13 March 2009

skin deep

Our skin is our largest organ and as women we slather all kinds of things on ourselves in the hopes of beautifying, firming, delaying aging, fading freckles, and minimizing scars or stretch marks. I am totally guilty of it. There are almost no regulations on cosmetic companies which is fine, but it is up to us to be educated about what we use on our bodies and in turn slather our kids in. Even the stuff that is supposed to be good for you-like sunscreen, can be chock full of metals and other things we probably wouldn't apply liberally if we stopped and thought about it.

Skin Deep is a highly resourceful cosmetics database that ranks the toxicity in each ingredient to provide an overall score ranking in three categories: low (0-2), moderate (3-6) and high (7-10) hazard. They have category short cuts for Makeup, Skin Care, Hair Care, Eye Care, Nail Care, Baby Care, Oral Care and Fragrance, or if you are curious about a specific product you use you can search by name brand or narrow it down to ingredient.

My Neutrogena sunscreen that I layered on myself and my kids last summer scores a 7. Naturally I freaked out for a moment, but did I really increase my children's cancer probabilities in one summer? Unlikely. Will I research and consider other products this year. Absolutely. Power in information, but be warned this website can be a total time suck. Don't put is past yourself to casually search a product and then feel compelled to raid your medicine cabinet. Oh and just please don't start with the deodorants.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm scared to even look. Though, I believe my moisturizer is being discontinued because I went to 5 stores and they were all out of it. Maybe this website will help me pick a new one.

~M

Amy said...

Excellent site. Thanks for the tip!
Mine wasn't too bad...I use Bare Escentuals Mineral stuff and it ranged from 3-5 on the scale. Whew!

B said...

Amy, that's excellent. I'll have to look into the Bare Escentuals line. I use that site as a give and take; I love Origins products but they score higher then I expected and I'm not sure I can give them up. My Dove deodorant though seems like a killer with as high as it scores and I have no problems tossing it in the garbage in exchange for another product!

Amy said...

I love the Bare Escentuals line. I'm not sure if they have a store in WA, but you can also buy it at Ulta or Sephora. They usually also carry a trail kit that you can buy (smaller containers of the makeup) to try it out first, in case you don't like it. Although, I've been using it for over 5 years, and have never heard anyone complain about it.

I haven't checked out my other products yet..I can well imagine that my deodorant will also score pretty high. Scary stuff.