Yes there’s Mercury in some skin care products

For a long time we’ve been writing about the dangers of some chemical ingredients found in so many modern skin care products of other personal products. Today, however, it’s Mercury, which was not focused on before.

As most people will be aware Mercury is a poison, or least it is when it gets into your system. It can damage your brain and damage your health in a range of other quite nasty ways such as impairment of the vision or the hearing, shaking and worse.

Serious health problems can become evident even after relatively minor exposure to Mercury.

We’ve been alerted by a recent article on CNN Health  that we should now be considering the risks of the inclusion of Mercury in skin care products and anti aging products (along with so many other chemical ingredients.)

The article points out that the products which are using Mercury as one of their ingredients are generally made overseas, and are commonly purchased online, though some were available in the stores in the US.

Often they are products like skin whitening creams or other products designed to remove such facial blemishes as age spots or freckles.

However Mercury has also been found in products which are designed to help reduce wrinkles.

Unfortunately, as we have pointed out before, personal products such as skin care products, cosmetics, soaps, shampoos are much more, do not need to be tested for safety by any government authority before they are sold. In other words it is perfectly possible for the manufacturer to include ingredients in the products which are known to be dangerous to your health.

And they do, as we have pointed out often on this website.

The bad news is that a wide range of skin care products and anti aging products and other products can actually be harmful to your health, as a result of this fact. There is no effective regulation of the ingredients that are used in these products, and as a result there is a range of chemical ingredients, many of which are known to be toxic to people, found in many of these products.

(Fortunately not all however, there are excellent natural skin care products available which do not use toxic chemical ingredients).

Some of the more serious examples are skin whitening products which contain hydroquinone, and you should read our article about dangerous skin whitening products if you’re looking to find a quality product that whitens your skin without risking your health.

According to Gary Coody, a national health fraud coordinator in the FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs, it’s been found that personal products containing mercury have been sold in 7 states in the US. Read the rest of this entry

You don’t want to find fragrances in skin care products. Here’s why

We have previously talked about the risks to your health from fragrances in skin care products and a range of other personal and beauty products. Today we wanted to go into a little more depth about the health risks of fragrances.

Just to recap, there are thousands of fragrances present in so many of the personal products such as anti aging skin care products, cosmetics, soaps, shampoos, deodorants and much more that virtually all of this use on our skin every single day.

Fragrances are chemicals, normally created in a lab, and the vast majority of them have never been tested for safety for use on people. So the health risks of many are simply unknown.

And in some cases the health risks are known, including neurotoxicity which can potentially lead to brain damage.

If you browse this page at the Cosmetics Database you’ll see a range of skin care and anti aging products listed there. In fact there are hundreds or possibly even thousands listed, however they can only fit so many on the page.

On the right you’ll see a coloured circle with a number in it. The number represents the score that the Cosmetics Database assigns to that product on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 represents no perceived health hazards from the use of the product and 10 represents maximum health risk.

Of course there is some fluidity in these results, because, as is normally noted in the results, there are some gaps in the data and some other reasons why it is impossible to give a perfect result.

Notwithstanding this we wouldn’t want be using a product that has a score of 8 or above, let alone 10. In fact we wouldn’t want to use a skin care product with any number beside it at all. Data gaps or not we would prefer to err on the side of caution.

Now let’s look at one of the particular products listed there. Click on the one second from the top, namely Home Skin Lab effective Wrink’less The Wrinkle Corrector. The page you are presented with details the particular ingredients which are considered a health risk, together with a summary of the potential health risks. Here’s an image of that page.

What do you notice about the ingredients? The top listed ingredient with the highest score, marked with a red circle, is fragrance. Click on fragrance and you’ll find out more.

If you’ve read our previous page you will know that the chemical used as a fragrance is often not listed on the label. Scroll down and you will note the statement “Ingredient not fully labeled – identity unknown”.

Need we say more about the risks of fragrances in anti aging skin care products and wide range of other personal and beauty products. Anyone concerned about fragrances, or any one of dozens of other chemical ingredients found in these products should immediately start looking for alternatives.

And spend some time looking at some of the other antiaging products with a score of 10 and see how often “fragrance” is listed there.

As far as skin care products go the good news is that one small niche skin care company recognizes completely the risks of fragrances, along with many other chemical ingredients, and produces extremely high quality natural skin care products that do not contain any fragrances for this reason. They also do not contain any other chemical ingredients which may be suspect to your health.

Not only that but they work extremely well and come with a 90 day money back guarantee. You can’t ask for more than that. Read the rest of this entry