January 30th, 2012

Recently, I found myself haunting boutiques and natural food markets, looking for a perfume that didn’t float on a raft of toxic ingredients.
This has never been an easy mission. Even though many organic and natural body products have ditched the phthalates, parabens, triclocan, sodium lauryl sulfate, PEG and other unhealthy compounds with names requiring acronyms, many colognes and perfumes remain stuck in chem-land.

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November 29th, 2010

Ready to abandon all those preservatives, petroleum byproducts, antibacterials and mystery chemicals in scented lotions and beauty products?

We are too. Here are a few tips for holiday shoppers that include some of the purest baby lotions, fun beauty kits for teens and eco-friendly skin smoothers for women.

We’ll start with Abe’s Market in Chicago (and online) because it sells many products that harken back to when formulas were simpler.

Mayron's Goods were developed by Melanie and David Mayron.

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January 18th, 2010

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

When Nidhi Lal founded Los Angeles’s tres-green, tres-chic Recess Organic Nail Spa two years ago, she knew she wanted to target an upscale, conscientious clientele (read = Hollywood’s A-list); she never expected that followers like actress Jeanne Tripplehorn would tout her services while walking the Golden Globe Awards red carpet.

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January 12th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The last time I picked up some “natural” hand soap, I got burned. It turned out to be natural in only the most nominal way. It had a couple herbal ingredients, but these were far outnumbered by a fleet of synthetic preservatives and unpronounceable components that included parabens.

Solutions have been coming. Many health conscious cosmetic companies are offering new, non-toxic hand soaps (see this list at Skin Deep) for those of us getting away from discredited antibacterial formulas and other unnecessary additives.

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October 22nd, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

After the Environmental Working Group released research on toxins in beauty products showing that teen girls could be especially vulnerable (see our blog), we took a closer look at alternative beauty supplies. These products opt for botanicals and other natural and organic ingredients over the suspect synthetic chemicals — phthalates, parabens and made-made fragrances — that can lurk in your body butter and play games with your hormone or immune system.

The happy news: Natural products are gaining ground in stores. We found everything listed below at Main Street outlets like Target, Walgreens, Ulta, Drugstore.com, Amazon.com., and Whole Foods. And the labels are getting quite explicit, many note when they’re paraben- and phthalate-free. While we can’t scientifically endorse the samplings below, we can say we have used most of them and found them to be effective — and as pampering and great-smelling — as many of their conventional cousins.

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October 17th, 2008

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” – like her – 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.

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September 25th, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

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.

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