This article does a good job of explaining so many of the concerns I have about cosmetics and Body Care Products. If you are interested in digging a little deeper read the following article.
The government knows just about as much as you do about what you’re putting on your skin—that is to say, not much
Scientific American
Katherine Harmon
Published May 6, 2009
Cosmetics—makeup, creams, fragrances—have been around for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian and Roman women famously caked on lead-based foundation. (Lead, a metal, can cause nerve, muscle and organ damage.) But surely lead-laden cosmetics have been phased out along with lead-lined water pipes, right? Not necessarily.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees the multi-billion-dollar-a-year cosmetics industry but it lacks the power to approve products or ingredients before they hit store shelves, even though their contents have been shown to enter the body.
According to the FDA, a cosmetic is anything used for “cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness or altering the appearance.” An average U.S. consumer uses about 10 cosmetic products every day, including makeup, soap, shampoo, lotion, hair gel and cologne, says Lisa Archer, the national coordinator for The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC), a nonprofit advocacy group based in San Francisco and financed in part by the Breast Cancer Fund, a nonprofit organization. As a result, she says, people are exposed to roughly 126 different chemicals daily, many of which haven’t been thoroughly tested.
“We’re operating in a vacuum in terms of safety,” Archer says. “The FDA doesn’t even define what ’safe’ is, so it’s totally up to the discretion of cosmetic companies.”
Soaking it in, Slathering, powdering, spritzing. The skin is the body’s largest organ and its shield against the surrounding environment. But it is a porous protector, allowing some substances in and others—most notably moisture—out. Some compounds that are applied to the skin’s surface can be absorbed into the body, including the estimated four pounds (1.8 kilograms) of lipstick an average lipstick-wearer consumes in a lifetime, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit public interest organization based in Washington, D.C.
To read the full article:
http://www.ewg.org/newsclip/Saving-Face-How-Safe-Are-Cosmetics-and-Body-Care-Products
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Not only do you need to consider the consequences of commercial cosmetics, you need to consider the methods of manufacture – our environment suffers as those chemicals enter our water table and again we get poisoned a second time around.MJ
Thank you for posting a very informative article! I am so appreciative for your site and the Safe Cosmetics site as go-to’s for information and resources. It’s great to see many new companies with cleaner products available to us!Thank you! XO Candy
Thanks for bringing everyone’s attention to this issue with this great information. We so often think of our skin as our protection that we forget how much we absorb through our skin. The Skin Deep website is such a great resource for consumers because of all of the information it’s consolidated for us. I’m nearly ready to launch a completely new line of personal care products which are all pure and proven effective. As one way to ensure purity of our products, we formulated each of them with the CSC’s database as a guide (as well as the EUs list and other sources). We’ve also clinically proven their efficacy. I hope you’ll try some when they’re ready (later this year). In the meantime, please keep great info like this coming so we can all make better choices armed with better information. Thanks, M’lou Arnett. (check out my blog, Pure Talk, http://mloublog.squarespace.com/ if you get a chance).
Cancer rates are going down and life spans are increasing. These so-called toxins don’t seem to be doing that much harm.
The lifespan of average people have not really increased by as much as people would have you think. The reason they say that people in the early 1900s lived shorter is because they count the infant deaths in those stats. For example: Average Life Expectancy: 70 (adult) + 2 (child) / 2 = 35 yrs.When this 35 yrs is compared to ave age of adults today of course it seems like we live longer.For more details on this check out the documentary: Healing Cancer from the Inside Out http://www.ravediet.com/caHealingcancer.htmWhat is really at issue is not the lifespan but the quality of life as we get older. Our grandparents and great-grandparents who lived to a ripe old age were strong and full of vitality. Today, many adults reach their senior years with a host of illnesses. Quality of life is not the same. This is the heart of the issue and why we need to avoid environmental toxins (makeups, household cleaners, non-organic foods) in favour clean and green products.I am a nurse and health educator and see the sickness afflicting humanity on a daily basis in the hospital. Articles like this one increase awareness which is what we need. My eZine had articles on makeup and household toxins last month. I support educating the masses about taking responsibility for their own health. EWG is also a very credible source of health information.Peace and be well.Jenny Berkeley, RN, Health EducatorBlog: http://www.eating4eternity.org/blogeZine: http://www.issuu.com/eating4eternityTwitter: @sproutqueen
Jenny, Well more children getting through birth is a good news story in itself, so we can all feel a bit happier.Statistics are dull things and you can argue endlessly about them, so here is a (relevant) story instead. I live in the UK and it is traditional that the Queen writes a letter to everyone who reaches 100. Every few years there is a news story about how many more letters she is having to write than she used to when she first came to the throne 50 years ago. Its always a lot more than simply how much the population has grown.That isn’t really consistent with the idea that increased life span is purely down to better infant mortality. So we seem to have two good news stories. If I can find a fallacy in the above the article and therefore show that toxins are less of a hazard than it suggests, that would be a third good news story.You do agree don’t you?