Oct 1st 2010 By Virginia Sole-Smith from lemondrop.com
On Tuesday, a group of (San Francisco ) Bay Area teens decided to let the brand know just how much they don’t appreciate the nostril assault. Teens Turning Green stormed an Abercrombie & Fitch store in San Francisco’s Westfield Mall, wearing surgical masks and gas masks and carrying signs with slogans like “Stop the Perfume Pollution.”
And it wasn’t the pungent aroma of disappointing prom nights and bad keg parties that they were protesting. Recent lab analysis by the nonprofit advocacy group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics revealed that A&F’s “Fierce” fragrance contains 11 chemicals not listed on the ingredient label, many of which are sensitizers that can trigger asthma, headaches and contact dermatitis. One (diethyl phthalate) has been linked in some studies to sperm damage in adult men and abnormal reproductive development in baby boys … Store managers responded to the protest by closing the location to all customers and calling the police.
Teens Turning Green co-president Emily Packer’s response: “We may have trespassed in your store, but we want to tell you, you’re trespassing on our rights and on our health.” Game on.