10 Cosmetic Brands To AVOID Buying At ALL COSTS! (And 3 Safe Ones Added)

The Cosmetic Scandals the Law Could Not Stop—and the Simple Habits That Walk Around Them

Here is something most people never realize at the makeup counter.

Cosmetics are barely regulated. In the United States the FDA cannot approve a cosmetic before it is sold, cannot demand safety testing, and cannot even force a recall when it finds something dangerous.

So “worst” in this accounting does not mean illegal or that every product harmed everyone.

It means the brands with the most serious documented safety failures on public record—the recalls, the lawsuits, the confirmed contaminants.

Many of these issues have since been addressed, and every company here denies wrongdoing, which is only fair to say upfront.

This is about knowing the history so choices can be made well.

No cosmetic story is bigger than Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based baby powder, a product trusted in American homes for over a century.

Talc is mined from the ground right alongside asbestos, a known carcinogen, and the two can end up mixed.

In 2019 the FDA found trace asbestos in a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Powder and the company recalled about 33,000 bottles as part of a wider survey.

What followed became one of the largest product-liability sagas in history.

Tens of thousands of people sued; by 2026 roughly 67,000 claims were consolidated in federal court alone, with plaintiffs alleging the powder caused ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.

Some juries delivered staggering verdicts, including nearly $5 billion to 22 women in 2018 and a $1.5 billion award to a single plaintiff in late 2025.

The company tried three times to resolve the cases through bankruptcy; each attempt was rejected.

Johnson & Johnson firmly denies wrongdoing, insists its talc has always been asbestos-free, is appealing the verdicts, and has won several trials outright.

The litigation remains genuinely unsettled.

The science is contested too: the American Cancer Society describes the ovarian-cancer link from ordinary talc as slightly increased at most, with the clearer danger being asbestos contamination.

Talc and asbestos form under similar geological conditions, so an impure deposit can carry fibers; even a trace is considered dangerous because no safe level of exposure has been established.

The practical takeaway is already clear.

Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc-based baby powder in North America in 2020 and worldwide by 2023, replacing it with cornstarch.

The version on shelves today is not the one at the center of the lawsuits.

Any old bottle of classic talc powder still sitting in a cabinet is the one worth retiring.

The reformulated product sidesteps the entire dispute.

Claire’s is a mall fixture built almost entirely around children and teenagers, which is exactly what makes its asbestos story troubling.

Starting in 2017 independent testing reported asbestos in several Claire’s makeup products.

In 2019 the FDA confirmed tremolite asbestos in three of them—an eyeshadow, a compact powder, and a contour palette—all aimed at young girls.

The agency asked Claire’s to recall the products; Claire’s refused.

Because the FDA has no power to force a cosmetic recall, it took the rare step of publicly warning consumers not to use them.

Claire’s disputed the findings, accused the agency of faulty testing, and insisted its makeup was safe, though it pulled the items out of an abundance of caution and has since moved to talc-free cosmetics.

A retailer refusing a federal health agency’s recall request over makeup sold to children is as stark an example of the regulatory gap as exists.

The entire episode was possible only because United States law does not require cosmetics to be tested before they are sold and gives the FDA no power to compel a recall the way it can with food or drugs.

To Claire’s credit, the company later reformulated, publicly supported stronger FDA oversight, and offered refunds.

Public pressure works; a brand caught in a scandal can change course.

The talc-free label it now carries is exactly the signal a careful shopper should look for.

Justice, another enormously popular tween brand, landed in the same asbestos scandal at almost the same time.

In 2017 independent analysis of its Just Shine Shimmer Powder found trace asbestos; the company pulled around eight cosmetic products.

The FDA later confirmed asbestos in a Justice product as part of the same wave of testing.

The pattern across both brands was identical: inexpensive, glittery, talc-based makeup marketed to children and made cheaply enough that contaminated talc could slip through with no mandatory testing to catch it.

These were trace amounts detected by sensitive methods, not visible chunks of mineral, and there is no way to know how many children were meaningfully exposed.

With asbestos there is no reassuring lower limit, and the diseases it causes can take decades to appear.

The responsible reading is neither panic nor dismissal but simple avoidance.

Talc-based glitter makeup for kids carries a contamination risk that talc-free alternatives do not.

Avon is one of the most storied names in American beauty—the door-to-door empire many grandmothers bought from—which makes its place on the list genuinely sad.

Like Johnson & Johnson, Avon sold talc-based powders for decades and has faced lawsuits alleging asbestos contamination.

In 2022 a California jury ordered Avon to pay $40 million, including punitive damages, to a 76-year-old woman who developed mesothelioma after years of using the company’s talc products.

Court evidence indicated executives had been aware of asbestos concerns for years.

Avon’s inclusion corrects a comforting myth: that these problems belong only to faceless discount brands.

Avon was the opposite—a heritage company sold person-to-person and associated with truSt. If a brand built almost entirely on personal relationships could still end up liable, then reputation and longevity are simply not the safety guarantees people assume.

The next entry is not about a bad ingredient anyone chose but about a carcinogen that should never have been there at all: benzene.

In 2021 the independent lab Valisure tested nearly 300 batches of sunscreen from 69 companies and detected benzene—a chemical linked to leukemia and blood cancers—in 78 of them.

There is no safe level of exposure.

Johnson & Johnson voluntarily recalled five Neutrogena and Aveeno aerosol sunscreens; Banana Boat and Coppertone issued their own recalls over the following years.

Benzene is not a sunscreen ingredient; it is a contaminant most likely introduced through propellants or the manufacturing process, which is why spray products were hit hardeSt. The problem was sloppy quality control rather than a deliberately toxic formula, and the affected batches were pulled.

There was no wave of illnesses tied to these specific sunscreens—only the detection of a contaminant that should not have been present.

A product marketed as cancer prevention is held to a higher promise, and finding any amount of a carcinogen in it is a failure of exactly the trust sunscreen is sold on.

The benzene problem did not stop at sunscreen.

In 2022 Unilever recalled roughly 19 aerosol dry shampoos, including Dove, Nexxus, Suave, and TRESemmé, after benzene was detected.

Procter & Gamble separately recalled aerosol dry shampoos and conditioners under Pantene, Herbal Essences, and Aussie, and had earlier recalled Old Spice and Secret aerosol antiperspirants for the same reason.

The through-line is unmistakable: benzene keeps turning up as a contaminant in pressurized spray products across the personal-care industry.

In almost every case the benzene appeared in the propellant-driven spray version while the pump, stick, or roll-on version of the same category was not implicated.

The fix is therefore easy: change the format, not the product.

WEN by Chaz Dean was a celebrity-endorsed hair-care sensation whose cleansing conditioners promised healthier, fuller hair.

Instead it generated one of the most alarming complaint records in cosmetic history.

The FDA received more than 21,000 complaints of significant hair loss, thinning, and breakage—the largest number of adverse-event reports it had ever logged for any cosmetic hair-cleansing product.

A class-action lawsuit was eventually settled.

The company has consistently denied that its products cause hair loss, and no single ingredient was ever definitively proven to be the culprit.

Hair loss has many possible causes, so proving causation across tens of thousands of people is genuinely difficult.

Yet the sheer record-shattering volume of reports is itself the signal worth heeding.

Brazilian Blowout became the name in salon hair-smoothing treatments, promising sleek, frizz-free hair for months.

The treatment, like many keratin systems, released formaldehyde—a known carcinogen—when heated with a blow-dryer and flat iron.

Stylists who breathed the fumes all day reported burning eyes, nosebleeds, breathing problems, and headaches; some clients reported hair loss and scalp damage.

The company reached a settlement with California’s attorney general in 2012 over failing to warn about formaldehyde, and both the FDA and workplace-safety officials issued warnings.

Formaldehyde-free smoothing options now exist and salons are far more aware of ventilation.

The people most harmed were often not the customers but the workers who breathe the heated fumes every working day—an occupational-health issue as much as a consumer one.

Sunlight on a problem tends to fix it, and an informed shopper is the brightest light of all.

A few simple habits move almost every risk on this list out of the way.

Favor talc-free powders; nearly every asbestos story traces back to talc, so a cornstarch- or rice-based powder sidesteps the contamination risk entirely.

For sun protection reach for lotions rather than aerosol sprays, or choose a mineral sunscreen based on zinc oxide or titanium dioxide.

Be cautious with anything that fills the air—aerosol dry shampoos and formaldehyde-based salon treatments; a pump product or a formaldehyde-free system removes the risk.

Let independent testing do the work: free resources such as the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database rate products by ingredient safety, and certifications such as EWG Verified signal that a company chose to be checked.

The vast majority of cosmetics already owned are perfectly fine.

The products named here were flagged for specific documented reasons, and in almost every case the company disputed the findings or pulled the affected iteMs. This is not a reason to throw out a makeup bag or to believe every beauty product is poison.

The real lesson is bigger than any single brand and is about the system behind all of them.

The FDA cannot approve a cosmetic before it reaches the shelf, cannot require safety testing, and cannot force a recall even after finding a carcinogen—which is exactly how a company like Claire’s could simply refuse one.

Assume no one tested it for you, and shop accordingly.

Turn the package over. Favor talc-free, mineral, and fragrance-simple products.

Lean on independent ratings and give trust to the brands that choose transparency rather than the ones with the biggest advertising budget.

Do that and the whole list of documented failures becomes a set of mistakes that can be walked around.