The color of beauty is turning green, which pleases Pure Skin Care companies who offer products with natural or organic ingredients. But what are you really getting? Some can contain ingredients that have been linked to cancer or reproductive problems.
Shopper Nikole Sarno said, “It’s a little scary when you find out what you’re actually putting on your body every day.”
That fear is leading a growing number of women to explore so-called green alternatives for pure skin care.
“They’re more health conscious in terms of what they’re putting on their bodies, and it just makes sense for us to have organic and natural products,” said Sephora skin care expert Jamelia Everly.
“I guess most of the time when patients are asking about organic, they’re thinking chemical-free. And I have to tell them it’s not always true that they’re chemical-free,” said University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Cherie Ditre.
And how about you? Have you read the labels on your skin care products or cosmetic packages lately? Chances are you’ll have a hard time pronouncing most of the ingredients. Did you know that two of those difficult-to-pronounce names, phthalates and parabens, were banned by the European Union in 2003?
Phthalates have been known to cause a broad range of birth defects and lifelong reproductive impairments in laboratory animals. Phthalates are also known to be hormone-mimicking chemicals. Parabens are chemical preservatives identified as estrogenic and disruptive of normal hormone function.
What are we to do? The best place to discover if the ingredients in your cosmetics qualify for really Pure Skin Care is to visit the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Database. The Environmental Working Group is an organization that reports on the toxicity of ingredients used in personal care products where each product has been given a hazard rating from 0 to 10.
The safest has a 0 rating, and the most dangerous level of toxicity has the 10 rating. Just type in a product or company name, see their ratings, and presto, you can now make an educated choice based on scientific analysis.
A great idea is to start with a sample size of the products you find that have ratings of 0. Now we’re truly talkin’ Pure Skin Care!
