Dare to eat your lotion? You are doing it
October 23, 2007
Posted by CindyW in : Fresh Look , 1 comment so far
In the last couple of years, many consumers have reaped benefits from moving toward organic produce, grain, dairy, and meat. The word organic has certainly gained some prominence.
So now that you have figured out what to put on your plate, it maybe time to reconsider what you put on your skin. After all, quite a bit of what you apply on your skin gets absorbed into your skin. In some sense, you are effectively eating your lipsticks, your lotions, and your eye shadows. Glamour magazine reported in its June 2002 issue that “women inadvertently eat about 4 lbs of lipsticks” in a lifetime.
Well, do you know that lipsticks used by millions of American women also contain surprising level of lead? Campaign for Safe Cosmetics recently commissioned an independent lab to study the safety of lipsticks in the market place. In September 2007, the lab tested red lipsticks bought in Boston, Hartford, San Francisco, and Minneapolis. Amongst other things, they found that 11 out of the 33 tested lipsticks exceeded US FDA 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candy – “a standard established to protect children from directly ingesting lead.” Some national brands have as much as 6 times the lead limit in candy. While I am not exactly sure how much the lead in 4 pounds of lipsticks can harm you, I suspect most women would choose to buy lead-free ones.
Similarly few people can be persuaded to eat the chemical DMDM Hydantoin, which is called out as a “known human immune system toxicant” by National Library of Medicine. It is, however, in many brand-named moisturizers, sunscreen, shampoos, and facial cleansers. How about Sodium Methylparaben? Doesn’t sound that appetizing either. In fact Europe has banned its use in cosmetics. But it can be found in many American brand-named shampoos, anti-aging lotions, and cleansers.
According to FDA, “Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act, cosmetics and their ingredients are not required to undergo approval before they are sold to the public”. So how can an average consumer find out whether their lotions are safe? Study all the ingredients on the shampoo bottles? Lotion jars? Lipsticks? Not an option. Have you ever seen the number of unrecognizable names on any given bottle?
Fortunately Environmental Working Group has created the Skin Deep cosmetic safety database, where one can search for a product or an ingredient and learn its safety score. For example, Olay Complete Defense Daily UV Moisturizer, SFP 30 has a Skin Deep score of 2 out 10, meaning low health hazard. 0 is the best and 10 is the worst. Take it a step further, you can find the score for all the ingredients used in that lotion. PEG-90M gets a score of 5 (medium health hazard) and water of course gets a score of 0.
Just because a shampoo is sold in a health food store, it does not automatically garner a low health hazard score. For instance, Avalon Organics Vitamin C Hydrating Cleansing Milk has a medium Skin Deep score of 6 for containing Benzyl Alcohol, Melatonin, and a few unspecified essential oils.
If you are concerned with a particular ingredient, search that directly. The infamous phthalate has a high health hazard score of 10 because National Library of Medicine calls it a “known human immune system toxicant”. You can then find all the nail polishes, nail treatments, and cuticle treatments that contain phthalate.
The database has an amazing number of products. For example, you can find 656 foundations, 779 lipsticks, 345 hair sprays, 478 tooth pastes, 901 fragrance, and many many more.
Armed with the easily searchable knowledge base, I can now feed my skin healthy ingredients that nourishing and safe. And if I decide to eat a couple of pounds of lipsticks in the next few years, I know which ones to choose…
CindyW at Organicpicks
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