Friday, May 4, 2012

Skin Deep...What's in your skin care products?

And therefore on your face and in the layers of your skin. Yikes!  I know.  Not another thing to worry about.  But ignorance is not bliss my friends.  I did this myself a couple of years ago.   I checked my cosmetics and toiletries on EWG.COM to see how they scored.  EWG's Skin Deep is an online safety guide for cosmetics and personal care products, launched in 2004 to help people find safer products, with fewer ingredients that are hazardous or that haven't been thoroughly tested. Skin Deep combines product ingredient lists with information in more than 50 standard toxicity and regulatory databases. The database provides easy-to-navigate safety ratings for thousands of personal care products.   I came up with the sad realization that I had to get rid of some of my favorite things.  As a former professional make up artist and licensed esthetician, this was not easy to do.    But I know that what we place on our skin travels deep, and if I was going to make a conscious effort to go green, watch what I eat and change my lifestyle.  I had to do this too.  So go grab some of your and toiletries and head to your computer to check out how your favorite products score.  Here's an example of one of the products I currently have.  To show you how it works.   My shampoo scored a 4.  (0 being the safest and 10 being the most hazardous).  4 is considered Moderate Hazard. Hmmmm....not the worst but not the best I could do.

By Organix


Health concerns of ingredients

Overall Hazardyes
Canceryes
Developmental & reproductive toxicityyes
Allergies & immunotoxicityyes
Use restrictionsyes
























It will go on to give you much more information and break down the ingredients for you and score each one.   Please don't get overwhelmed if your products do not fare too well.  Change the items you need to as you start run out.  Start by switching the highest scored ones.  I know this can be costly.  If you can't afford to go completely organic and non toxic on all your products.  You can change to something with a lower score.  Consider how many products you use everyday, any changes you make will be for the better.  I hope this was helpful for you as it was for me.  I have to go now.  Gotta go buy some new shampoo.  See you later!

Awesome youtube video that breaks it down for you: YouTube/storyofcosmetics


4 comments:

  1. Yes! great post. There are also some great apps for smart phones like "ingredient watch" (free) which breaks down every ingredient and the effects in all cosmetics. Also if you go on Dr. Bronner's website they have an interesting article on a law suit they are pursuing against so called "organic" cosmetic products. It's quite interesting. You have to be really careful even with "organic" or "all natural" labels. I changed to Dr. Bronner's products 6 yrs ago and have never looked back. Also Suki color products are wonderful and legit. We ladies use cosmetics every single day, it becomes so second nature to us that we don't think about all the yucky chemicals in all of these products. We really need to be aware of what we are putting on our bodies and our children's little bodies. These companies don't care about your health, they care about you swiping your credit cards.

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  2. here is the link for the coming clean campaign along with a very good you tube video "the story of cosmetics" enjoy!

    http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/index.cfm

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  3. Thanks Gina, Yes I agree. You know there is so much we are exposed to whether the products we use, the environment, the foods we eat, our furniture, paint. There's is such an overload of toxins all around us. If we could control some of it. How amazing is that. It's so important for us to do all we can for ourselves and our families. Some of it we can't help but the ones we can. We should do all we can. Dr. Bronner's is one the ingredients of laundry detergent recipe I have to make your own. I will post that next. Thanks for all the links. I will include them in my post! xo

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  4. Good Stuff ladies!! So looking forward to research. Thanks.

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