Toxic Beauty - Whats in your beauty products
Web site warns of toxins in beauty products
When you wash your hair or put on makeup, are you getting a dangerous dose of toxic chemicals in the process?
Safety advocates are sounding the alarm about the potential health risks in thousands of cosmetic ingredients.
Biologist Renee sharp says reading labels is worthless if you don’t know what they mean.
Sharp is senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group, a cosmetic safety advocate in Washington, D.C.
Sharp says studies show as many half the personal care products on the market have at least one chemical linked to either reproductive problems or cancer.
“We’re basically conducting a giant chemical experiment on ourselves.” she said.
Sharp points to parabens as one example. Parabens are widely used as preservatives. Names you’ll likely see on ingredient labels are ethylparaben, propylparaben and methylparaben.
Published studies have linked parabens to breast tumors in women, and possible disruption of reproductive hormones in young males.
Many nail polishes contain the controversial chemicals called phthalates. The industry insists phthalates are safe in the amounts currently used in consumer products. Health advocates say tests associate phthalates with abnormal reproductive hormone development.
Health advocates are further concerned that federal regulators do virtually no cosmetic testing.
Of the more than 350 pages of the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Acts, there are only one and a half pages addressing cosmetics, and those sections deal with adulteration and misbranding.
Safety testing for cosmetics is left to manufacturers. The FDA is only involved when a cosmetic product also contains a drug.
So the Environmental Working Group launched a cosmetic safety database called Skin Deep.
Sharp says the database is a compilation of more than 10,000 ingredients and more than 30,000 products, matched against 50 toxicity and regulatory databases from around the world.
Type in the product or ingredient and you’ll get ingredient descriptions, potential concerns, and a color coded hazard score: green for low hazard, yellow for moderate hazard and red if the hazard is considered high.
The oxybenzone in Cathy Matson’s skin cream prevents sun damage, but also raises concern about potential problems with reproduction development.
Oxybenzone is the active ingredient in many sunscreen products, even sunscreens made for babies. Oxybenzone got a Skin Deep ranking of 7.
“That’s scary,” said Matson. “That’s terrifying. That’s something that’s supposed to be good for my skin.”
Seattle pediatrician Sheela Sathyanarayana says some health trends clearly raise questions about possible environmental factors.
“There’s more breast cancer in women than there used to be. There’s more testicular cancer in men,” she said.
But are the chemicals the cause?
“We have a lot of animal studies, but we don’t have a lot of human studies,” said Sathyanarayana, who is also a researcher at the University of Washington Department of Pediatric Environmental Health.
Sathyanarayana’s own recent studies confirm higher phthalate concentrations in the urine of infants who were exposed to baby care products with phthalates.
“And it’s more that cumulative exposure to all of these chemicals that may be potentially causing a health effect,” said Sathyanarayana.
The doctor’s prescription? Minimize all chemical exposure to infants and young children. Women of reproductive age or women who are pregnant should minimize their exposure, too.
For everyone else, beware of what’s in the products you’re using so you can make an informed choice.
The Personal Care Products Council represents the cosmetic and personal care industry. PCPC insists the products we use are safe, saying a lot of information on the Internet is inaccurate and misleading.
The industry has launched its own cosmetics database with the industry’s explanation of cosmetic ingredients and the industry’s efforts to insure consumer safety.
