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Informing about Skin DeepWhat I Choose to Buy at the Co-op... and Why. A
series of monthly articles by members of our Nutrition and Education
Committee When my child was young, more than twenty
years ago, I was very familiar with the ingredients in every bodycare
product
that I purchased. She was pan-allergic to many synthetic chemicals, and
also to
some natural ones in these bathroom- sink products, and to dozens of
whole food
items as well. Her main nickname was Sweetpea, but I also called her
Barometer,
for her frequent allergic reactions were readily measurable. For
instance, she
had a discernable and immediate reaction at age three to her first
jelly bean.
When she sucked the red dye and showed me how white it had become, I
also
watched halfdollar- sized hives blooming over her small body. Her diet
was
always simple and closely supervised, including her diet of bodycare
products.
And I knew what was in the soaps, lotions, toothpastes, etc., that I
purchased.
That was
then, when the lead in chips of old paint was big news. This is now,
when 61% of recently tested lipsticks in the U.S. market contain lead
(see www.safecosmetics.org
and www.environmentalhealthnews.org)
— and it’s not in the news. This is now, when the same bodycare
products that were on my safety list 20 years ago have additional and
suspect
synthetic ingredients, at least in the The
shampoos and lotions, which I have used for two decades, now often
contain one
or more of the estrogenic (i.e., they can disrupt hormones)
preservatives —
parabens — which were not in the product back then, and aren’t in the
product
when currently sold in the European Union. The EU has actually banned
these common
preservatives, along with 1,100 ingredients that are still in use in
the I
first learned about the change in the product line over a year ago,
when our
Health and Body Aids (HaBA) manager pointed it out. It has taken me
some time
to catch up with her tip and do the research. I used a single website,
the
Environmental Working Group (EWG) at (click on its Skin Deep database),
to do
updated checks on products I had thought to be safe. It turned out that
94 Nature’s
Gate products are examined, ingredient by ingredient — and 27 are
currently
rated as either No or Low Hazard. So this database is a way to choose
the
safest individual products, not just by brand. Aubrey, for
instance,
scores No or Low Hazard on 83 of its 113 products. In
2004, EWG first published this comprehensive database, which brings
together
available independent and government science. The database
cross-references
10,000 chemicals and 25,000 products against 50 small toxicity
databases. EWG
lists, for example, the ingredients in 480 toothpastes, provides safety
scores
by ingredient and also by product, and gives an overall list of these
toothpastes from the most to least safe. One can easily access the
safest
products, according to known science. But,
since the science is so incomplete, a “science gap” percentile is also
given
for each product rated. EWG’s advice: Simpler (i.e., fewer ingredients)
is
usually safer. Avoid “fragrance,” as it often masks toxic or untested
synthetic
chemicals such as phthalates (unless the fragrance is composed of
natural
ingredients, as in and products). Avoid preservatives, like parabens.
But, as
there is no short-list to avoid, the recommendation is to check each of
your favorite
products. And tell others, as many of us don’t realize these bodycare
products
are being absorbed through the skin, and are being inhaled or ingested. Our
Co-op has for years been promulgating EWG’s list of
the “Dirty Dozen” (i.e., high pesticide residue) produce, which should
be
purchased organic, and also the “Cleanest 12.” We have shared
information from EWG’s
Body Burden research (also done by the Centers for Disease Control and
the Red
Cross), which demonstrated that almost 200 known toxic chemicals are
found in
umbilical cord blood of newborns, as well as in adult blood and urine. Continuing
to inform consumers, we recently cosponsored a stop on author Stacy
Malkan’s
national book tour for Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the
Beauty
Industry. She reminded us that we all use multiple personal care
products, getting
multiple hits daily of minute amounts (we assume — but ingredient
amounts are
not listed) of one or more chemicals suspected of causing cancer or
reproductive harm. And so, our bodies contain mixes of these synthetic
chemicals, most of which have unknown effects. For children, the timing
as well
as the amount of exposure is crucial. And Malkan
told us about Charlotte Brody,
an environmentalist, nurse and mother whose family was one of first
tested in
the Body Burden research. Brody had described how violated she felt
when tests
revealed more than a hundred toxins, such as pesticides, in the blood
of her
family members — whom she thought were safe, because she bought organic
foods
and didn’t use pesticides. Our Co-op
plans to continue providing safety
information in 2008, as we are working on a written safety protocol for
HaBA
products that will be voted on by Honest Weight members. In the new
year, we
all can upgrade our personal “precautionary principle index” by using
products
that don’t contain chemicals on the EU Cosmetic Directive’s banned
list, and by checking the EWG database. We can also use products from
the hundreds
of small And take
note: Both
Malkan’s Not Just a Pretty Face and Mark Schapiro’s excellent
new book, Exposed:
The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for
American Power,
are on sale at HWFC. |
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