Heather McKenney (SPH’17) Is Lead Toxicologist at The Honest Company.
Heather McKenney
Heather McKenney (SPH’17) Is Lead Toxicologist at The Honest Company
As the head of the toxicology and product safety team, the SPH alum evaluates the company’s process for ingredient selection and clinical testing.
Ethical consumption of products has risen over the last few decades, with recent research showing that consumers have become even more committed to making health-conscious and sustainable purchases in the era of COVID-19.
This consumer consciousness and desire to choose products that are safe for themselves and their communities help drive the mission and values of The Honest Company, a Los Angeles-based consumer goods company where School of Public Health alum Heather McKenney (SPH’17), works as the manager of toxicology and product safety.
The Honest Company is a purpose-driven company with a mission to inspire everyone to love living consciously that was launched in 2012 by globally recognized business leader, actor, advocate and author, Jessica Alba. Today, the company provides a variety of safe and effective baby, beauty, personal care, and cleaning products, and has built a loyal customer base through its commitment to safety, efficacy, and full transparency about the ingredients in its products.
“The company has a guiding standard that is not only about ingredient selection for its products, but also continued improvement around sustainability and giving back to the community,” says McKenney, who joined Honest as a research toxicologist in 2017 after completing the MPH program in environmental health at SPH.
Now she leads the toxicology and product safety team within the Research and Development division, where she evaluates and maintains the company’s stringent process for ingredient selection and clinical testing.
“I focus on understanding what information we need to ensure we are confident about the ingredients we’re putting into our products,” she says. “I evaluate formulas from an acute standpoint of potentially irritating ingredients as well as the chronic, low-dose effects of certain chemicals of potential concern.”
McKenney says her SPH courses in introductory and advanced toxicology, as well as risk assessment methods provided the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to conduct human health risk assessments of the ingredients the company considers for its products. While the US Food and Drug Administration has only banned 11 chemicals from consumer products (compared to more than 1,300 banned by the European Union) The Honest Company maintains its own list of restricted ingredients that is almost twice as long as the US and EU lists combined. Referred to as the NO List™, it identifies more than 2,500 ingredients that are deemed potentially harmful to health and omitted from all Honest products.
“These are the fundamental ingredients that we don’t feel comfortable using because of their inherent characteristics,” says McKenney. “For example, we have enough data to say that parabens could potentially have an effect on human health, so we avoid this chemical class altogether.”
McKenney says Honest conducts a full toxicological risk assessment of all of the ingredients in its products. That assessment (another requirement in the EU, but not the US) utilizes a tool that can account for the intended consumer and exposure scenario, and then determine the quantifiable risk of the ingredient.
Sometimes balancing science and evidence with consumer perception of certain ingredients can be challenging, McKenney says—but it’s a challenge she enjoys. She has engaged directly with consumers on social media to answer questions or explain why Honest does or doesn’t use certain ingredients. In an Instagram chat, she clarified to a consumer the difference between carbon black and black iron oxide, and why the company chooses to add the latter ingredient in its mascara. She has also explained how the safe level of certain ingredients depends on the type of product and the manner in which the product is consumed.
“While an ingredient may be widely recognized as safe by the scientific community for certain uses, exposure type, frequency, duration, and product user matters,” says McKenney. For example, she says, “regarding retinol, while there is no elevated risk of systemic effects for use by the average adult, a pregnant woman should not use this ingredient due to the risk of potential teratogenic effects. It’s important to take care in identifying potential risk factors, including your most susceptible user when completing a comprehensive human health risk assessment.”
“Communicating with consumers is really rewarding to me because that’s how you actually make a difference,” she says. “We can make products that we know are good, but it matters more that we make this information available to consumers so they can make their own decisions.”
“As practitioners of public health, we owe it to our consumers and general public to help educate them on ingredients and products,” says McKenney, to “guide them to make the best choices for themselves and their families.”
Hear more from McKenney and other alums during the virtual Alumni Conversation: Environmental Health event on Thursday, March 25. To register, click here.