The Importance of Choosing Safe Beauty Products

Image from safecosmetics.org

Have you ever checked the ingredients in those beauty products you use daily?  It's ok if you haven't.  And if you have, you'll know just how difficult it is to make sense of the jargon on the back.  Who's ever heard of retinyl acetate anyway?  Turns out it's a deadly chemical found in moisturizers that use a synthetic to replicate vitamin A, causing extreme reproductive harm.  Large production companies use words unfamiliar to us to mask the words that we do know, like formaldehyde, carcinogen, etc. Even if we don't know the exact harm in these chemicals, we know that they should be avoided at all costs.  The problem, as described below in the video, is that there's very little regulation on cosmetics.  It's becoming more and more difficult to detect harmful chemicals as more products are using them.

Below is a video by Annie Leonard, a well-known environmentalist now heading Greenpeace USA, titled the Story of Cosmetics based off her series, the Story of Stuff.  With the use of animation, she describes how we are exposed to high levels of toxic chemicals and why nothing has been done about this.

For further information you can visit the site she mentioned in her video, safecosmetics.org, that has printables of hazardous chemicals to avoid in products like shampoo and sunscreen.  If you'd like to see if the current products you use are safe, EWG has a fantastic database of tens of thousands of health products reviewed.  The lower the rank, the safer the product.  I usually aim for products with an overall rating below 5, but each one has sub-categorical ranks that could be higher than the overall ranking.  For me, allergen-inducing ingredients are minor compared to those that have been linked to cancer.  And you'll likely have certain red-flag chemicals that take priority, too.  The next time you're at Target or Walgreens, you can shop smarter and choose safe hair and skincare products.