Rubba dub dub, there's engine degreaser in my tub!
Sunday, October 18, 2009 at 10:24AM Do you know what you are washing your hair with? By law, cosmetics manufacturers are required to put the ingredients on the label - but the combination of long words, acronyms and numbers means very little to the general consumer - leaving you none the wiser as to what it actually is that makes your hair shiny, your skin smooth, or your bath so lovely and bubbly!!
Here's a few common ingredients:
Sodium laureth sulphate (SLES) is one of the most common ingredients found in personal care products. In short, it is used to make the product soapy and foamy. Sounds lovely? Not so lovely when you consider it is also used in car washes, floor cleaners and engine degreasers. SLES has the potential to be carcinogenic when combined with other ingredients that contain nitrates (Nitrates can be found in water and plants, among other things).
It's cousin sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) can be used in personal care products but is also found in industrial cleaning products!!! I don't know about you but it doesn't sound so luscious! It is actually used in testing labs to irritate the skin. The molecules of SLS stay on the skin long after you have finished your shower and can strip away fatty acids, moisture and amino acids from your hair and skin. It has also been linked to cataracts - and not from direct contact with the eye - but from simply being absorbed through the skin and then altering the proteins of the eye tissue.
Fragrance is an "ingredient" found in almost all personal care products. But fragrance is a collective term for a number of ingredients. Manufacturers are not required to list the ingredients of a fragrance but it can be made of up to 4000 (yes 4000!) separate chemicals. (Similarly to the term "flavour" on food packaging). Some of these chemicals may be carcinogenic, cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, stuffy noses, skin irritations, sleep problems and so on and on and on!
Ammonium Laureth Sulfate (ALES) which is added to the mix to enable the liquid to spread more easily may be contaminated with carcinogenic nitrosamines. ALES can be irritating the skin, eyes, respiratory system, throat, stomach and gastrointestinal tract and may contain 1,4-dioxane as a by product which is a cancer-suspect agent.
Glycol Distearate, a common ingredient in shampoos and hair colour agents is used as a thickening agent. It is the Glycol Distearate which gives soaps, shampoos and body washes the milk-like appearance. Glycol Disterate can be harmful to the central nervous system, the immune system, the liver, the neurological system, respiratory system, gastrointestinal system. It can be toxic to the kidneys and can cause contact dermatitis.
Ever seen the letters DEA on your cosmetics? DEA stands for diethanolamine and is found in things liquid soap, hair dye and bubble bath but is also found in brake fluid, industrial degreases and antifreeze. Ewww! It is commonly combined with other ingredients (eg: cocamide DEA). DEA are easily contaminated with nitrosimines, which are suspected carcinogens. Approximately 27 out of 29 cosmetics tested by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) contained nitroso-DEA which has been linked to stomach, oesophageal, liver and bladder cancer.
Argh....! I could go on and on. There are at least 75,000 synthetic chemicals in use today and approximately 2000 being added each year. Chemicals do get tested by an organisation called NICNAS (National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme), but it can take up to 7 years to test one chemical. So a large proportion hit our supermarket shelves and get into our bathrooms and onto our skin, before being thoroughly tested!! Therefore, this is not the last you'll hear from me on this topic! If you have got any questions about ingredients in your cosmetics, feel free to shoot them through and I will see if I can give you a heads up about them. Information on chemicals are not always easy to track down (manufacturers can be quite tricky about the way they label ingredients), but I love a challenge!
Reader Comments (1)
Cute headline! For a minute I thought it read...Rub a dub dub theres and engineer in my tub :)