By Tania Reuben
The purchasing decisions we make on a daily basis may impact more than just the environment.
The food we put in our body, the air we breath and the personal care products we use may impact our quality of life. According to the EWG, Americans have the highest rate of cancer in the world.
Consumers rely on government agencies to protect them, the evidence suggests this may not be wise. Personal Care products contain an average 126 individual ingredients and my belief is that we don’t know if they are safe. The US has approximately 82,000 registered chemicals & 10,500 are used in cosmetics. Of these 10,500 chemicals less than 10% have been evaluated for safety by the CIR, the FDA or any other publicly accountable institution.
Incidentally, the government approves on average 7 new chemicals every day – the evaluation of most chemicals takes less that 3 weeks and approvals are typically based on computer models!
Personal care products – lotions, potions and make up – sit on our skin – we’re not eating them. How can they be either good or bad for us? Our skin is our largest organ. Doctors routinely prescribe medicine to be topically applied. The evidence shows what we put on our skin absorbs into our bodies, scientists have found many common cosmetic ingredients in human tissues – Including, phthalates, parabens, and a fragrance ingredient musk xylene.
The good news is there are options for personal care products that don’t contain these potential toxins. The bad news it’s difficult to figure out which products are truly the better option.
Sifting through the Natural & Organic marketplace can be challenging – with no clear regulation or standard of conduct for manufacturers. PND recently did an overview of the Natural & Organic products offered by Sephora - while we are thrilled that they offer this category to their customers – the report card clearly indicated just how confusing it is to navigate the marketplace as a consumer.
More good news? Often the companies that take care in their formulations also take better care of the environment.
Conclusively we don’t know that ingredients in our personal care products are harmful, the trouble is we don’t know that they’re safe either.
With cancer rates in our country I believe it makes sense to use caution. Choose safer cosmetics, eat food grown without pesticides, paint with VOC free paints….
Reduce your exposure whenever and wherever you can.
Tania is a wife and mother living in Los Angeles CA. She spends her days chasing her children, nights being chased by her husband and writes about Whole Living with Style and Ease @ www.purenaturaldiva.com in all her spare time. PND reviews and features safer personal care products. To determine “safer” PND relies on ratings from the EWG Cosmetics Database – Skin Deep.
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