Toxic Free NC Tip of the Week: Toxic-Free Toiletries

The average person is exposed to multiple chemicals before breakfast every day that may cause cancer, disrupt their hormone functioning, damage their brain….all from their toiletries. So many soaps, lotions, shampoos, toothpastes, and cosmetics on the market contain toxic chemicals. Meanwhile, we are slathering them on our skin, breathing them in all day long, even applying them to our lips and using them to clean our teeth. They are all ending up inside our bodies through one route or another.

Sure, it’s just a little bit, but a little bit every day can add up to a lot. Plus, we’re exposed to not one, but dozens of potentially harmful chemicals in the course of a day. How do the chemicals from shampoo and deodorant interact with each other, and with all the other chemicals we take in from food, pest control, cleaners, flame retardants in furniture and electronics, plastics, vehicle exhaust, and so forth? Actually, no one really knows - scientists are still trying to figure it out, meanwhile, we’re all already exposed to it. Scary!

Last year, a report from Environmental Working Group found that among a group of 20 teen-aged girls, the average had 13 different hormone-disrupting chemicals in her body from her cosmetics. Yipes! Then just this month, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics released a report on toxic chemical contaminants in baby shampoo, which don’t appear on the labels. Ugh!

Want to avoid putting toxic junk on your face, in your bath, or in your mouth? Choosing products with words like “natural” and “organic” on their labels isn’t enough - those claims on cosmetics and body care products aren’t regulated for the most part, so they may not mean much. You need to read the ingredients.
Check out Skin Deep, the Cosmetics Safety Database from Environmental Working Group. You can find out what’s in the stuff you use, and alternative products have less toxic chemicals.
Also check out this great list of the top chemicals to avoid in personal care products from Northwestern University, which is really helpful for deciphering the crazy multi-syllable words on product ingredient lists.

And, check out Pristine Beauty, a local purveyor of non-toxic personal care products that I just found out about - looks like good stuff, plus her website art reminds me a little bit of bad a$$ feminist artist Stella Marrs - awesome. (Thanks to Stella for this post’s artwork!)
Durham-based Burt’s Bees scores pretty well for natural ingredients in that Skin Deep database - not as squeaky clean as we might have hoped, but hey, as long as my lip balm doesn’t have anything too terrible in it, I’m happy.

Are there any other locally made, toxic-free hygiene and beauty products that you all can recommend? Please let me know in the comments, and I’ll add them to this post. Thanks!

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