Natural personal care products sound healthy enough, but are they truly safe organic cosmetics? With all the talk of natural cosmetics being safer for you, some manufacturers fail to back this claim up. Sure, their product may contain a natural ingredient here or there, but this is not the same as safe organic cosmetics. The problem is that “natural” can simply mean an ingredient was derived from a natural source and is not necessarily organically produced.
That does not mean that all “Organic” products are safe. A shampoo, for instance, may be made of organically grown herbs and plant extracts, but still contain sodium lauryl sulphate, a penetration enhancer which can cause the body to absorb other ingredients more easily into the skin and certain organs.
Safe organic cosmetics are those whose ingredients have been
grown organicallyand are free from
toxic ingredients.
Though shampoo and toothpaste may seem like trivial items to be concerned with in the broader scheme of environmental safety, using toxic personal care products affects more than our individual health. The harmful ingredients in these products wash down our drains and into our rivers, negatively affecting the hormone systems in wildlife and contaminating our water supply.
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. working toward safeguarding public health and the environment, more than one-third of all personal care products contains at least one ingredient linked to cancer. EWG has also found that 79 percent of products contain ingredients that may contain harmful impurities like known human carcinogens, according to FDA or industry reviews. Worse still, these impurities are legal and unrestricted for the personal care product industry at this time.
Many cosmetics manufacturers have signed the
Compact for Safe Cosmetics
agreeing to meet the standards set by the European Union’s “Cosmetics Directive”, which bans ingredients that are know or strongly suspected of causing cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects. Unfortunately there are still many companies who have not yet chosen to reformulate their products, L’Oreal and Estee Lauder among them.
So how do you know if the products you use are safe? Check out this handy
product guide
from the Environmental Working Group to see how your favorite products stack up.
Your best bet is always to choose a product which is “100% Organic” or made by a manufacturer dedicated to safety in cosmetics and the environment.
