Chemical Free, Natural Skin Care - How Can You be Sure?
People are having adverse reactions from their skin care
products and our bodies are getting bombarded with potentially
toxic substances it can not eliminate.
Wildcrafted Herbal
Products have been actively taking part in educating the
general public and informing them of the potential dangers of
not reading the labels carefully and just buying their skin care
products based on advertising slogans and marketing strategies
which are often misleading if not down right false...
Below is the report (in part) which was aired on Channel Seven's
Today Tonight:
Expert warns of toxic cosmetics
REPORTER: Glenn Connley
BROADCAST DATE: September 21, 2005 - viewable at:
http://seven.com.au/todaytonight/story/?id=24679
Expert warns of toxic cosmetics
A toxicologist has warned consumers to avoid certain
additives in cosmetics, saying they could do long term damage or
even be deadly.
From moisturiser to shampoo, hair dye to toothpaste,
Australians are using lotions and potions daily, trying to look
better, younger, smoother and softer.
But what exactly are we asking our bodies to absorb?
Toxicologist Dr Peter Dingle said many of the cosmetics that are
meant to make us look good and defy age, were actually doing
significant, long-term damage.
He said chemical additives, often used in creams as a
preservative, could trigger dangerous - even deadly - allergic
reactions.
"Over the long term, these are not improving the quality of
your skin, they're damaging the quality of your skin," Dr Dingle
said.
"So you're going to end up looking older and more wrinkled,
the more of these chemicals you put on the skin. That's the
incredibly ridiculous thing about it."
Eve Diamante had a bad reaction to a sorbolene cream, usually
renowned as a simple, safe product. After a burning sensation,
Eve frantically washed her face in cold water to ease the
pain.
"The water was drying out my face and it even started to
bleed along here, if you look in the photos there's quite deep
cracks and it started to bleed," Eve said.
"My eyes were swollen, I had a red face, but the funny thing
was I had a red line to where I didn't put cream."
Eve consulted a dermatologist, who discovered she'd reacted
to a chemical preservative known as chlorocresol. It took two
weeks and a layer of skin to get Eve back to normal.
"All my skin peeled off and that took the heat off my face,"
Eve said. "I still looked quite wrinkly and red."
Melanie Brown's cleansing mousse freebie didn't feel quite
such a bargain when her skin reacted violently after just two
applications.
"It looked swollen," Melanie said. "It was very red, scaly,
it had little white pimples forming on top of the redness and it
felt awful, it was burning and itching and it just felt
terrible."
Leanne Black, 30, reacted to a foaming gel which she said
turned her clear complexion into a spotty, inflamed
nightmare.
"I just thought it was something I'd eaten or drank, but it
wasn't and it continued to get worse and worse," Leanne said.
"And I got some peeling on my nose and cheek areas, and when I
put moisturiser on, it would sting quite a lot."
Neither Leanne nor Melanie were sure which ingredient caused
the reaction.
Cosmetics manufacturer L'Oreal insisted its products met all
Australian safety standards, but Melanie claimed she was not the
only one to have a problem with the cleansing mousse.
"I'm a member of an online forum for women, Vogue Australia,
and there's a whole thread dedicated to just this product and
the reaction that a lot of women are getting is identical to
what I had: the redness, the inflaming, there was one woman that
woke up with her eye fused shut," Melanie said.
While chemical preservatives were found in many foodstuffs
and cosmetics these days, doctors said people were now also more
susceptible to allergies. Either way, Dr Dingle said many of the
chemicals were unnecessary.
"There is no need for all these chemicals," Dr Dingle said.
"One, you can make simpler products. Two, you can make safer
products and just by reducing the number of chemicals that go in
people are going to be exposed to a lot less chemicals."
No matter what the label promises, consumers were advised to
test a small amount of creams or cosmetics on their hand or
wrist before smearing it elsewhere.
Comment:
This is what we at Wildcrafted Herbal Products have been
saying now for 20 years and is the reason why all our skin and personal care
products are formulated by a medical herbalist and
Aromatherapist, and why only herbal extracts and pure essential
oils (as opposed to isolated, extracted active ingredients) are
used.
After all, you don't add a beat-carotene tablet to your salad
instead of a carrot, do you...?
Also be careful of terms such as hypo allergenic, which are
marketing terms and really have no meaning what so ever - you
can be allergic to anything, even the most natural, purest form
of a substance - peanuts are natural, possibly even organic, but
if you're allergic to them you will have a reaction, which could
kill you. It's that simple.
In some brands of Natural skin care, Natural can mean the
addition of one natural ingredient to a cocktail of 'un-natural'
chemicals; Organic can be as little as 1 per cent organic
content...
Doctor Dingle named a danger list of ingredients to
avoid.
1. Formaldehyde, an industrial chemical linked to burning
eyes, nose and throat, rashes, coughing and nausea.
2. SLS, or sodium lauryl sulphate, which can reportedly
affect the brain, eyes, heart and liver.
3 and 4. DEA and TEA, di- and tri-thanolamine, used as
wetting agents in creams and shampoos, linked in research with
stomach, oesophagus, liver and bladder cancers.
5. Propylene glycol, used as a humidifier in cosmetics, which
has been connected with liver abnormalities and kidney
damage.
"Sometimes its just the combination of chemicals," Dr Dingle
said. "And there are so many combinations that it's just
impossible to actually pick out a chemical that could be causing
the problem."
In Anna Bragaglia's case, the chemical was PPD, or
paraphenylenediamine, used in hair dyes.
"My son came into my room early in the morning and he just
looked at me and he started crying, and he said 'Mummy, what's
wrong with your face?'," Anna said.
Anna had put a burgundy tint through her hair at her
hairdresser. Within a day, the swelling and pain was
unbelievable, she said.
"I think people need to be more aware of the dangers because
it has become a society where everyone's high on looks and
everything like that," Anna said.
"So I really think that people need to look into that, read
more about it before they start using products which are
available from the supermarket shelf and chemists."
Take a look at: My Article entitled 'Chemicals in skin care' - This article contains a
long list of chemicals commonly found in popular skin care
products and you should definitely avoid them.