The Story of Cosmetics... and the toxins within many of them

The Story of Cosmetics video has just been released, and it shares information on the ugly truth about cosmetics and personal care products.

Have you read the ingredient label on your favorite mascara, shampoo or deodorant? Seriously, you need a degree in chemistry to figure out just what's in there!
Now to be fair, just because an ingredient sounds scary, doesn't mean it is, but some common ingredients in personal care products ARE linked to asthma, cancer, learning disabilities and male infertility. How can this be?

And how can a product marketed with the PINK RIBBON logo to fight breast cancer, contain ingredients LINKED to breast cancer? Because nobody, not even the FDA regulates ingredients in personal care products. In fact, since 1938, the FDA has banned only eight ingredients from being in them!

The video is enlightening, and after you watch it, I encourage you to purchase products from responsible companies who market products that are truly safe, that really work and that are actually green!

Oh, and please sign the petition asking Congress to pass the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010. Isn't it time for all products to be safe?

Cleaning products and their link to asthma

The good news, biodegradable cleaners are finally "en Vogue." Everybody is going GREEN. But did you realize that many of the cleaners that you purchase in the supermarket - and some of the "biodegradable" cleaners that you buy in your local health food store release toxic fumes in your home that can adversely affect your health and the health of your family?

Sadly between 1980 and 1994 childhood asthma increased 74%. Today 1 in 13 kids has asthma. The cause(s) behind this rapid increase in asthma is probably a combination of things, but recently evidence has shown that some of the increase may be caused by early exposure to toxic chemical fumes in the home.

How can that be?

Because consumers demand cleaners that work well and are easy to use - and if no effort is required, all the better! Also because cleaning product manufacturers have been more than willing to oblige consumers by mixing numerous chemicals together in household cleaners and then putting them in convenient spray bottles. And these days with our homes well insulated against the cold, and central air running in the summer, who opens a window to vent those fumes? The result is that those toxic chemicals accumulate in the air that we breathe inside our own homes!

Over the years a number of studies have pointed to an association between toxic household fumes and childhood asthma, including one published in the European Respiratory Journal (31: 54-57, 2008) which was very large and particularly well controlled. The study measured the household chemical exposure of 7,162 pregnant women in England and looked at the incidence of asthma in their children at age 8.5 years. The household products used most frequently by the pregnant women were disinfectants (87.4%), bleach (84.8%), aerosols (71.7%), air fresheners (68%), window cleaners (60.5%), carpet cleaners (35.3%) and pesticides/insecticides (21.2%).

And the results were clear. Higher household chemical exposure during pregnancy was associated with a 41% increase in childhood asthma in children with no known allergies!

What should we learn from this? That it's not enough to select household products that are safe for the environment. We also need to choose products on the basis of their safety for us and our family - not just on the basis of cost and convenience.

For information on the toxic chemicals in common household products visit: http://www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov/products.htm)