Jessica Alba's Honest Co Recalls Organic Baby Powder in U.S.

Honest Co, co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, voluntarily recalled all bottles of its organic baby powder in the United States due to concerns of eye and skin infections.

The Santa Monica, California-based company said that during recent tests conducted on the product, possible contaminations from microorganisms that could cause skin or eye infections were found.

"With the full knowledge and under the guidance of the FDA, we've decided to voluntarily recall this product out of an abundance of caution," Christopher Gavigan, co-founder, said in a video posted on the company's website on Wednesday.

The baby powder, marketed as a natural alternative to traditional products, has been marketed in 4 oz. containers and has been in stores since April 14. The product's UPC number is 817810014529. No other Honest Co products are affected by this recall.

This isn't the company's first controversy.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) filed a lawsuit in California in April 2016 that claimed Honest Co falsely labeled its Premium Infant Formula as "organic." The brand immediately fired back against these allegations, accusing the advocacy group of using Alba's celebrity status to "draw more awareness to their efforts."

Honest Co said in a blog post on their site that lawsuit has spread "a great deal of misinformation about our Infant Formula in the press."

That followed two 2015 lawsuits. The first challenged the company's use of the word "natural" to describe some products, and called its sunscreen "ineffective."

The second, a class-action suit, claimed that the sunscreen is ineffective because the company removed over half of the zinc oxide originally in the product. Consumers had taken to Twitter and Amazon to post pictures of nasty looking sunburns on both adults and children, making claims that the product just didn’t work, even when it was reapplied as directed.

The sunscreen was voluntarily recalled by Honest Co in September 2015. “The Honest Company takes all consumer feedback very seriously,” co-founder said Jessica Alba in a statement. “Not only do we want to remedy the situation, but we also want to make sure something like this never happens again.”

They have since changed their formula, and the sunscreen is back on the shelves. 

A Wall Street Journal investigation also found that the company's laundry detergent contained an ingredient Honest Co had said it would not use.

Honest Co and the Food and Drug Administration were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Gayathree Ganesan in Bengaluru)