Did you know that cosmetic products we use daily, like shampoo, body wash, make-up, and even baby lotions contain chemicals that have been linked to serious health concerns such as cancer and birth defects? And did you know that it is perfectly legal in the US for companies to make personal care products with these harmful ingredients?
When it comes to choosing our personal care products, most of us go for packaging, color, fragrance, even glitter, beads and kernels. Or how about those trusted brands that have been in our families for generations? We could never imagine there being any harm in choosing a mint toothpaste with tartar control or a mango-scented body wash with matching body cream.
“Putting chemicals on our skin is actually far worse than ingesting them, because when you eat something the enzymes in our saliva and stomach help break it down and flush it out of your body. When you put these chemicals on your skin, however, it is absorbed straight into our blood stream without filtering of any kind, so there’s no protection against the toxin.”
–Dr. Mercola, OrganicLifestyle.com
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has almost no authority to regulate cosmetics. Most ingredients are never tested for safety. The FDA cannot require safety testing of products before they are sold, and does not systematically assess the safety of ingredients. Instead, the cosmetic industry polices itself through a safety panel that is run and funded by the industry’s trade association. In the absence of mandated testing or even FDA guidance on product safety, some companies make products safe enough to eat, while other companies routinely add carcinogens and other hazardous chemicals to their formulations. The chemicals are used as the base ingredients of products, as flour is used in bread. The FDA is not permitted to require recalls of cosmetics. They can only monitor a company once it voluntarily decides to conduct a product recall.
The FDA’s own web site explains its limitations: “FDA's legal authority over cosmetics is different from other products regulated by the agency .... Cosmetic products and ingredients are not subject to FDA premarket approval authority, with the exception of color additives.”
The FDA has banned 9 ingredients from use in personal care products in contrast to the European Union who has banned approximately 1100 ingredients. Our standards should be more in line with Europe. Up to 70% of our products surveyed contained 1 or more ingredients contaminated with impurities linked to cancer and other health problems. Europe has much better health protection laws and they take a precautionary approach. Companies cater to the difference between US and European standards by having different formulations of the same products. Some, with harmful toxins removed, go to Europe, while others with toxins go to the US. The US needs to prove that an ingredient in a product causes harm before we can do anything about it.
As consumers we need to read the labels on our products. Don’t be fooled by generic claims such as “organic,” “natural,” or “hypoallergenic.” These terms do not have any regulatory significance (except for California, which has a state law regulating the use of the term “organic”). You can research beforehand at the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep cosmetic safety database of ingredients. The Skin Deep website: www.skindeep.com was a huge eye opener for my family. I rounded up the kids and we gathered our personal care products onto the counter and checked all of them against the Skin Deep list. It was very astonishing to see 99% of the products we were using contained many toxic ingredients.
As a breast cancer survivor, I know first-hand how overwhelming it can be to begin to understand the sources of harmful chemicals and how to begin making better choices. Get the entire family involved in your mission to live a healthy, safe, and long life.
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