In the last couple of decades, thousands of new “personal-care products” have been created for a buying public blitzed by advertising PR into believing that these products will bring them health and beauty. (According to TV Guide, the average American watches 200 TV commercials a day.) In most cases, however, they do the opposite. There is precious little “care” in the personal-care industry.

You may wish to check the products you are presently using for the following ingredients, and choose more healthful alternatives for those products that contain them. This list is by no means exhaustive, as hundreds of chemicals are used in such products, but these are the “biggies.”

Triclosan

As we are caught up in an antibacterial craze fed by marketing hype, many of our personal products also contain toxic triclosan or triclocarbon. (Remember, ALL chemicals that kill germs are also toxic to us.) These chemicals need to be left on a surface (your skin) for about two minutes in order to kill germs, so in most cases they do not, as people don’t stand with soapy hands for two minutes. This failure is most likely a good thing, as the normal bacteria population of our bodies not only eats our sweat but also acts to defend us against harmful invasive bacteria. However, scientists are concerned that common usage of antibacterial agents will create resistant bacteria, just as the overuse of antibiotics has. At any rate, washing with any soap effectively washes away any stray “bad guy bacteria” one may have picked up, and diseases such as the common cold are not bacterial in nature anyway, but viral. This leaves us with no reason to use antibacterial soaps, and many good reasons not to. Let me add more.

Dr. O’Donoghue, associate professor of dermatology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Centre in Chicago,says that many of her patients have developed cracked skin or eczema from using these products. and that “there is nothing quite as good to spread bacteria as hand eczema.”

Triclosan is a member of the carcinogenic chlorophenol family. (As is Agent Orange, the defoliant used in Vietnam with such tragic results.) In addition, not only are batches of triclosan occasionally contaminated by carcinogenic dioxins, but triclosan itself breaks down into dioxins when exposed to sunlight in the general environment.

The EPA lists Triclosan as a toxic pesticide with the highest scores regarding risk to both human health and the environment. The triclosan absorbed through your skin is stored in your fatty tissues, eventually reaching levels that suppress your immune system and may damage your liver, kidneys and lungs and cause paralysis or heart problems. The Triclosan your body does not absorb when you use antibacterial products goes down the drain and remains in the environment forever. A recent study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey found triclosan contamination in 57% of 139 streams they tested in 30 states.

Retailers in Sweden have cleared their shelves of triclosan products after traces of it were found in sewage, fish and mothers’ breast milk, and major English retailers are now following suit, phasing out triclosan products by 2005. Be aware that triclosan is also common in plastic kitchenware products, and even in sinks and toilet seats.

Sodium Lauryl/Laureth/dodecyl Sulfate

Another downside of commercial soaps/shampoos/toothpastes is Sodium Lauryl/Laureth/dodecyl Sulfate (SLS). SLS is absorbed into and retained in the tissues of the eye, brain, heart, liver, and other organs. As pointed out by Dr. O’Donoghue,”surfactant molecules stay on hair and skin long after you think you’ve rinsed them off. As they sit there, they literally strip-away fatty acids, moisture and amino acids from your hair and skin. They increase dryness, increase roughness, and disturb the healthy growth process of new hair and skin.” SLS can also cause cataracts in adults, and keep children’s eyes from developing properly. It has a tendency to react with other ingredients to form NDELA, a nitrosamine and potent carcinogen. Researchers estimate that you absorb as much nitrate from shampooing your hair once with a product containing SLS as you do by eating a pound of bacon! SLS also acts to make it easier for other toxins to be absorbed into our bodies. SLS is a skin irritant, used in testing labs as the standard ingredient to irritate skin. It is a denaturant, that is, it dissolves protein. Our skin, hair and gum tissue are made of protein, thus the SLS in our personal products is very damaging to our very cell structure. (When I began making tooth powder and stopped using tooth paste, my dentist commented on the fact that my gums were much healthier. He was surprised to learn the reason why.)

Propylene/ethylene/butylene/polyethylene glycol

Propylene glycol (PG) and butylene glycol are petroleum plastics that easily penetrate the skin and can weaken protein and cellular structure. Glycols are used in antifreeze and deicing solutions for cars, airplanes, and boats and as solvents in the paint and plastics industries. PG is also used to remove barnacles from boats! The EPA requires workers to wear protective gloves, clothing and goggles when disposing of PG solutions by burying them in the ground, warning against skin contact to prevent consequences such as brain, liver, and kidney abnormalities. However, the concentration is greater in personal products than in most industrial applications.

Some soap manufacturers use diethylene glycol or triethylene glycol to give their soap a smooth, moist look. However, these petroleum products remove essential skin lipids, so they themselves are actually drying and damaging our skin.

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a potentially carcinogenic petroleum product that can reduce your skin’s natural moisture factor thereby increasing the appearance of aging and vulnerability to bacteria.

DEA (diethanolamine), MEA (monoethanolamine), & TEA (triethanolamine):
The use of these hormone-disrupting chemicals is restricted in Europe due to known carcinogenic effects, but in the U.S. they are used to create foam in products like shampoo, shaving creams and bubble bath.

Fragrances

Synthetic fragrances are among the most dangerous ingredients in today’s personal-care products. They can cause watery eyes, reddened skin, spaciness, nausea, mood changes, depression, lethargy, restlessness, irritability, anger, memory lapses and inability to concentrate. Fragrance-sensitive people can be incapacitated by exposure to these chemicals. (Upon being sprayed with cologne by a department store worker who did not ask permission, a friend of mine promptly collapsed on the floor and was unable to walk for some time.)

About 95 percent of the makeup of a “fragrance” is synthetic chemicals, many of which are designated as hazardous, including methylene chloride, toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, ethyl alcohol, and benzyl chloride. A fragrance may contain six hundred or more different raw materials and synthetic chemicals, few of which have been tested for their safety.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) reports that 884 toxic substances were identified in a list of 2,983 chemicals used in the fragrance industry as capable of causing breathing difficulty, allergic reactions, multiple chemical sensitivities, and other serious maladies, including neurotoxicity.

FD&C Color Pigments

I once saw a poster in a college chemistry lab that consisted simply of a large picture of a sponge cut out in the shape of a human hand, with the caption “This is what your hand looks like to chemicals.” The skin of our entire body is excellent at absorbing whatever we put on it.

Strangely, in the 1930′s skin was supposedly thought to be an impermeable barrier. That thought, along with the sheer political clout of big money industries, resulted in many ingredients being given special exemption from bans when the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1938. The FDA has no power to remove these ingredients from the market, even though many have since proven to be highly toxic and even carcinogenic. Thus synthetic colorants made from petroleum and containing benzidine, a known carcinogen, are used in our personal products (as well as our processed vegetables and many beverages, desserts and drugs). Absorption of certain colors can cause oxygen depletion, even death. Animal studies have shown almost all of them to be carcinogenic.

Today’s synthetic dyes are engineered from petroleum products rather than extracted from actual coal tar, which reduces the amount of carcinogenic residuals from the coal itself, but as these dyes still have carcinogenic properties they are still referred to in the industry as “coal-tar dyes,” according to the FDA. (From U.S. Food & Drug Administration. “Color Additives Fact Sheet.”)

These chemicals can trigger a wide number of behavioral, learning and health problems. FD&C color or D&C (drug & cosmetic) colors may cause severe allergic reactions, asthma attacks, headaches, nausea, fatigue, nervousness, lack of concentration, and cancer. For example, Yellow 5, widely used in foods and drugs, causes asthma and hives in some individuals (U.S. Food & Drug Administration) and triggers hyperactivity in sensitive children (Lancet, Mar. 9, 1985). Yellow 6 can cause urticaria (hives), rhinitis, nasal congestion, bronchoconstriction, anaphylactoid reaction, purpura, indigestion, abdominal pain and vomiting. (Source: American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs, 1985) Another of the most common colors, Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine), is associated with allergic reactions and conditions.

You might check to see if your toothpaste contains FD&C Blue #1, found in animal studies to be a definite bladder carcinogen. While you’re at it, check for saccharin, which has been rated carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.) These substances can be absorbed in mere seconds through the skin on our lips or through the mucous membrane that lines our mouth which, according to the Physician’s Desk Reference, has an absorption efficiency of over 90 percent.

With all toxic personal products, children are particularly at risk, as they have a greater sensitivity and proportion of skin area than adults.

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