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Cosmetics Safety Series - Part 3: Why it's Time for Personal Care Products to Go on Sale
This classic line refers, of course, to the lengths to which we go for "beauty." As a second-grader, having sore arms after 35 minutes of setting curlers was a steep bounty for the temporary effect. Today it's clear that there are bigger stakes - our health and that of our children and our environment - and these stakes are just too high.We need safer personal care products. Here's why:
They contain toxic chemicals that affect our health.
- Phthalates are most commonly used for softening plastics. When it comes to their use in personal care products, they are a regular ingredient in fragrance and moisturizing beads. A 2008 report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics brought the good news that companies are using less phthalates. However, until they're officially banned - they'll remain an ingredient of top concern due to their association with hormone disruption.
- Parabens are preservatives found in products with higher water content (think shampoo, conditioner, and lotion). They have also been found in breast cancer tumors, as they are another notorious hormone disruptor. Play it safe, and skip products using ingredients ending in - "paraben."
- Heavy metals - We took lead out of house paint over 30 years ago, so why is it still in lipstick? The FDA found lead in 100% of lipstick samples they tested. Arsenic, mercury and zinc are other heavy metals known to be in body care products. While some of these, such as zinc, are necessary in small amounts for the body, higher doses can lead to a variety of health effects. Lead and mercury are both known neurotoxins.Lets not forget that we have found all of these chemicals in people through biomonitoring studies, so not only are they in our products but they are in our bodies too.
- Immediate reactions - Allergies, contact dermatitis, asthma, migraines... they are all common reactions to ingredients in personal care products. Remember when a bank was evacuated in Ft. Worth, TX last summer because of someone's perfume?
- Long-term consequences - What can be more frightening is what we don't see happen immediately after using these products. Cancer, endocrine disruption, and nervous system damage are some of the reported health effects of exposure to the ingredients in cosmetics products. This recent New York Time's article on skin lighteners is a good example.
- Unstudied risks of unstudied ingredients - Recall our conversation a few weeks ago about the ingredient data gap? Until we know the effects of these ingredients AND the effects of combining these ingredients, day in and day out, we're still playing a game of chemical roulette with our personal care products
This is part of our "Not in My Cosmetics" series. The first two posts are here and here.
[Thanks to Flickr CC and Orin Zebest for the photo "Staring At It."]
Finding parabens in breast tissue is scary, but many paraben free products have other even more worrisome preservatives substituted for the parabens. Some of these non-paraben preservatives come from chemical families that cause me even greater concern than parabens. As I 'grew up' in my dermatology training, I learned that parabens were the kinder,gentler preservatives. The best products contained parabens instead of formaldehyde releasers etc. Very conscientious chemists add them in only small amounts to products; as little as they can in order to do the job. It's becoming very difficult to functionally preserve skin care products without including scary and potentially toxic chemicals. Do you have a practical list of functional skin product preservatives that are effective and of low toxicity risk; a list that can be used to help guide companies in formulating products that are PROBABLY safer than what we have available now?
You highlight some important issues, Dr. Bailey; thank you. In speaking with my colleague Olga Naidenko, she highlighted the following: We recognize that commercial sales of cosmetics products are impossible without preservatives - but also that many preservatives are toxic to human health and the environment.
EWG has not developed a list of preservatives we would recommend; what we do is compile information that is available in the public domain. The problem is that for many preservatives there is a very large data gap. This is something that the cosmetics industry needs to address, by generating those studies and making them publicly available, so that both personal care product shoppers and scientific experts would be able to decide for themselves on what preservatives are "safest" or "most acceptable." At the moment, data insufficiency concerns remain.
It is so troubling that finding cosmetic products that are free of these toxins is very difficult. Why should it be so hard to find "safe" cosmetics, shampoos, soaps, and body products? Why are we not protected, as consumers, from this poison!? Most people do not know about this problem, and many do not have ability to search out alternatives --so most people buy these unsafe products. This is so saddening. This affects babies, little kids, teens, their moms, and so on.