BestinBeauty.com is an information site and store all rolled into one. Co-founder Tara Lee founded the site after spending twelve years in the entertainment business, where she was shocked by the levels of toxic chemicals in make-up and beauty products.

The company recently launched a campaign Labels for Life, in order to raise awareness about toxic chemicals in makeup. The campaign’s slogan is a phrase designed to help you read labels when shopping for make-up. “Pretty products for healthy people minus

many lousy chemical substances.” Each word in the slogan corresponds with a chemical that can be left out of make-up. For example, minus turns into mercury (mercurous chloride) which is still used in some mascaras. Lousy stands for lead which can be found in some lipsticks.

The list of chemicals can be found in a range of products, not just make-up. The chemicals on the list can be found in shampoos and conditioners, nail polish and deodorant. The ultimate goal of the website is to encourage consumers to read the product label, just as they would if they were eating a product. Checking out the nutritional facts can scare many people away from sugary sodas, and reading the product information just might scare people into using natural beauty products. Check out the list of chemicals and read how they affect the body.

The site also is calling on action from the FDA. The Food and Drug Administration sets the standards for regulations in the United States for the manufacture of food and drugs, which includes cosmetics. The website is currently calling for more strict guidelines in the chemicals and materials that can be use in beauty products.

Many of the chemicals used in beauty products have already been banned from other products. Lead has been banned from use in paint in children’s toys, but is currently still used for coloring in lipstick in some products.

The shopping section of the site offers chemical-free alternatives to make-up, shampoos, fragrance and skin care products.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

That old saw “Beauty at all costs” got flipped on its perfectly coiffed head at a salon convention in Chicago where some 60,000 beauty professionals gathered over the weekend at America’s Beauty Show. There, some organizers took a moment to ask, “Beauty at what cost?”

The question broadly encompassed the economic concerns facing salon workers, how to improve environmental sustainability, and also reduce the environmental risks of acute and chronic exposure to the chemicals in beauty products.

These concerns are still be working their way to the top of the industry, but the whiff of trouble is evident in any busy salon, where hairspray particles aggravate the nose and the pungent scents of bleaches and dyes can slice through the indoor atmosphere like chlorine at a chemical spill — at least on Saturdays.

In connection with the Chicago show, which ends today, Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus of Environmental & Occupational Medicine
at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, released a statement about these often smelly, but unvetted, “hidden dangers” wafting about most beauty establishments and coming home on our hair and in our lungs.

His list of concerns rivals the list of products stocked by your average hairdresser:

• Bulk containers that dispense products with the label no longer present, leaving practitioners and clients in the dark about ingredients

• Poor ventilation, especially in smaller salons; a serious concern for salon workers

• Hairspray aerosols that can settle into the lungs and may contain a carcinogen, vinyl chloride, a propellant linked to liver cancer

• Hair dyes, especially those containing phenylenediamines which have been shown to cause cancer

• Phthalates, compounds typically used as preservatives in scented products and known to be endocrine disruptors, linked to breast cancer and the hormonal health effects, especially on boys

In a press statement, Dr. Epstein warned that hair dyes pose special concerns. “About 35 percent of women and 10 percent of men are regularly exposed to these dyes in salons or by personal use,” he said in a statement. “Black and dark brown permanent and semi-permanent dyes contain carcinogens, particularly those known as phenylenediamines. These have been shown to cause cancers, particularly non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and multiple myeloma, besides breast and bladder cancers.”

Europe has banned these types of dyes, but in the U.S. most hairdressers and clients remain blithely unaware of their potential dangers, he said.

The remedy to this toxic roulette? Epstein, who also is head of the Chicago-based Cancer Prevention Coalition, is calling for better ventilation of salons and also for a ban on pressurized sprays.

He also says that the government-produced Material Safety Data Sheets (known as MSDS reports) should be made available and kept on site at salons so employees can take precautions.

And for those of us who serve as client guinea pigs in the pursuit of a finished veneer – there’s Epstein’s new book (March 2009): Toxic Beauty: How Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Endanger Your Health…and What you Can Do About It.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Beauty and the Beastly Dangers

• Some beauty products pose significant dangers
• Color me natural: The search for good organic cosmetics
• Sugar and spice and toxins: teen girls exposed to chemicals in beauty products
• Consider natural beauty products and avoid hidden toxins
• Do ‘natural’ and ‘hair color’ ever go together?

See more in Personal Care/Medicine

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My tweener daughter has often patiently explained to me that there are “girly girls” and “Tom Boys” and variations in between. I guess she figures that in the century when I grew up that wasn’t the case, or possibly that my girlhood is so far gone, it can’t even be imagined! I need to be brought up to speed.

As her tutorial goes, “girly girls” need to dress girlishly and primp with lip gloss, cologne and smell-nice body lotions. Tom Boys, not so much.

As her mom, I want her to be a Shiny Happy Female, but my green side ends up questioning all this girlish goop-la.

Scientists have been sounding alarms about suspicious ingredients in shampoo, lotions and cosmetics for many years and being an obsessive label reader, I’ve tended to agree that it might be worthwhile to deconstruct these labels with their gazillion unpronounceable preservatives, sudsing agents, flavorings and fragrances.

Can a product containing PPG-2 hydroxyethlcoco/isostearmide be completely safe? Not being a chemist, I really don’t know, and I imagine that’s where a lot of us land: wary of this onslaught of chemicals, but without sufficient knowledge to sort it out.

The Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based watchdog organization concerned with toxins in our everyday lives, can help. You can gather info on the products you use by consulting the EWG database Skin Deep. The online tool – which includes some 25,000 products — can show you whether your body lotion, mascara or hair conditioner is rated as low, medium or high toxicity. It identifies the chemicals that are noxious; tells how they are potentially dangerous (carcinogen vs. skin irritant, say) and shows the level of research that’s been done.

Recently, the EWG took another stab at raising public awareness about toxins in personal products, conducting a unique study of teen girls in which researchers found 16 harmful chemicals, many traceable to beauty products, in the urine and blood samples of 20 volunteers, ages 14-20.

Chemist and EWG researcher Rebecca Sutton, who crafted the study, obligingly identified some of the key questionable ingredients to watch for:

Triclosan – This anti-microbial has been melded into a vast array of consumer goods. It’s common in “anti-bacterial” hand soaps, but also turns up in deodorants, acne washes, toothpaste, and in hard goods like shower curtains and pillows marketed as “anti-microbial.”

According to Sutton, manufacturers are doing us no great favors with this chemical, which has been associated with a higher risk of thyroid problems in humans, is a suspected hormone disrupter (especially of concern to growing kids) and is not environmentally friendly, persisting in groundwater. Triclosan also has been accused of fostering antibiotic-resistance in germs. In any event, studies with hand soaps show that Triclosan works no better than regular soap and water to fight germs, says Dr. Sutton (among others).

Phthalates – These chemicals, which are used as plasticizers (to make items more flexible) and as preservatives, are ominously present in many beauty products, concealed by the term “fragrance,” and not required to be disclosed on labels, Sutton says. They are used to make the fragrance in the product last longer, or absorb better, on the skin.

“Because these products are hidden by the term ‘fragrance’ (on the label), you don’t even know what you’re getting…And they are dangerous,” Dr. Sutton said.

One analysis of fragrances and scented body care products found that phthalates were present, but not listed, in 75 percent of the items tested.

Phthalates also are found in nail polishes containing dibutyl phthalate, used as an anti-chipping additive and in bendable plastic baby toys, prompting California to ban their use in plastic products starting in 2009.

Studies have found that phthalates interfere with the reproductive and endocrine systems and they’ve been implicated in diabetes and infertility. For more info see the EWG posting Cosmetic Chemicals of Concern.

The American Chemistry Council, the trade group representing manufacturers, disputes claims that phthalates pose any danger, even in baby toys, noting in a recent release that they are “among the most thoroughly studied products in the world, and have been reviewed by multiple regulatory bodies in the U.S. and overseas.

Musks – These synthetic scents added to personal care products – and household items like laundry detergent, also may act as endocrine disruptors. Like phthalates, they are not listed separately on items, but fall under the umbrella term “fragrance.”

Musks can build up in the body and may impair one’s defenses to toxins. Some studies have linked these synthetic fragrance additives to cancer development. “Nitromusks” have been banned by the European Union because of health concerns. Experts advise choosing fragrance-free products and avoid using air fresheners to minimize the risk, which is still under study.

Parabens – You’ve probably heard of parabens, preservatives that turn up in an array of body care products – moisturizers, lotions, shampoos and sunscreens. They can be a skin irritant, but of more concern is their tendency to mimic estrogen, causing researchers to look into their possible role in breast cancer and reproductive problems. Parabens are regulated as food additives, but not in cosmetics, by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration.

Fortunately, the problems posed by these chemicals, have some ready solutions.

Dr. Sutton, who found that the teen girls in her study used an average of 17 beauty products compared with the 12 used by adult women, advises young girls is to simply cut down on the number of beauty items in their feminine arsenal.

Girls (and guys for that matter) also can switch to alternative products that avoid the use of phthalates, parabens and Triclosan. Store shelves are becoming stocked with an array of natural, plant-based products that eschew these synthetic additives. Many proclaim on their labels that they are free of parabens and phthalates. Some eschew the use of sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate, cleansing/sudsing agent used in industrial cleaning products but which can irritate the skin, according to some research.

What’s more, this niche market is growing. Many of these natural products are coming down in price and are more widely distributed than ever. We found several botanically scented, chemical-free (or nearly chemical free) choices at our local health food market, but also at Target, Ulta and Drugstore.com. For our next blog we’ll present a grab bag of natural products (can you say Yes to Carrots?) that we put to the home test, showing you a sampling of those we found to be sweet-smelling, affordable and effective.

Some not so pretty news out about cosmetics this week shows that teen girls tested for chemical exposure from beauty products had become human repositories of parabens, phthalates, triclosan and musks.

These chemicals, some of which are hormone disruptors or have been linked to cancer, turned up in the blood and urine of 20 teenage girls tested by the Environmental Working Group.

On average, the girls, ages 14-19, tested positive for 13 hormone-disrupting chemicals each. Parabens, commonly used as cosmetic preservatives, were detected in every girl tested.

While it remains unclear how dangerous these toxins, absorbed in minute amounts, really are, scientists worry that their effects could compound over time.

The study found that the participating teen girls used some 17 products every day, more than even adult women (who average 12 products in a day), raising their cumulative exposure to these potentially harmful substances at a time when their reproductive, immune, metabolic and adrenal systems are maturing.

“Emerging research suggest that teens may be particularly sensitive to exposures to trace levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals like the ones targeted in this study,” noted the EWG news release.

The EWG, a non-profit based in Washington, called for the federal government to set safety standards for cosmetics, which include many ingredients that are not tested by any independent agency. The group advised teens to:

• Reduce the number of beauty products they use

• Use paraben-free skin products, shampoos and sunscreens. Parabens can mimic estrogen, interfering with reproductive health and some studies have linked them to breast cancer.

• Seek out fragrance-free beauty products to reduce exposure to musks, which may disturb the body’s ability to fend off toxins; and to reduce exposure to phthalates, linked to a host of medical problems including infertility issues.

• Avoid products labeled “antibacterial” particularly hand soaps with triclosan listed as an active ingredient on the label. Switch to an alcohol hand rub or use regular soap and water instead. Triclosan has been found to disrupt the thyroid system, which can affect brain development in the young, and is suspected of contributing to the development super-strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

• Use the EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to inform your product choices. EWG also maintains the public Skin Deep database to help consumers find safer products.

To learn more about the uses and effects of the chemicals tested, see the EWG’s notes on phthalates, triclosan, parabens and musks, and the detailed report on the study.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media