The Toxic Dangers of Many Personal-Care Products--Are You Informed?

Over 10,000 different chemicals are used in cosmetics, skin-care treatments, & other personal products. Some of these chemicals are nitrosamines, lead and other heavy metals, parabens, phthalates, hydroquinone, and 1,4-dioxane--all very bad! The chemical 1,4-dioxane is a probable carcinogen found in almost 1/4 of all cosmetic products--and not even as an ingredient, but instead as a contaminant! That shouldn't be very comforting to read!

But I am sure you are asking yourself: If these products have such dangerous ingredients, how can it be legal to sell them to unsuspecting customers?

The government created a term called "maximum safe levels" to tell you how much of a toxic ingredient your body should be able to withstand. This is the government's way of saying that a scientist has informed them that, based on animal studies, 5 parts per million of a particular ingredient doesn't cause health problems that they can detect. At higher levels, however, this same ingredient may show signs of causing anything from hives to cancer.

The fact that studies such as this have been done may sound reassuring to you, but you should understand that the groups typically performing toxicity studies on skin-care ingredients are the manufacturers themselves who want their products to make it to market. Furthermore, when it comes to clinical studies, one could be designed that shows cyanide is safe in mice. All you would have to do is evaluate the mice two seconds after the cyanide was administered and conclude they were fine. Yet if you waited a minute to record the data, all the mice would be dead.

Although this example may seem a little silly, it shows the very real dangers of performing short-term studies on ingredients that might have long-term, cumulative effects on your health. Cancer, heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, Type 2 Diabetes, and other degenerative diseases take years to develop. And really, there are too many variables to look for in any single study. But as far as some manufacturers are concerned, safety is secondary. New chemicals are considered safe until PROVEN dangerous, and for many consumers, this may be too late.

You may hear some personal-care industry experts claim that the incriminating studies--such as those showing a risk of cancer--are unrealistic. After all, they say, the studies may have used ten times the "normal dose" or "maximum safe level" of an ingredient recommended in the use of that product. But what if you were to use 10 products with the maximum safe level of the same ingredient, or use them for 10 times longer than the study ran? Did someone actually decide that 1/10th of the poison that kills you is safe?

For that matter, are those who are conducting the studies assuming that you have a perfectly healthy immune system, liver, and kidneys, as well as excellent air quality and drinking water? If so, it is a bad assumption! It's more realistic to assume that your body is battling a hundred other cellular attacks at any given time.