Daily Loaf

The $500 billion beauty industry is embraces a message that tells women they must correct, conceal and camouflage. Peel away the glitz and glamour, says Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, and you’ll expose the toxic truths lurking beneath the beauty industry’s seedy underbelly. Malkan shares five of the biggies that the major beauty purveyors would rather keep under wraps.

1. Many skincare products contain chemicals toxic to the skin

“A mind-boggling array of products contain chemicals that sensitize skin and trigger skin problems such as rashes, redness, acne, and other symptoms of contact dermatitis”, says Malkan, who notes that doctors often misdiagnose these problems as eczema and prescribe drugs such as steroids or immunosuppressants. Then, of course, there are the toxic chemicals that are known or suspected causes of long-term health effects such as asthma, infertility, learning disabilities, and cancer—ingredients that companies persist in including despite the fact that they “already know how to make great products without these hazardous chemicals,” she says.

2. Companies that donate to breast cancer research still use carcinogens in their products
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Confused on which fruits and vegetables should you be buying organic? Yes, it can be expensive, but studies by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) show that there are some produce items that you should always be buying organic because of the amount of pesticides used on the non-organic kind and the porousness of their skins in retaining the pesticides.

Why should you care about the pesticides on your food? According to the EWG, “The growing consensus among scientists is that small doses of some pesticides and other chemicals can cause lasting damage to human health, especially during fetal development and early childhood. Scientists now know enough about the long-term consequences of ingesting these powerful chemicals to advise that we minimize our consumption of pesticides.” Read the rest of this entry »