Ingredients you should try to avoid....

Major gaps in public health laws allow cosmetics companies to use almost any ingredient they choose in everything from sunscreen and mascara to deodorant and baby shampoo, with no restrictions and no requirement for safety testing. To help you navigate your store's aisles, Environmental Working Group researchers have scoured thousands of ingredient labels to bring you our top recommendations for what not to buy — products with worrisome or downright dangerous ingredients that don't belong in your shopping cart or on your skin. Read more about why this matters.


Placenta (yes really!)
Extracts from human and cow placenta can condition skin and hair. Vital to a growing baby in the womb, these same extracts in cosmetics give the body a slug of hormones that may be enough to spur breast growth in toddlers according to a few recent case studies.


Mercury
Given everything we've learned over the past 30 years about mercury's ability to damage brain function at low levels, it's hard to believe it's still used in cosmetics. But it is. We found it in Paula Dorf mascara, listed as the mercury preservative "thimerosal." If you get a little bit of mascara in your eyes or face when it clumps or as you wash it off, you may also be getting a little dose of mercury. Watch out for mercury in eye drops, too. Send a message to companies that use brain-damaging ingredients and avoid these products.

Lead
When scientists recognized that lead harms the developing brain of a child, the government demanded its removal from gasoline and house paint — but not hair dye. This pernicious neurotoxin is in Grecian Formula 16 and other black hair dyes for men. It's hard to keep all the lead on your hair — studies find residues on door knobs and cabinets. Don't expose yourself or your children to this one.

Fragrance
It may smell great, but do you know what's in it? Fragrances are the great secrets of the cosmetics industry, in everything from shampoo to deodorant to lotion, and falling straight into a giant loophole in federal law that doesn't require companies to list on product labels any of the potentially hundreds of chemicals in a single product's secret fragrance mixture. Fragrances can contain neurotoxins and are among the top 5 allergens in the world. Our advice? Buy fragrance free. BUY "FRAGRANCE" FREE:


Animal parts
If fat scraped from the back of the hide of mink and emu isn't something you'd like to smear on your skin, you may want to avoid mink and emu oil, conditioning agents in sunscreen, shaving cream, hair spray and more. These are just two of many ingredients made from animal parts — you'll find a partial list here; use Skin Deep to find more.

Hydroquinone skin lightener
On a quest for lighter skin? Take a cue from FDA's recent warning, and avoid skin lighteners with hydroquinone. This skin bleaching chemical can cause a skin disease called ochronosis, with "disfiguring and irreversible" blue-black lesions that in the worst cases become permanent, intensively black bumps the size of caviar all over the skin.

Nanoparticles
These tiny little inventions are touted as the next green revolution, but we don't find much sexy or green about untested ingredients that can slide up the optic nerve to the brain or burrow inside red blood cells. They're found in cosmetics in forms ranging from tiny wire cages called "buckeyballs" to miniscule bits of metals used as sunscreens. Good luck finding them, though — companies don't have to tell us that they're in our products, though we found that more than one-third of all products contain ingredients now commercially available in nano forms. And we did find them listed outright on the labels of some sunscreens (nano metals) and skin creams (buckeyballs). Buyer beware! (see all ingredients known to be nanoparticles or see all ingredients that may be lurking as nanoparticles.)
BUYER BEWARE: We can't always tell from the product labeling, but you can take a look at our list of products that may contain nanoparticles.


Phthalates
Pronounced "tha'-lates," these little plasticizer chemicals pack a punch to male sex organs. Whether it's sperm damage, feminization of baby boys, or infertility, a growing number of studies link phthalates to problems in men and boys. Pregnant women should avoid it in nail polish ("dibutyl phathalate") and everyone should avoid products with "fragrance" on the label, chemical mixtures where phthalates often hide.

Petroleum byproducts
Surprised to learn that the same factories making gas for your car also make emollients for your face cream? Meet the workhorse chemicals of the cosmetics industry — petroleum byproducts, and the cancer-causing impurities that often contaminate them. These ingredients include carcinogens in baby shampoo (see new research on 1,4-dioxane) and petrochemical waste called coal tar in scalp treatment shampoos. We list a few products and their cancer-causing contaminants here, but use Skin Deep to find more.

To name a few of the brands is just to let you know what is out there-learn about your brands, keep your glasses on, not the pink tinted ones! These articles are studies from the Skin Deep Cosmetic safety studies and not necessarily the opinion of olive workshop.

But we appreciate their hard work in collecting these studies.

Have you ever counted how many cosmetics or personal care products you use in a day?

Dear Friends-

 

I know I am harping a lot on the chemical facts within this industry-but people please read this, these are very interesting facts and they are not just from some little study group in South Africa-these people are all over the world and make it their business to study cosmetics! So go get some coffee or tea, print this out and read it quietly.  Its important.

 

Have you ever counted how many cosmetics or personal care products you use in a day?

 

Chances are it's nearly 10

 

And chances are good that they include shampoo, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, hair conditioner, lip balm, sunscreen, body lotion, shaving products if you're a man, and cosmetics if you are a woman. And what about your children? On any given day you might rub, spray, or pour some combination of sunscreen, diaper cream, shampoo, lotion, and maybe even insect repellant on their skin.

Most people use these products without a second thought, and believe that the government must certainly be policing the safety of the mixtures in these myriad containers. But they are wrong about this. The government does not require health studies or pre-market testing for these products before they are sold. And as people apply an average of 126 unique ingredients on their skin daily, these chemicals, whether they seep through the skin, rinse down the drain, or flush down the toilet in human excretions, are causing concerns for human health, and for the impacts they may have to wildlife, rivers and streams.

Why personal care products? At first blush it may seem that mascara and shaving cream have little relevance to the broader world of environmental health. Think again. In August 2005, when scientists published a study finding a relationship between plasticizers called phthalates and feminization of U.S. male babies, they named fragrance as a possible culprit. When estrogenic industrial chemicals called parabens were found in human breast tumor tissue earlier this year, researchers questioned if deodorant was the source. And when studies show, again and again, that hormone systems in wildlife are thrown in disarray by common water pollutants, once again the list of culprits include personal care products, rinsing down drains and into rivers.

At the Environmental Working Group we have researched and advocated on personal care product safety for five years now, and consider it an integral part of our work to strengthen our system of public health protections from industrial chemicals. Here's why:

Industrial chemicals are basic ingredients in personal care products. The 10,500 unique chemical ingredients in these products equate to about one of every eight of the 82,000 chemicals registered for use in the U.S. Personal care products contain carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, endocrine disruptors, plasticizers, degreasers, and surfactants. They are the chemical industry in a bottle.
No premarket safety testing required — this is a reality of both the personal care product industry and the broader chemical industry as a whole. For industrial chemicals, the government approves an average of seven new chemicals every day. Eighty percent are approved in three weeks or less, with or without safety tests. Advocating that industry have an understanding of product safety before selling to the public finds common messages, common methods, and common gains whether the focus is cosmetic ingredients or other industrial chemicals.
Everyone uses personal care products. Exposures are widespread, and for some people, extensive. Our 2004 product use survey shows that more than a quarter of all women and one of every 100 men use at least 15 products daily. These exposures add up, and raise questions about the potential health risks from the myriad of unassessed ingredients migrating into the bodies of nearly every American, day after day.
No safety testing. According to the agency that regulates cosmetics, the FDA's Office of Cosmetics and Colors, "...a cosmetic manufacturer may use almost any raw material as a cosmetic ingredient and market the product without an approval from FDA" (FDA 1995). The industry's self-policing safety panel falls far short of compensating for the lack of government oversight. An EWG analysis found that in its 30-year history, the industry's self-policing safety panel has reviewed the safety of just 11 percent of the 10,500 ingredients used in personal care products. FDA does no systematic reviews of safety. And collectively, the ingredients in personal care products account for one of every eight of the 82,000 chemicals industries have registered for commercial use with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nearly 90 percent of the 10,500 ingredients FDA has determined are used in personal care products have not been evaluated for safety by the CIR, the FDA, or any other publicly accountable institution.
While some companies make products that are safe to eat, other companies choose to use known human carcinogens or developmental toxins like coal tar and lead acetate. When risky chemicals are used in cosmetics, the stakes are high. These are not trace contaminants like those found at part-per-million or even part-per-billion levels in food and water. These are the base ingredients of the product, just as flour is an ingredient in bread. These chemicals are found in percent levels in personal care products, nearly all easily penetrate the skin, and some we ingest directly from our lips or hands.

Are our products harming our health? To learn about the safety of ingredients in personal care products, the Environmental Working Group compiled an electronic database of ingredient labels for 27,084 name-brand products and cross-linked it with 49 toxicity or regulatory databases. Here's what we found:

At Environmental Working Group we consider these results cause for concern, not alarm. Much study remains to be done on exposure levels and health risks. But what we do know shows that such study — and direct consumer action to avoid known toxic ingredients — is absolutely essential.

Cosmetic ingredients do not sit tight of the surface of the skin — they are designed to penetrate, and they do. Scientists have found many common cosmetic ingredients in human tissues, including industrial plasticizers called phthalates in urine, preservatives called parabens in breast tumor tissue, and persistent fragrance components like musk xylene in human fat. Do the levels at which they are found pose risks? For the most part, those studies have not been done. But a recent study showing feminization of human male babies in the U.S. linked to a common fragrance component (diethyl phthalate) joins a small but growing number of studies that serve as scientific red flags when it comes to the safety of ingredients in personal care products.

Are our products affecting wildlife, rivers and streams? When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sought to understand human exposures to industrial plasticizers called phthalates, they passed up food, water, air, or human blood testing, and targeted urine instead. When ingredients in personal care products seep through human skin into our bodies, many end up in human excretions. Other ingredients get washed down the drain when we wash our hair and bodies in the shower, or clean a day's makeup and lotion off our faces at the end of the day.

A growing number of studies in the field of testing that targets what are known as "PPCPs" — pharmaceuticals and personal care products — finds our personal care product ingredients in rivers and streams across the country. And some ingredients have been linked to impacts in wildlife - those that target the hormone system, for example, that have been linked to feminization of fish and other aquatic life.

Personal care products are chock full of chemicals that act like estrogen and that raise concerns with respect to wildlife. Examples? Fifty-seven percent of all products contain paraben preservatives, nearly two percent contain surfactants called alkylphenols and just over two percent contain estrogenic sunscreen ingredients, according to EWG's 2004 product assessment.

EWG's research shows that 50 percent of all products on the market contain added "fragrance," complex mixtures of chemicals, some persistent, some neurotoxic, and some newly found to harm wildlife. Researchers at Stanford University published work in 2004 showing that mussels lost their ability to clear their bodies of poisons when exposed to parts-per-billion levels of common fragrance musks.

When the ingredients in our products are harming wildlife, what must be their impact to us? That is a question that remains unanswered by an industry with near complete discretion over product safety, making slow progress in screening ingredients for safety.
(this article is thanks to SKIN DEEP COSMETIC DATA BASE).

Another happy customer

Dear Vee and Colin

Let me begin by saying that your products are totally awesome and a great hit in the one lodge that we have up and running since December!!

I would really love to have some of the treatment range for myself, and for Chanda - in the office - and also to sell from the Tasting Room area.

Kind wishes to you!
Andrea S

Feedback from Edgar, for Olive Workshop's African Kigelia treatments.

Dear Vee

I have found the kigelia gel to be of the highest quality and it worked exceptionally well on the dry skin on my right hand which I have through driving constantly.

The doctor tells me its eczema and quite honestly the stuff that they gave me didn't work as well as your kigelia gel - so what I am saying is I NEED SOME MORE but that doesn't mean you can put your price up!

That's my story and please could you tell me where I can get some more.

Best regards.

EDGAR MORRIS

Lovely products!

Thanks Vee and Colin for a fabulous website, and products that arrived very quickly and were packaged well.

Your shampoo and conditioner smell lovely, and both left my hair feeling very soft!

The flaxseed oil is very easy to use, and I look forward to all the health benefits that come along with the product!"

Warm regards,

Mz B Taylor - South Africa

Kigelia and Olive Gel-happy people!

Hi Vee

I just wanted to drop you a line to say thank you!
Robbie 'prescribed” me some of your kigelia gel and it has worked so well, so quickly!

I have always had annoying skin – it gets really dry and even the tinniest scratch makes it red and sore.
I scratched myself messing about in the garden and, as always it was getting angry and giving me really ugly looking hands.
Then, I put some of the gel on and, within about half an hour, it had started to calm down.
The redness has disappeared and the skin is healing so much quicker than it would ever do before.

This stuff is great. It doesn't make your skin greasy and is really handy to keep with you too.
I am amazed. Thank you!

Best wishes,
Fiona.


Ps

The Rejuvenating treatment cream is lovely to use too and really effective.
And the smell of those real cucumbers is so nice and summery, I feel better just putting it on!

From Fiona Keen from twentysix in London

Parabens, Artificial Preservatives and other nasties.

This year we want to encourage our friends and clients to read labels carefully and spend just a little more time looking at the selection of goods on sale...shops are not big on selecting the best, they only want the most reasonable prices-so its up to us to become educated and smart about what we put in our mouths and on our bodies.

It is a known fact that we try our best to buy good wholesome foods for our children and family.

However the production of foods, cosmetics and products for washing and keeping house and body clean has become quite 'dark and devious'.

There are thousands of smaller cosmetic houses that do their best to keep the pure product on the shelf.

Sadly, most of the big cosmetic houses have already fallen to the way side with their "organic and pure products".

But what I laugh about is that we DON'T make time to check, therefore we buy product because the packaging and aroma is good.

They are laughing all the way to the bank :)

We don't have a thought for what we are doing. SO spend a little more time checking and reading the label of the foods and cosmetics you buy.

Paying a little more DOES NOT mean it is good and safe. Especially mothers. Please check baby foods and creams that they don't have a load of parabens and colorings at the bottom of the ingredients.

Check and ask, read the Internet and become a 'green person' Its vital that we are all familiar with the chemicals and harsh products that these huge corporates are filling our shelves with.

Just to make a few more big boys wealthy and a few million children sicker.

Think before you buy for your children...keep it simple, don't buy because the package is pretty only-check the box. next week we will speak on the different chemicals used to preserve products.