Cleaning with Marie Kondo!

Hi Everybody,
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming on natural body care products to discuss tidying and decluttering your home.  I have been KonMari'd.  It's from the book by Marie Kondo, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.  Marie “KonMari” Kondo runs an acclaimed consulting business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. Marie has been taking the world by storm with her international bestseller about the KonMari method of cleaning up.  Get the book!  It revolutionized my thinking on cleaning and tidying. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down.  I read it in two days and jumped up and started cleaning and organizing the very next day.  I first cleaned my kitchen and bathroom thoroughly.  Then the next weekend I tidied my linen closets and then took on my youngest son's room.  We got rid of 10 bags of linens and toys for charity, and threw away countless bags of garbage.  Even my son is happy now because he knows where all of his toys are.  I am eagerly eyeing my next tidying project.  : )



Keep it Clean!
Michele

Why Are Phthalates So Bad?

Phthalates are found in plastics and artificial fragrances.  (I pronounce them THAL-lates, I can't manage the PHTH). :-)  One of their uses is to make plastics softer and another is to carry fragrances.  We are exposed to them in a number of ways - through vinyl shower curtains, new cars (you know that new car smell that we all love - phthalates!), perfumes and some children's toys.  They are among a class of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors interfere with our body's natural hormonal system and cause subtle changes in our bodies.  Some possible health effects are: sperm mutations, interference with puberty and masculinity, interference with fetal development and tumor promotion.

One way to avoid them is to avoid artificial fragrances and vinyl shower curtains. I use cloth shower curtains, natural fragrances and avoid cooking in plastic containers, which can contain them also.  A great article on how to avoid phthalates can be found on the Huffington Post website.

A study of 9 pregnant women by the Washington Toxics Coalition showed that all of the women had at least 4 types of phthalates in their bloodstreams.  The CDC did a study from 2001-2010 of exposures to chemicals as measured by levels of metabolites in urine (http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/), and among Americans many phthalates were found in our urine at varying levels.  The CDC asserts in its phthalate fact sheet that human health effects from exposure to low levels of phthalates are unknown. Another study by Manikkam, M., et al, showed that phthalates caused multigenerational effects in rats, such as obesity, reproductive disease and sperm mutations.  Hmmmmmmmm.  I'm not liking it. :(

Keep it Clean!
Michele

How Much Have I Lowered My Chemical Body Burden?

With my switch to more natural body care products, my chemical body burden has dropped from 227 to 63 chemicals and the average EWG Hazard is down from 4.0 to 1.5.  If you remember from one of my earlier blogs, the EWG is the Environmental Working Group and they have a cosmetics database with assigned hazards from 0-10.  I think 63 is still a lot of chemicals, but I can drop it further by switching my lip-gloss, mascara and leave-in conditioner. (See my June 12th and 29th posts)

So, I think I'm getting the hang of this.  Let me know if any of you have switched to cleaner, more natural products and what you think!

Keep it Clean!

Michele

Let's Take the "Cosmetics Challenge" Again!

Hi Everyone,
I'm back from a weekend with family!  So, I have switched to a much more natural body care regimen.  I will show you what I am now using and the numbers of chemicals in each product.  I am using Face Naturals and Nubian Heritage products now.  Here is my new "Cosmetics Challenge" in the table below.  I used the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database, www.ewg.org/skindeep/ to evaluate the relative hazards of the new products that I am using.  What is kind of interesting is that Burt's Bees, which has a reputation for being "natural," has a lot of chemicals in it and a fairly high EWG hazard.  Tarte make-up is supposed to be natural, but it has a lot of chemicals and the same EWG hazard of 3 as Almay mascara, which is the drugstore brand.

More Natural Care Products	# chemicals	EWG Hazard
NH Shea butter soap	4	1
FN face soap	0	0
FN lavender deodorant	1	1
NH Shea butter lotion	6	2
FN face moisturizer	2	0
FN Plum perfect eye cream	2	0
Burt's Bees lip-gloss	14	4
Tarte mascara	14	3
FN Peppermint toothpaste	1	0
Alaffia Black African Soap	1	1
GF Leave-in conditioning hair cream	10	4
NH papaya&coconut hand cream	8	2
	63	1.5

*EWG Hazard, 0-2=low hazard, 3-6=moderate hazard, 7-10-high hazard

You may notice from my June 12th blog post that I kept the same hair conditioner. Some things just aren't worth the fight. :) Finding things that work on my hair is one of those fights that I'm just not up to right now.  Maybe in the future.

Talk to you later!

Michele

Kookie says "Keep it Natural!"

Well, I have family coming into town this weekend, so we'll take a commercial break.

Kookie says "Keep it Natural!"

Why is Lowering Your Chemical Body Burden Important?

• It is important to lower both the amount of chemicals that you are exposed to in your cosmetics and the hazards of the chemicals used.
• Small exposures can add up when they come from many different sources and products that you use.
• We do not know the effects of multiple additive exposures over a lifetime.
• For example, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a research organization sponsored by the cosmetics industry, says that parabens are safe at the levels used in cosmetics.
• However, what if you are getting parabens in 10 of the products you use?  Do the effects add up to be more of a health concern?
• Women of child-bearing age are especially susceptible, because they tend to use a lot of beauty products in the teens and twenties.
• Also many chemicals can be passed on to an unborn child.

Keep It Clean!

Michele

Face Naturals Skin Care Products

Getting more natural is a process.  It doesn’t have to happen overnight.  I fully intend to use up all of my conventional products and gradually switch over to more natural products.  What do I hope to gain?  -Hopefully less irritation and less risks of cancer.

One of the companies I discovered lately that sells wonderful, natural, personal care products is Face Naturals, based out of Georgia: www.facenaturals.com.  (Please put referred by MichelesNaturalCare in the comment section)  I found them through the EWG Skin Deep database: www.ewg.org/skindeep/ (see my June 10th post), when I was looking for some lip-gloss that wouldn’t irritate my lips.  (Most lipsticks and glosses make my lips peel)  I bought a couple of lip-glosses from them that I really liked.  They kept my lips nice and soft during the brutal Chicago winter.  I’ve since tried the Lavender stick deodorant, the Hibiscus facial wash, the Superfruit facial cream and the Plum Perfect eye cream.

Photo courtesy of Face Naturals

Here’s what I think of their products:

The deodorant is wonderful; it smells like a meadow.  However, it’s baking soda based, so it’s a little crumbly.  It works well in cooler weather.  I’ll have to let you know once the weather gets hot.  My sister really likes the Grapefruit and Bergamot Cream Deodorant, and she lives in the sunbelt, where it's hot.  I think the facial wash is nice, not too drying.  The eye cream is good in the winter months to keep my eyes dewy.  I haven’t tried the facial cream, yet.  It’s spring now and I don’t really need face cream now when it’s warm.  When winter comes I’ll try it out and let you know.

Keeping it Clean!

Michele

What are the Hazards of the Products I Used?

Hi Everyone,
As a continuation of my previous post "How Do I Learn about the Potential Hazards in the Products I Use?", I looked at the relative hazard of the products I was using, according to EWG.  Here goes a table with a little more detail.  It contains the number of chemicals in my PCPs and the EWG Hazard.  We can see that Aveeno Active Naturals lotion isn’t so bad; it has only 7 non-plant-based ingredients and a low EWG hazard of 2.  However, the facial cleanser and lotion have EWG hazards of 5; not so low.  Dove shampoo has the most chemical ingredients of all, with 38 and an EWG hazard of 5.  So I’ve been exploring Natural PCPs as alternatives to some of these products.  

Personal Care Products	# Chemicals	EWG Hazard
Dove soap, unscented	14	4
Aveeno Active Naturals Positively Ageless Daily Exfoliating Cleanser	13	5
Secret Invisible Solid deodorant	13	4
Aveeno Active Naturals (AN) Daily Moisturizing Lotion	7	2
Aveeno AN Clear Complexion Moisturizer	20	5
The Body Shop Vitamin E eye cream	21	4
Revlon lip-gloss	35	4
Almay Mascara	18	3
Crest Scope whitening toothpaste	20	4
Dove shampoo	38	5
Garnier Fructis Leave-in conditioning hair cream	10	4
Vaseline hand cream	18	4
Total Chemicals and Average EWG Hazard	227	4.0

I find a lot of soap irritating to my skin so I switched to Dove unscented soap (talk about boring).  My skin continued to be irritated for the next year, but I couldn’t figure out why, when Dove was so mild and “clean.”  After looking in the EWG database, I found out that it contains Cocoamidopropyl betaine, which is an irritant and an allergen for some people.  I received some Origins Body Wash as a gift and when I tried it the irritation diminished.  Unfortunately, it costs $24 for a 6.7 oz bottle, which is not sustainable for me.  In future posts I’ll be discussing some of the wonderful, truly natural products I have been switching to that are affordable. 

Keep it clean! :)

-         Michele

How Do I Learn about the Potential Hazards in the Products I Use?

Hi Y’all,
Now, that we’ve looked at our chemical body burden, the next question is “What are the potential hazards of the chemicals we are using?”  This is where I go to the Environmental Working Group.  They have a fabulous resource called the "Skin Deep Cosmetics Database," www.ewg.org/skindeep/.

It has information on over 70,000 personal care products in it.  You can type in a product or brand name and it will not only tell you what’s in it, but also the relative hazard.  They rank everything on a scale of 0-10, where 0-2 is low hazard, 3-6 is moderate hazard and 7-10 is high hazard.  That is where I found out that using Retinyl palmitate on your skin is considered a high hazard (9) (see my May 30 post).  This database is thorough, and is a scientist’s smorgasbord.  :) They tell you about all of the kinds of  potential hazards such as reproductive, cancerous, allergic and ecological effects, and they also give the links to various studies.  I have found an occasional minor error, but all in all I think it is awesome!  In the next post we’ll look at some of the products I was using and their relative hazards.

Check out the database and tell us what you think!
Michele

How Can You Lower Your Chemical Body Burden?

Picture by Athena Publishing

Hey Everyone,
We see from my last blog post that I am exposed to a whopping 179 chemicals on an average day.  My innocent sounding lip-gloss has a total of 35 possible ingredients, most of which I am probably eating off my lips!  If I add in my shampoo and leave-in conditioner it goes to over 220 chemicals per day!  I'm not subtracting duplicate chemicals.  So, how can I lower my chemical body burden?

• By using less PCPs
• By using PCPs with less chemicals in them
• By using products with more plant-based ingredients

Did any of you try the “Cosmetics Challenge?”  What did you come up with?  Write me and tell us.  Let’s do our own survey.  Did you see how hard it is to count the chemicals in the products you use?  The print is microscopic; if it’s on the container at all.  Sometimes it’s on the box (which I throw away).  Sometimes they don’t tell you; they just say "fragrance," which can be anything.  This is one of the problems with cosmetics; you don’t necessarily know what you are getting.  Artificial fragrances can contain phthalates, which are bad. (We’ll go into that more in a later post). 

Hope to hear from you!
- Michele

What is the Cosmetics Challenge?

Hi Everyone,
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) did a study in 2004 of how many personal care products (PCPs) an average American uses in a day.  According to EWG, women use an average of 12 PCPs, and put an average of 168 chemical ingredients on their bodies a day!  So I asked myself, “How many cosmetic ingredients do I use on a typical day?”  I decided to take the “Cosmetics Challenge!”
So here’s what I used to use before I switched to more Natural products and the number of chemicals in each:

• Dove soap, unscented – 14
• Aveeno AN Positively Ageless Daily Exfoliating Cleanser -13
• Secret invisible solid deodorant – 13
• Aveeno Active Naturals (AN) Lotion – 7
• Aveeno Active Naturals Clear Complexion Moisturizer – 20
• Body Shop Vitamin E eye cream - 21
• Revlon lip-gloss – 35
• Almay mascara - 18
• Crest Scope Whitening toothpaste - 20
• Vaseline Intensive Care hand cream – 18

For a whopping total of 179 chemicals!!!
This is not counting water, sodium chloride (salt) or any plant extracts or essences.  (There are some duplicates)  This is called my chemical body burden.  Now the number of chemicals is not the only concern to have, but the potential hazards of those chemicals that you are using.  We’ll investigate that more in a future blog.
 
Stay tuned!
Michele

What is the present state of affairs?

Hi Everyone!
 I am writing this blog because of the sorry present state of affairs with regard to cosmetics and personal care products (hereafter, I’ll call them PCPs).  Currently, there are no definitions of “clean,” “green,” “natural,” or “organic.”  I believe there is insufficient consumer protection and government regulation.  (I’ll go into why I think that, in a future post.) According to the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit consumer protection organization, no one assesses the safety of your cumulative exposures to cosmetic ingredients. Cosmetic makers are not required to assess how much of a particular chemical gets into your body and what the risks might be.  With conventional cosmetics, it’s basically “Buyer Beware.”  So I am going to be writing about what I have found out about how you can better protect yourself.

Keep it clean :)
- Michele

Hi

Hello Good People!
This is my first post. I decided to start this blog because of a recent incident that sparked a passion in me. I recently purchased a hand cream from a health food store. The product touted itself as being organic and having all natural fragrance (it was called earth science multi-therapy oatmeal hand & body lotion). Upon reading the long list of ingredients, I discovered that it contained Retinyl Palmitate. Retinyl palmitate is a vitamin A derivative that is shown by the National Toxicology Program (2012) to promote tumor growth in the presence of sunlight. I was shocked! Here I was expecting to find a safe product that had already been screened by the health food store, which is why I paid a premium for it. Thankfully, my back ground as a Chemist and Environmental Engineer gave me the knowledge of how I would screen the product. Unfortunately, the lay person probably does not know how to do this research, so I started this site to bring awareness to the issue and teach you!