July 28 2011 A letter to Tod Arbogast Vice President, Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, Avon Products, Inc.

In your letter to Meghan Casserly dated July 20, 2011 you pointed out two so-called inaccuracies in our recent paper in Environmental Justice and our article on Forbes.com. We wish to address the concerns raised in your letter and clarify the points made in our research. To begin, you claim that we appear to be referring to parabens when we suggest that cosmetic products often contain hormone disrupting chemicals. Some type of parabens are known to disrupt hormone function, an effect that is linked to increased risk of breast cancer and reproductive toxicity, but they are just one type of hormone disrupting chemicals found in cosmetics. Others include phthalates, synthetic musks, and triclosan. We disagree with your suggestion that parabens have been extensively studied; wed like to see more data on the effect of low dose exposures to parabens. There is, however, a substantial amount of research on the health effects of hormone disruptors in general, and given the breadth of research demonstrating negative effects of even very low doses, such as the amounts were exposed to from cosmetics and other everyday products, we support our previous claims that chemicals that cause cancer or have been linked to cancer have no place in consumer products. While we applaud the efforts to reduce the presence of toxic chemicals in Avon products, we maintain that continuing to build brand recognition through breast cancer cause-marketing while continuing to sell products that are not completely free of toxic chemicals is a harmful contradiction. Your letter also takes issue with the fact that we single out Avon and the Love/Army of Women for not investing more research dollars into preventive research. We wish to point out that funding for breast cancer prevention and causation remains quite low across the board- it isnt just Avon- with many philanthropic or governmental research dollars going to treatment and early detection. To clarify our point, we contend that prevention begins with understanding and illuminating the root causes of cancer and making efforts to reduce the occurrence of the disease. Early detection is not preventionif you detect breast cancer, that means a woman already has the disease. We are grateful for early detection and recognize that it saves many womens lives, but it does not eliminate the painful reality that more and more women each year are being diagnosed with breast cancer. More research dollars must go to true prevention so that we may begin to answer important questions, including why the United States continues to have one of the highest rates of breast cancer in the industrialized world, and why women who move to the US from other countries adopt our breast cancer rates. While Avons support and financial contributions have increased the quantity of breast cancer research and may have contributed to important medical breakthroughs, a funding paradigm that is centered solely on treatment and care can never hope to reduce the prevalence of cancer. Racing for a cure is understandable, but understanding and reducing the occurrence of the disease would be revolutionary and should be a goal of any corporation whose public

image is so inseparable from breast cancer. If Avon, The Company for Women, truly wishes to continue their commitment to do everything in its power to eradicate breast cancer we would like to suggest that Avon publicly commit to removing carcinogens and hormone disruptors from all of its products and that the company must increase transparency in their fundraising and philanthropic operations. And we ask, what is Avons and the Love/Army of Womens definition of prevention? Our article articulates pinkwashing as the practice whereby companies profit from the sale of pink ribbon products while simultaneously selling products or services that contain (or utilize in manufacturing) chemicals linked to cancer, a practice that is far too common and which harms people and the environment and manipulates consumer emotions. We maintain this point. It is our sincere hope that Avon and other companies steer clear of pinkwashing and that Avon use its considerable power and brand recognition to be a true leader in prevention, as well as in early detection and the search for the cure. Sincerely, Mia Davis and Amy Lubitow