Choosing better body care products

Posted on Jun 26, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Personal Care, Products

Under-regulated chemicals are causing concerns for human health and the environment, whether they seep through your skin or wash down your drain.

The Environmental Working Group continues its Healthy Home Tip series with “Choosing Better Body Care Products”:

ewgDear Supporter,

Most people use around 10 personal care products every day with an average of 126 unique ingredients. We’d like to believe that the government is policing the safety of all of these mixtures we’re putting on our bodies, but they’re not. Instead, these under-regulated chemicals are causing concerns for human health and the environment – whether they seep through your skin or wash down your drain.

We think you deserve better than that. So we’re sending you our Healthy Home Tip Series to make it easier to safeguard your family’s health. This month’s tip is: Choose better body care products.

What makes a body care product “better”?

Better products meet their claims and are free of ingredients that could harm our health or the environment. Labels might claim that a product is “gentle” or “natural,” but with no required safety testing, companies that make personal care products can use almost any chemical they want, regardless of risks. So, always read product labels – especially the ingredient list – before you buy.

Learn how to choose better body care products

We make these choices as simple as possible on our Healthy Home Tips page, where you’ll learn:

Tell your friends about our Healthy Home Tips

We know you’re not the only one who wants to choose better body care products. Tell your friends about our Healthy Home Tip Series so they, too, can be informed when faced with rows of under-regulated products at the store.

Talk to you in a month when we discuss our next Healthy Home Tip: going organic and eating fresh foods.

Thanks for reading,

Lisa Frack
EWG Online Organizer

PS: Last month we introduced this Healthy Home Tips Series. Click here to read about it.

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4 Responses to “Choosing better body care products”

  1. Leslie

    28. Jun, 2009

    I think long before they’ll really regulate the body care products, people need to start being educated about what they are mixing all over their body, in their clothes, hair, houses… ect – I find it an amazing point that when all the ingredients are added up the numbers fall into the hundreds. It’s amazing more people don’t have serious MCS- but honestly I think all that crap is causing chronic illness, cancer, and other bad health problems. People with MCS just notice where it’s coming from after a long struggle and try to stop being exposed.

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  2. Susie Collins

    28. Jun, 2009

    I think that’s really true, Leslie, lots of people are getting sick from this toxic crap but aren’t connecting the dots. Evidently, those of us who are sensitive, are considered totally expendable in our free market society.

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  3. linda

    28. Jun, 2009

    One reason we who warn are expendable, is because the chemical and pharmaceutical industries are so closely related and extremely huge and powerful in politics.

    As long as “health care” consists primarily of taking a drug to numb the symptom instead of treating the cause, they are all laughing their way to the bank.

    The cosmetics industry is right in there with them, covering up true and natural beauty with toxic chems, just to make a buck and disempower women.

    So far, there hasn’t been anyone powerful enough to be pushing prevention. It’s taking a very long time for women to wake up, to feel strong and beautiful without make-up (or shaved legs – how industry created that need is another interesting story), and/or to start demanding completely safe products.

    Perhaps new moms are beginning to be clued in, for baby’s sake, but once they start down that toxic path of “convenience”, most will still not give up their hair dye, fragranced lotions, or fabric softener if told it could be harming their child.

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  4. Susie Collins

    29. Jun, 2009

    Linda, I came across this post today by Janelle at Healthy Child Healthy World who says she’s seeing a shift in parents’ focus from “What can I buy?” to “What can I do?” http://tinyurl.com/n5qq4q

    Healthy Child Healthy World offers a Healthy Community Toolkit with guidance on what to DO to affect change from local schools to cities to national initiatives http://healthychild.org/issues/policies/

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