe that it's referred to as "breakbone fever." Chikungunya and yellow fever can both be fatal, and Zika, when contracted by a pregnant woman, can infect her fetus and cause devastating birth defects, including a condition called microcephaly. Babies born with this condition have abnormally small heads and lack proper brain development, which leads to profound, lifelong disabilities.
Decades of efforts to eradicate the disease-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito from the Keys and other tropical locales have had limited impact. Since the advent of pesticides, homes and neighborhoods have been drenched with them, but after each spraying, the mosquito population quickly bounces back, and the pesticides have to be sprayed over and over. But thanks to genetic engineering, new approaches are underway that could possibly prove safer, cheaper and more effective than any pesticide.
One of those approaches involves, ironically, releasing more mosquitoes in the Florida Keys.
The kill-switch will ensure that the female offspring die before they reach maturity and thus, be unable to reproduce.
British biotech company Oxitec has engineered male mosquitoes to have a genetic "kill-switch" that could potentially crash the local population of Aedes aegypti, at least in the short-term. The modified males that are being released are intended to mate with wild females.
Males don't bite; it's the female that's deadly, always seeking out blood to gorge on to help mature her eggs. After settling her filament-thin legs on her prey, she sinks a needlelike proboscis into the skin and sucks the blood until her translucent belly is bloated and glowing red.
The kill-switch will ensure that the female offspring die before they reach maturity and thus, be unable to reproduce. In some experiments using genetically modified mosquitoes, the small number of females that survived were rendered unable to bite. The modification prevented the proboscis, the sickle-like needle that pierces the skin, from forming properly. But this isn't the case with Oxitec's mosquitoes; in the Oxitec release, the females simply die off before they can mate.
The modified mosquitoes are the second genetically engineered insect to be released in the U.S. by Oxitec. The first was a modified diamondback moth, an agricultural pest that doesn't bite humans. But with the mosquitoes, there are many questions about the long-term effects on wild ecosystems, other species in the food chain, and human health. With the Keys initiative, there has been vociferous opposition from environmental groups and some local residents, but some scientists and public health experts say that genetically modified insects pose less of a risk than the diseases they carry and the powerful, indiscriminant pesticides used to combat them.
Oxitec spent a decade developing the technology and engaging in a massive public education campaign before beginning the field test in April. Eventually, the company will release 750,000 of the insects from six locations on three islands of the Florida Keys. Although the release has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, and the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, the company was never able to obtain unanimous approval among local residents, some of whom worry that the experiment could cause irreversible damage to the ecosystem.
The company has already begun distributing multiple blue and white boxes containing the eggs of thousands of the mosquitoes which, when water is added, will hatch legions of modified males.
There are a number of techniques available to genetically engineer animals and plants to minimize disease and maximize crop yields. According to Kevin Gorman, chief development officer for Oxitec, the company's mosquitoes were altered by injecting genetic material into the eggs, testing them, then re-injecting them if not enough of the new genes were incorporated into the developing embryos. "We insert genes, but take nothing away," he says.
Gorman points out that the Oxitec mosquitoes will only pass the kill-switch genes on to some of their offspring, and that they will die out fairly quickly. They should temporarily lessen diseases by reducing the local population of Aedes aegypti, but to have a long-term effect, repeated introductions of the altered mosquitoes would have to take place.
Critics say the Oxitec experiment is a precursor to a far more consequential, and more troubling development: the introduction of gene drives in modified species that aggressively tilt inheritance factors in a decided direction.
Gene Drives
Gene drives coupled with the recent development of the gene-editing technique, CRISPR-Cas9, promise to be far more targeted and powerful than previous gene altering efforts. Gene drives override the normal laws of inheritance by harnessing natural processes involved in reproduction. The technique targets small sections of the animal's DNA and replaces it with an altered allele, or trait-determining snippet. Normally, when two members of a species mate, the offspring have a 50 percent chance of receiving an allele because they will receive one from each parent. But in a gene drive, each offspring ends up getting two copies of a desired allele from a single parent—the modified parent. The method "drives" the modified DNA into up to 100 percent of the animals' offspring.
In the case of gene drive mosquitoes, the modified males will mate with wild females. Upon fertilization of the egg, the offspring will start off with one copy of the targeted allele from each parent. But an enzyme, called Cas9, is introduced and acts as a kind of molecular scissors to cut, or damage, the "wild" allele. Then the developing embryo's genetic repair mechanisms kick in and, to repair the damage, copy the undamaged allele from the modified parent. In this way, the offspring ends up with two copies of the modified allele, and it will pass the modification on to virtually all of its progeny.
There is some debate among researchers and others about what constitutes a gene drive, but leaders in the nascent field, such as Andrea Crisanti, generally agree that the defining factor is the heritability of a change introduced into a species. A gene drive is not a particular gene or suite of genes, but a program that proliferates in a species because it is inherited by virtually all offspring.
An illustration of how gene drives spread an altered gene through a population.
Mariuswalter, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Of the experts who spoke with Leaps.org for this article, there was disagreement on whether the Oxitec mosquitoes carry a gene drive, but Gorman says they don't because they carry no inheritance advantage. The mosquitoes have baked-in limitations on their potential impact on the tropical ecosystem because the kill-switch should only temporarily affect the local population of Aedes aegypti. The modified mosquitoes will die pretty quickly. But modified organisms that do carry gene drives have the potential to spread widely and persist for an unknown period of time.
Since it has such a reproductive advantage, animals modified by CRISPR and carrying gene drives can quickly replace wild species that compete with them. On the other hand, if the gene drive carries a kill-switch, it can theoretically cause a whole species to collapse.
This makes many people uneasy in an age of mass extinctions, when animals and ecosystems are already under extreme stress due to climate change and the ceaseless destruction of their habitats. Ecosystems are intricate, delicately balanced mosaics where one animal's competitor is another animal's food. The interconnectedness of nature is only partially understood and still contains many mysteries as to what effects human intervention could eventually cause.
But there's a compelling case to be made for the use of gene drives in general. Economies throughout the world are often based on the ecosystem and its animals, which rely on a natural food chain that was evolved over billions of years. But diseases carried by mosquitoes and other animals cause massive damage, both economically and in terms of human suffering.
Malaria alone is a case in point. In 2019, the World Health Organization reported 229 million cases of malaria, which led to 449,000 deaths worldwide. Over 70 percent of those deaths were in children under the age of 12. Efforts to combat malaria-carrying mosquitoes rely on fogging the home with chemical pesticides and sleeping under pesticide-soaked nets, and while this has reduced the occurrence of malaria in recent years, the result is nowhere near as effective as eradicating the Anopheles gambiae mosquito that carries the disease.
Pesticides, a known carcinogen for animals and humans, are a blunt instrument, says Anthony Shelton, a biologist and entomologist at Cornell University. "There are no pesticides so specific that they just get the animal you want to target. They get pollinators. They get predators and parasites. They negatively affect the ecosystem, and they get into our bodies." And it's not uncommon for insects to develop resistance to pesticides, necessitating the continuous development of new, more powerful chemicals to control them.
"The harm of insecticides is not debatable," says Shelton. With gene drives, the potential harm is less clear.
Shelton also points out that although genetic modification sounds radical, people have been altering the genes of animals since before recorded history, through the selective breeding of farm and domesticated animals. While critics of genetic modification decry the possibility of changing the trajectory of evolution in animals, "We've been doing it for centuries," says Shelton. "Gene drives are just a much faster way to do what we've been doing all along."
Still, one might argue that farms are closed experiments, because animals enclosed within farms don't mate with wild animals. This limits the impact of human changes on the larger ecosystem. And getting new genes to work their way through multiple generations in longer-lived animals through breeding can take centuries, which imposes the element of time to ascertain the relative benefits of any introduced change. Gene drives fast-forward change in ways that have never been harnessed before.
The unique thing about gene drives, Shelton says, is that they only affect the targeted species, because those animals will only breed with their own species. Although the Oxitec mosquitoes are modified but not imbued with a gene drive, they illustrate the point. Aedes aegypti will only mate with its own species, and not with any of the other 3,000 varieties of mosquito. According to Shelton, "If they were to disappear, it would have no effect on the fish, bats and birds that feed on them." But should gene drives become widely used, this won't always be true of animals that play a larger part in the food chain. This will be especially true if gene drives are used in mammals.
One factor, cited by both proponents of gene drives and those who want a complete moratorium on them, is that once a gene drive is released into the wild, animals tend to evolve strategies to resist them. In a 2017 article in Nature, Philip Messer, a population geneticist at Cornell, says that gene drives create "the ideal conditions for resistant organisms to flourish."
Sometimes, when CRISPR is used and the Cas9 enzyme cuts an allele soon after egg fertilization, the animal's repair mechanism, rather than creating a straight copy of the desired allele, inserts random DNA letters. The gene drive won't recognize the new sequence, and the change will slip through. In this way, nature has a way of overriding gene drives.
In caged experiments using CRISPR-modified mosquitoes, while the gene drive initially worked, resistance has developed fairly rapidly. Scientists working for Target Malaria, the massive anti-malaria enterprise funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are now working on developing a new version of a gene drive that is not so vulnerable to genetic resistance. But cage conditions are not representative of complex natural ecosystems, and to figure out how a modified species is going to affect the big picture, ultimately they will have to be tested in the wild.
Because there are so many unknowns, such testing is just too dangerous to undertake, according to environmentalists such as Dana Perls of the Friends of the Earth, an international consortium of environmental organizations headquartered in Amsterdam. "There's no safe way to experiment in the wild," she says. "Extinction is permanent, and to drive any species to extinction could have major environmental problems. At a time when we're seeing species disappearing at a high rate, we need to focus on safe processes and a slow approach rather than assume there's a silver bullet."
She cites a number of possible harmful outcomes from genetic modification, including the possible creation of dangerous hybrids that could be more effective at spreading disease and more resistant to pesticides. She points to a 2019 paper in Scientific Reports in which Yale researchers suggested there's evidence that genetically modified species can interbreed with organisms outside their own species. The researchers claimed that when Oxitec tested its modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Brazil, the release resulted in a dangerous hybrid due to the altered animals breeding with two other varieties of mosquito. They suggested that the hybrid mosquito was more robust than the original gene drive mosquitoes.
The paper contributed to breathless headlines in the media and made a big splash with the anti-GMO community. However, it turned out that when other scientists reviewed the data, they found it didn't support the authors' claims. In a short time, the editors of Nature ran an Editorial Expression of Concern for the article, noting that of the insects examined by the researchers, none of them contained the transgenes of the released mosquitoes. Among multiple concerns, Nature found that the researchers didn't follow the released population for more than a short time, and that previous work from the same authors had shown that after a short time, transgenes would have faded from the population.
Of course, unintended consequences are always a concern any time we interfere with nature, says Michael Montague, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Health Security. "Unpredictability is part of living in the world," he says. Still, he's relatively comfortable with the limited Florida Keys release.
"Even if one type of mosquito was eliminated in the Keys, the ecosystem wouldn't notice," he says. This is because of the thousands of other species of mosquito. He says that while the Keys initiative is ultimately a test, "Oxitec has done their due diligence."
Montague addressed another concern voiced by Perls. The Oxitec mosquitoes were developed so that the female larvae will only hatch in water containing the antibiotic tetracycline. Perls and others caution that, because of the widespread use of antibiotics, the drug inevitably makes its way into the water system, and could be present in the standing pools of water that mosquitoes mate and lay their eggs in.
It's highly unlikely that tetracycline would exist in concentrations high enough to make any difference, says Montague. "But even if it did happen, and the modified females hatched out and mated with wild males, many of their offspring would inherit the modification and only be able to hatch in tetracycline-laced water. The worst-case scenario would be that the pest control didn't work. Net effect: Zero," he says.
As for comparing GMO mosquitoes with insecticides, Montague says, "We 100 percent know insecticides have a harmful effect on human health, whereas modified [male] mosquitoes don't bite humans. They're essentially a chemical-free insecticide, and if there were to be some harmful effect on human health, it would have to be some complicated, convoluted effect" that no one has predicted.
It's not clear, though, given the transitory nature of self-limiting genetically modified insects, whether any effects on the ecosystem would be long-lasting. Certainly in the case of the Oxitec mosquitoes, any effect on the environment would likely be subtle. However, there are other species that are far more important to the food chain, and humans have been greatly impacting them for centuries, sometimes with disastrous effects.
The world's oceans are particularly vulnerable to the effects of human actions. "Codfish used to dominate the North Atlantic ecosystem," says Montague, but due to overfishing, there were huge changes to that ecosystem, including the expansion of their prey—lobsters, crabs and shrimp. The whole system got out of balance." The fish illustrate the international nature of the issues related to gene drives, because wild species have few boundaries and a change in one region can easily spread far and wide.
On the other hand, gene drives can be used for beneficial purposes beyond eliminating disease-carrying species. They could also be used to combat invasive species, fight crop-destroying insects, promote biodiversity, and give a leg up to endangered species that would otherwise die out.
Today nearly 90 percent of the world's islands have been invaded by disease-carrying rodents that have over-multiplied and are driving other island species to extinction. Common rodents such as rats and mice normally encounter a large number of predators in mainland territories, and this controls their numbers. Once they are introduced into island ecosystems, however, they have few predators and often become invasive. Because of this, they are a prevalent cause of the extinction of both animals and plants globally. The primary way to combat them has been to spread powerful toxicants that, when ingested, cause death. Not only has this inhumane practice had limited impact, the toxicants can be eaten by untargeted species and are toxic to humans.
The Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents program (GBIRd), an international consortium of scientists, ethicists, regulatory experts, sociologists, conservationists and others, is exploring the possible development of a genetically modified mouse that could be introduced to islands where rodents are invasive. Similar to the Oxitec mosquitoes, the mice would carry a modification that results in the appearance of only one sex, and they would also carry a gene drive. Theoretically, once they mate with the wild mice, all of the surviving offspring would be either male or female, and the species would disappear from the islands, giving other, threatened species an opportunity to revive.
GBIRd is moving slowly by design and is currently focused on asking if a genetically engineered mouse should be developed. The program is a potential model for how gene drives can be ethically developed with maximum foresight and the least impact on complex ecosystems. By first releasing a genetically engineered mouse on an island — likely years from now — the impact would naturally be contained within a limited locale.
Regulating GM Insects
While multiple agencies in the U.S. were involved in approving the release of the Oxitec mosquitoes, most experts agree that there is not a straightforward path to regulating genetically modified organisms released into the environment. Clearly, international regulation is needed as genetically modified organisms are released into open environments like the air and the ocean.
The United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity, which oversees environmental issues at an international level, recently met to continue a process of hammering out voluntary protocols concerning gene drives. Multiple nations have already signed on to already-established protocols, but the United States has not and, according to Montague, is not expected to. "The U.S. will never be signatory to CBD agreements because agricultural companies are huge businesses" that may not see them as in their best interests, he says. Bans or limitations on the release of genetically modified organisms could limit crop yields, for example, thereby limiting profits.
Even if every nation signed on to international regulations of gene drives, cooperation is voluntary. The regulations wouldn't prevent bad actors from using the technology in nefarious ways, such as developing gene drives that can be used as weapons, according to Perls. An example would be unleashing a genetically modified invasive insect to destroy the crops of enemy nations. Or the releasing of a swarm of disease-carrying insects. But in this scenario, it would be very hard to limit the genetically modified species to a specific environment, and the bad actors could be unleashing disaster on themselves.
Because of the risks of misuse, scientists disagree on whether to openly share their gene drive research with others. But Montague believes that there should be a universal registry of gene drives, because "one gene drive can mess up another one. Two groups using the same species should know about each other," he says.
Ultimately, the decision of whether and when to release gene drives into nature rests with not one group, but with society as a whole. This includes not only diverse experts and regulatory bodies, but the general public, a group Oxitec spent considerable time and resources interacting with for their Florida Keys project. In the end, they gained approval for the initiative by a majority of Keys residents, but never gained a total consensus.
There's no escaping the fact that the use of gene drives is a nascent field, and even geneticists and regulators are still grapping with the best ways to develop, oversee, regulate, and control them. Much more data is needed to fully ascertain its risks and benefits.
Experts agree that the Oxitec venture isn't likely to have a noticeable effect on the larger ecosystem unless something truly catastrophic goes wrong. But following the GMO mosquitoes over time will give scientists more real-world data about the long-term effects of genetically altered species. If the release doesn't work, nothing about the ecosystem will change and Aedes aegypti will continue to be a menace to human health. But if something goes horribly wrong, it could hinder the field for years, if not forever.
On the other hand, if the Oxitec mosquitoes and other early initiatives achieve their goals of reducing disease, increasing crop yields, and protecting biodiversity, in the words of Anthony Shelton, "Maybe, 25 to 50 years from now, people will wonder what all the fuss was about."
Correction: The original version of this article mistakenly stated that the modified Oxitec mosquitoes would not be able to form a proper proboscis to bite humans. That is true for some modified mosquitoes but not the Oxitec ones, whose female offspring die off before they reach maturity. Additionally, the Oxitec release was not approved by the FDA and CDC, as originally stated. The FDA and CDC withdrew their role and passed the oversight to other regulatory entities.
New tech aims to make the ocean healthier for marine life
A defunct drydock basin arched by a rusting 19th century steel bridge seems an incongruous place to conduct state-of-the-art climate science. But this placid and protected sliver of water connecting Brooklyn’s Navy Yard to the East River was just right for Garrett Boudinot to float a small dock topped with water carbon-sensing gear. And while his system right now looks like a trio of plastic boxes wired up together, it aims to mediate the growing ocean acidification problem, caused by overabundance of dissolved carbon dioxide.
Boudinot, a biogeochemist and founder of a carbon-management startup called Vycarb, is honing his method for measuring CO2 levels in water, as well as (at least temporarily) correcting their negative effects. It’s a challenge that’s been occupying numerous climate scientists as the ocean heats up, and as states like New York recognize that reducing emissions won’t be enough to reach their climate goals; they’ll have to figure out how to remove carbon, too.
To date, though, methods for measuring CO2 in water at scale have been either intensely expensive, requiring fancy sensors that pump CO2 through membranes; or prohibitively complicated, involving a series of lab-based analyses. And that’s led to a bottleneck in efforts to remove carbon as well.
But recently, Boudinot cracked part of the code for measurement and mitigation, at least on a small scale. While the rest of the industry sorts out larger intricacies like getting ocean carbon markets up and running and driving carbon removal at billion-ton scale in centralized infrastructure, his decentralized method could have important, more immediate implications.
Specifically, for shellfish hatcheries, which grow seafood for human consumption and for coastal restoration projects. Some of these incubators for oysters and clams and scallops are already feeling the negative effects of excess carbon in water, and Vycarb’s tech could improve outcomes for the larval- and juvenile-stage mollusks they’re raising. “We’re learning from these folks about what their needs are, so that we’re developing our system as a solution that’s relevant,” Boudinot says.
Ocean acidification can wreak havoc on developing shellfish, inhibiting their shells from growing and leading to mass die-offs.
Ocean waters naturally absorb CO2 gas from the atmosphere. When CO2 accumulates faster than nature can dissipate it, it reacts with H2O molecules, forming carbonic acid, H2CO3, which makes the water column more acidic. On the West Coast, acidification occurs when deep, carbon dioxide-rich waters upwell onto the coast. This can wreak havoc on developing shellfish, inhibiting their shells from growing and leading to mass die-offs; this happened, disastrously, at Pacific Northwest oyster hatcheries in 2007.
This type of acidification will eventually come for the East Coast, too, says Ryan Wallace, assistant professor and graduate director of environmental studies and sciences at Long Island’s Adelphi University, who studies acidification. But at the moment, East Coast acidification has other sources: agricultural runoff, usually in the form of nitrogen, and human and animal waste entering coastal areas. These excess nutrient loads cause algae to grow, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, Wallace says; but when algae die, they’re consumed by bacteria, whose respiration in turn bumps up CO2 levels in water.
“Unfortunately, this is occurring at the bottom [of the water column], where shellfish organisms live and grow,” Wallace says. Acidification on the East Coast is minutely localized, occurring closest to where nutrients are being released, as well as seasonally; at least one local shellfish farm, on Fishers Island in the Long Island Sound, has contended with its effects.
The second Vycarb pilot, ready to be installed at the East Hampton shellfish hatchery.
Courtesy of Vycarb
Besides CO2, ocean water contains two other forms of dissolved carbon — carbonate (CO3-) and bicarbonate (HCO3) — at all times, at differing levels. At low pH (acidic), CO2 prevails; at medium pH, HCO3 is the dominant form; at higher pH, CO3 dominates. Boudinot’s invention is the first real-time measurement for all three, he says. From the dock at the Navy Yard, his pilot system uses carefully calibrated but low-cost sensors to gauge the water’s pH and its corresponding levels of CO2. When it detects elevated levels of the greenhouse gas, the system mitigates it on the spot. It does this by adding a bicarbonate powder that’s a byproduct of agricultural limestone mining in nearby Pennsylvania. Because the bicarbonate powder is alkaline, it increases the water pH and reduces the acidity. “We drive a chemical reaction to increase the pH to convert greenhouse gas- and acid-causing CO2 into bicarbonate, which is HCO3,” Boudinot says. “And HCO3 is what shellfish and fish and lots of marine life prefers over CO2.”
This de-acidifying “buffering” is something shellfish operations already do to water, usually by adding soda ash (NaHCO3), which is also alkaline. Some hatcheries add soda ash constantly, just in case; some wait till acidification causes significant problems. Generally, for an overly busy shellfish farmer to detect acidification takes time and effort. “We’re out there daily, taking a look at the pH and figuring out how much we need to dose it,” explains John “Barley” Dunne, director of the East Hampton Shellfish Hatchery on Long Island. “If this is an automatic system…that would be much less labor intensive — one less thing to monitor when we have so many other things we need to monitor.”
Across the Sound at the hatchery he runs, Dunne annually produces 30 million hard clams, 6 million oysters, and “if we’re lucky, some years we get a million bay scallops,” he says. These mollusks are destined for restoration projects around the town of East Hampton, where they’ll create habitat, filter water, and protect the coastline from sea level rise and storm surge. So far, Dunne’s hatchery has largely escaped the ill effects of acidification, although his bay scallops are having a finicky year and he’s checking to see if acidification might be part of the problem. But “I think it's important to have these solutions ready-at-hand for when the time comes,” he says. That’s why he’s hosting a second, 70-liter Vycarb pilot starting this summer on a dock adjacent to his East Hampton operation; it will amp up to a 50,000 liter-system in a few months.
If it can buffer water over a large area, absolutely this will benefit natural spawns. -- John “Barley” Dunne.
Boudinot hopes this new pilot will act as a proof of concept for hatcheries up and down the East Coast. The area from Maine to Nova Scotia is experiencing the worst of Atlantic acidification, due in part to increased Arctic meltwater combining with Gulf of St. Lawrence freshwater; that decreases saturation of calcium carbonate, making the water more acidic. Boudinot says his system should work to adjust low pH regardless of the cause or locale. The East Hampton system will eventually test and buffer-as-necessary the water that Dunne pumps from the Sound into 100-gallon land-based tanks where larvae grow for two weeks before being transferred to an in-Sound nursery to plump up.
Dunne says this could have positive effects — not only on his hatchery but on wild shellfish populations, too, reducing at least one stressor their larvae experience (others include increasing water temperatures and decreased oxygen levels). “If it can buffer water over a large area, absolutely this will [benefit] natural spawns,” he says.
No one believes the Vycarb model — even if it proves capable of functioning at much greater scale — is the sole solution to acidification in the ocean. Wallace says new water treatment plants in New York City, which reduce nitrogen released into coastal waters, are an important part of the equation. And “certainly, some green infrastructure would help,” says Boudinot, like restoring coastal and tidal wetlands to help filter nutrient runoff.
In the meantime, Boudinot continues to collect data in advance of amping up his own operations. Still unknown is the effect of releasing huge amounts of alkalinity into the ocean. Boudinot says a pH of 9 or higher can be too harsh for marine life, plus it can also trigger a release of CO2 from the water back into the atmosphere. For a third pilot, on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, Vycarb will install yet another system from which Boudinot’s team will frequently sample to analyze some of those and other impacts. “Let's really make sure that we know what the results are,” he says. “Let's have data to show, because in this carbon world, things behave very differently out in the real world versus on paper.”
When Erika Schreder’s 14-year-old daughter, who is Black, had her curly hair braided at a Seattle-area salon two or three times recently, the hairdresser applied a styling gel to seal the tresses in place.
Schreder and her daughter had been trying to avoid harmful chemicals, so they were shocked to later learn that this particular gel had the highest level of formaldehyde of any product tested by the Washington State Departments of Ecology and Health. In January 2023, the agencies released a report that uncovered high levels of formaldehyde in certain hair products, creams and lotions marketed to or used by people of color. When Schreder saw the report, she mentioned it to her daughter, who told her the name of the gel smoothed on her hair.
“It was really upsetting,” said Schreder, science director at Toxic-Free Future, a Seattle-based nonprofit environmental health research and advocacy organization. “Learning that this product used on my daughter’s hair contained cancer-causing formaldehyde made me even more committed to advocating for our state to ban toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products.”
In 2013, Toxic-Free Future launched Mind the Store to challenge the nation’s largest retailers in adopting comprehensive policies that eliminate toxic chemicals in their personal care products and packaging, and develop safer alternatives.
Now, more efforts are underway to expose and mitigate the harm in cosmetics, hair care and other products that children apply on their faces, heads, nails and other body parts. Advocates hope to raise awareness among parents while prompting manufacturers and salon professionals to adopt safer alternatives.
A recent study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Earthjustice, a San Francisco-based nonprofit public interest environmental law organization, revealed that most children in the United States use makeup and body products that may contain carcinogens and other toxic chemicals. In January, the results were published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Based on more than 200 surveys, 70 percent of parents in the study reported that their children 12 or younger have used makeup and body products marketed to youth — for instance, glitter, face paint and lip gloss.
Childhood exposure to harmful makeup and body product ingredients can also be considered an environmental justice issue, as communities of color may be more likely to use these products.
“We are concerned about exposure to chemicals that may be found in cosmetics and body products, including those that are marketed toward children,” said the study’s senior author, Julie Herbstman, a professor and director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. The goal of the survey was to try to understand how much kids are using cosmetic and body products and when, how and why they are using them.
“There is widespread use of children’s cosmetic and body products, and kids are using them principally to play,” Herbstman said. “That’s really quite different than how adults use cosmetic and body products.” Even with products that are specifically designed for children, “there’s no regulation that ensures that these products are safe for kids.” Also, she said, some children are using adult products — and they may do so in inadvisable ways, such as ingesting lipstick or applying it to other areas of the face.
Earlier research demonstrated that beauty and personal care products manufactured for children and adults frequently contain toxic chemicals, such as lead, asbestos, PFAS, phthalates and formaldehyde. Heavy metals and other toxic chemicals in children’s makeup and body products are particularly harmful to infants and youth, who are growing rapidly and whose bodies are less efficient at metabolizing these chemicals. Whether these chemicals are added intentionally or are present as contaminants, they have been associated with cancer, neurodevelopmental harm, and other serious and irreversible health effects, the Columbia University and Earthjustice researchers noted.
“Even when concentrations of individual chemicals are low in products, the potential for interactive effects from multiple toxicants is important to take into consideration,” the authors wrote in the journal article. “Allergic reactions, such as contact dermatitis, are some of the most frequently cited negative health outcomes associated with the use of cosmetics.”
Children’s small body side, rapid growth rate and immature immune systems are biologically more prone to the effects of toxicants than adults.
Adobe Stock
In addition to children’s rapid growth rate, the study also reported that their small body size, developing tissues and organs, and immature immune systems are biologically more prone to the effects of toxicants than adults. Meanwhile, the study noted, “childhood exposure to harmful makeup and body product ingredients can also be considered an environmental justice issue, as communities of color may be more likely to use these products.”
Although adults are the typical users of cosmetics, similar items are heavily marketed to youth with attention-grabbing features such as bright colors, animals and cartoon characters, according to the study. Beyond conventional makeup such as eyeshadow and lipstick, children may apply face paint, body glitter, nail polish, hair gel and fragrances. They also may frequent social media platforms on which these products are increasingly being promoted.
Products for both children and adults are currently regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Also, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1967 directs the Federal Trade Commission and the FDA “to issue regulations requiring that all ‘consumer commodities’ be labeled to disclose net contents, identity of commodity, and name and place of business of the product's manufacturer, packer, or distributor.” As the Columbia University and Earthjustice authors pointed out, though, “current safety regulations have been widely criticized as inadequate.”
The Personal Care Products Council in Washington, D.C., “fundamentally disagrees with the premise that companies put toxic chemicals in products produced for children,” industry spokeswoman Lisa Powers said in an email. Founded in 1894, the national trade association represents 600 member companies that manufacture, distribute and supply most personal care products marketed in the United States.
No category of consumer products is subject to less government oversight than cosmetics and other personal care products. -- Environmental Working Group.
“Science and safety are the cornerstones of our industry,” Powers stated. For more than a decade, she wrote, “the [Council] and our member companies worked diligently with a bipartisan group of congressional leaders and a diverse group of stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness of the FDA regulatory authority and to provide the safety reassurances that consumers expect and deserve.”
Powers added that the “industry employs and consults thousands of scientific and medical experts” who study the impacts of cosmetics and personal care products and the ingredients used in them. The Council also maintains a comprehensive database where consumers can look up science and safety information on the thousands of ingredients in sunscreens, toothpaste, shampoo, moisturizer, makeup, fragrances and other products.
However, the Environmental Working Group, which empowers consumers with breakthrough research to make informed choices about healthy living, believes the regulations are still not robust enough. “No category of consumer products is subject to less government oversight than cosmetics and other personal care products,” states the organization’s website. “Although many of the chemicals and contaminants in cosmetics and personal care products likely pose little risk, exposure to some has been linked to serious health problems, including cancer.”
The group, which operates the Skin Deep Database noted that “since 2009, 595 cosmetics manufacturers have reported using 88 chemicals, in more than 73,000 products, that have been linked to cancer, birth defects or reproductive harm.”
But change, for both adults and kids, is on the horizon. The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 significantly expanded the FDA’s authority to regulate cosmetics. In May 2023, Washington state adopted a law regulating cosmetics and personal care products. The Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act (HB 1047) bans chemicals in beauty and personal care products, such as PFAS, lead, mercury, phthalates and formaldehyde-releasing agents. These bans take effect in 2025, except for formaldehyde releasers, which have a phased-in approach starting in 2026.
Industry and advocates view this as a positive development. Powers, the spokesperson, praised “the long-awaited” Modernization Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022, which she said, “advances product safety and innovation.” Jen Lee, chief impact officer at Beautycoutner, a company that sells personal care products, also welcomes the change. “We were proud to support the Washington Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act (HB 1047) by mobilizing our community of Brand Advocates who reside in Washington State,” Lee said. “Together, they made their voices heard by sending over 1,000 emails to their state legislators urging them to support and pass the bill.”
Laurie Valeriano, executive director of Toxic-Free Future, praised the upcoming Washington state law as “a huge win for public health and the environment that will have impacts that ripple across the nation.” She added that “companies won’t make special products for Washington state.” Instead, “they will reformulate and make products safer for everyone” — adults and children.
You shouldn’t have to be a toxicologist to shop for shampoo. -- Washington State Rep. Sharlett Mena
The new legislation will require Washington state agencies to assess the hazards of chemicals used in products that can impact vulnerable populations, while providing support for small businesses and independent cosmetologists to transition to safer products.
The Toxic-Free Future team lauds the Cosmetics Act, signed in May 2023.
Courtesy Toxic-Free Future
“When we go to a store, we assume the products on the shelf are safe, but this isn’t always true,” said Washington State Rep. Sharlett Mena, a Democrat serving in the 29th Legislative District (Tacoma), who sponsored the law. “I introduced this bill (HB 1047) because currently, the burden is on the consumer to navigate labels and find safe alternatives. You shouldn’t have to be a toxicologist to shop for shampoo.”
The new law aims to protect people of all ages, but especially youth. “Children are more susceptible to the impacts of toxic chemicals because their bodies are still developing,” Mena said. “Lead, for example, is significantly more hazardous to children than adults. Also, since children, unlike adults, tend to put things in their mouths all the time, they are more exposed to harmful chemicals in personal care and other products.”
Cosmetologists and hair professionals are taking notice. “Safety should be the practitioner’s number one concern” in using products on small children, said Anwar Saleem, a hair stylist, instructor and former salon owner in Washington, D.C., who is chairman of the D.C. Board of Barbering and Cosmetology and president of the National Interstate Council of State Boards of Cosmetology. “There are so many products on the market that it can be confusing.”
Hair products designed and labeled for children's use often have milder formulations, but “every child is unique, and what works for one may not work for another,” Saleem said. He recommends doing a patch test, in which the stylist or cosmetologist dabs the product on a small, inconspicuous area of the scalp or skin and waits anywhere from an hour to a day to check for irritation before continuing to serve the client. “Performing a patch test, observing children's reactions to a product and adequately adjusting are essential.”
Saleem seeks products that are free from harsh chemicals such as sulfates, phthalates and parabens, noting that these ingredients can be irritating and drying to the hair and scalp. If a child has sensitive skin or allergies, Saleem opts for hypoallergenic products.
We also need to ensure that less toxic alternatives are available and accessible to all consumers. It’s often under-resourced, low-income populations who suffer the burden of environmental exposures and do not have access or cannot afford these safer alternatives. -- Lesliam Quirós-Alcalá.
Lesliam Quirós-Alcalá, an assistant professor in the department of environmental health and engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said current regulatory loopholes on product labeling still allow manufacturers to advertise their cosmetics and personal care products as “gentle” and “natural.” However, she said, those terms may be misleading as they don’t necessarily mean the contents are less toxic or harmful to consumers.
“We also need to ensure that less toxic alternatives are available and accessible to all consumers,” Quirós-Alcalá said, “as often alternatives considered to be less toxic come with a hefty price tag.” As a result, “it’s often under-resourced, low-income populations who suffer the burden of environmental exposures and do not have access or cannot afford these safer alternatives.”
To advocate for safer alternatives, Quirós-Alcalá suggests that parents turn to consumer groups involved in publicizing the harms of personal care products. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a program of Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, a national science-based advocacy organization aiming to prevent the disease by eliminating related environmental exposures. Other resources that inform users about unsafe ingredients include the mobile apps Clearya and Think Dirty.
“Children are not little adults, so it’s important to increase parent and consumer awareness to minimize their exposures to toxic chemicals in everyday products,” Quirós-Alcalá said. “Becoming smarter, more knowledgeable consumers is the first step to protecting your family from potentially harmful and toxic ingredients in consumer products.”