Take care with your personal products, take some simple precautions

Here on this website we have often spoken about some of the risks inherent in using skin care products and cosmetics and other personal products with various chemical components.

For instance tests have shown that many lipsticks have lead in them, and I’m sure you know how dangerous lead is for you.

33 brand-name lipsticks were tested for the presence of lead as an ingredient in the lipstick, and over half had some detectable level of lead. None of the lipsticks listed lead as an ingredient on the label.

And of course as lipstick used on the lips some amount of it goes into your body each day, either because you’ve licked your lips, or perhaps you’ve eaten food which carries a little of the lipstick on it.

Lead in your system has very serious consequences including damage to your brain, behavioural problems and a wide range of other health problems, none of them nice. Lead in your system even effects your fertility.

In fact the awareness in the community about the problems with chemical ingredients in our cosmetics and skin care products is growing, both because of the activism of various organisations such as the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and others.

And it’s also growing because of a range of publications coming on the market publicising this, such as the new book “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry”.

However if you’re concerned about the safety of your cosmetics and skin care products there is another issue which you should consider, and it’s this that we wanted to talk about today.

Many of these products will go off. In other words they will become contaminated, often with various bacteria or with mold, and this can also be risky to your health, regardless of which chemical ingredients are used in the bottle.

In fact this has now come to the attention of the US FDA which has recently held a meeting on cosmetic microbiology safety issues, to help develop FDA guidelines on this matter in the future.

Some simple rules for the use of your cosmetics, from the MSN website, suggest that you shouldn’t share make up with anyone else, that you should be washing all the equipment used for applying your make-up reasonably regularly, such as applicators and brushes, and you should be aware that these products can go off and that you should not keep them too long.

In particular you should be very careful with any product which is used on all around your eyes. Advice from that article is that anything that goes on or near your eyes should have a shelf life at home of no longer than 3 months, after which you should throw them out and get new ones.

Of course you should also be careful with your products, following some simple commonsense rules, such as avoiding keeping them in warm places.

So it would seem that it is not just the chemical ingredients in your cosmetics and skin care products that can damage your health, you should also be concerned about the possibility of contamination of your products by such agents as bacteria or mold over time.

And of course the best way to avoid the risks of chemical contamination is to purchase safe cosmetics which do not use nasty chemicals, though of course you should be equally careful with these to make sure that they are also not contaminated over time with bacteria or mould.

Read the article on the MSN website, it makes for interesting and informative reading.

Yes some of our personal products can be dangerous.

For a long time we’ve been talking about the dangers of modern skin care products and cosmetics, and in particular the risks involved in using a whole range of personal products, which includes big name skin care products and cosmetics.

That’s because so many of these products contain ingredients which may be harmful to you. We’ve talked about the Cosmetic Safety Database and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, both of which seek to publicise the fact that, due to lax government regulation of this industry, many products contain ingredients which are known to be harmful to your health.

But it’s not just the Cosmetic Safety Database and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, (and our website) that are publicising the problems with so many modern brands of personal products. There are other high profile people and websites which are also seeking to publicise these facts as well.

Chances are you know of David Suzuki. He is an extremely high profile campaigner on a range of green issues and health issues. He has made some outstanding television programs about this type of issue, and travels the world and speaks regularly.

David Suzuki has his own website at davidsuzuki.org, where, amongst other things, he also points out the risks inherent in so many modern personal products.

In fact he has a “Sustainable Shoppers Guide to a Dirty Dozen Ingredients to Avoid in Your Cosmetics”. In that guide he lists 12 things to avoid when shopping for cosmetics, or for that matter a whole range of other personal products. Included in that list are some that we have spoken about right here on our website.

For example he includes fragrances in the list. In the past we have written about the health risks of “fragrance” in so many personal products. This problem is that generally speaking any “fragrance” is usually listed on the label, if listed at all, as fragrance or parfum, no more.

This even applies to products which may well be labelled as “unscented”.

Unfortunately fragrances are usually a mixture of various types of chemicals, many of which can be a factor in various health problems such as allergies and asthma. As we have said before some of these chemicals have also been linked to cancer and neurotoxicity.

We have also spoken before about the problems of parabens, which are in fact a class of chemicals which are used as a preservative. Whilst there are safer and more natural ingredients available which are effective as preservatives, parabens are particularly cheap, and can interfere with various hormonal functions in your body and which have also been associated with breast cancer.

Sad to say but so many women, and men, are completely unaware that so many personal products that they use every day, often multiple times per day, may well be harmful as a result of lax regulation and poor standards which allow the companies that manufacture these products to use pretty much any chemical they want.

And this includes a wide range of personal products such as, soaps, shampoos, deodorants, cosmetics, skin care products and more. Many lipsticks even have lead in them, and you’re probably well aware of the health risks of lead.

We encourage you to read David Suzuki’s Sustainable Shoppers Guide, which you can find here. It’s well worth a read and when used in conjunction with other resources such as this website, the Campaign Safe Cosmetics and the Cosmetic Safety Database, may well help you choose safe and effective skin care products and safe and effective cosmetics.

It’s very important when choosing personal products to be an educated consumer. The manufacturers of the products will not tell you of the health risks of the ingredients they use, and will often not even label those ingredients.

It’s up to you to educate yourself to make sure that you, as a consumer, are sufficiently educated to choose your products wisely.