Deadly Ingredients in Our Soaps and Makeup

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Have you ever tried to google the name of the ingredients that appear on the back of your shampoo bottle? Soap? makeup? If you do that, you’ll find out not so pretty stuff that we’re using on our skin on a daily basis!!!

The image is for demonstration only

According to Jane Houlihan, who directs cosmetics safety research for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, cosmetics and other personal care products contain numerous ingredients — such as parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde and diethanolamine — that we should avoid from using. She explains that whatever we put on our skin, eventually finds its way to our body. Our skin contains pores in which the ingredients can easily penetrate to our the circulatory system and from there to all the rest of our body.

According to a recent research, many conventional personal-care products contain chemicals of concern that can disrupt our hormones, have been linked to cancer, cause allergies or can damage your skin. And yet drugstore shelves are lined with shampoos, deodorants, moisturizers, soaps and makeup that contain potentially harmful ingredients. Industry officials contend that the risks of using cosmetics with trace amounts of chemicals are insignificant or nonexistent. The Food and Drug Administration does evaluate some ingredients used in cosmetics and has issued warnings, such as with formaldehyde in some hair straighteners. But the dearth of solid, large-scale studies on the effect of such chemicals at the levels found in conditioner or toothpaste, say, means it’s difficult to know what the risks are only because such researches never has been done properly so no one really knows.

In November 2011, an advocacy group found that Johnson & Johnson was selling baby shampoo in the United States, Canada and several other countries that contained small amounts of quaternium-15, a formaldehyde-releasing preservative that has been linked to cancer, even though the company had removed the chemical from similar products sold in Europe and Japan. (The company has announced that it did not believe the small amounts in its shampoos posed any threat but that it would phase out the use of such ingredients across the globe.)

The worry here is not about this one chemical in your child’s shampoo, but rather,the buildup of potentially dangerous additives from a variety of sources. If your body gets one toxin from each product that you’re using, imagine how many of those you’re getting through out the day?! a week?! a year?! skin irritations and other acute reactions to some of the chemicals are possible, but the real and the greater concern is longer-term effects such as cancer, fertility problems and neurological issues.

Now It’s up to you whether to use a fruity body wash, lipstick or after-shave that may contain lead, diethyl phthalate (a hormone disruptor that is widely used in plastics and has been linked to sperm damage and other reproductive problems) or 1,4-Dioxane, a carcinogenic byproduct or others. Don’t believe “green labels”! Do some research of your own  and decide which ingredients you want to avoid  and then keep them out of your bathroom cabinet!!!

Good luck!

Larissa

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