Are Body Care Products Making You Sick?
I feel my job here at Blog4Brains not only involves informing and entertaining you regarding the ridiculous darkside of politics and and government, but exposing outright dishonesty and danger in consumer products. I have written articles about lead in lunchboxes, mercury in our air and water, flame retardants and industrial platicizers, and now it’s the unbelievable and unregulated dangers hiding in your shampoo, body wash and hand lotion. I guess what shocked me the most is the use of heavy metals in the surfactant technology that makes your soaps “sudsy”. Yeah, heavy metals — proven not safe at any levels. So, here we are applying, scrubbing, and massaging these toxins on to the largest organ of the body, the skin, something we surely wouldn’t ever consider putting in our body. These products include cancerous chemicals and toxic heavy metals. Do you think some of the products in your bathroom are making you sick? Here’s what to look for…
Read your “natural” and “organic” body care product ingredient labels to see if they contain any of the following toxic chemicals: imidazolidinyl or imadazolidinyl urea, diazolidinyl urea, sodium hydroxymethyl glycinate or hydroxymethyl glycinate or benzylhemiformal. I’m sure all of you have heard about formaldehyde — you know that stinky chemical used to preserve dead things in your science lab at school. In regards to formaldehyde, it has been reported by the World Health Organization that formaledhyde is a known carcinogen. And, the European Union Working Party’s (WP) Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-food Products in their Methods of Chemical Analysis of Cosmetic Products Report has revealed that the above ingredients used in body care products are formaldehyde releasers. 
Nice to know that your bodycare products byproduct is formaldehyde.
So what do manufacturers do when there is negative press about an ingredient in one of their products? Chemical manufacturers will often times remove the ingredient and replace it with other toxic chemicals. This was the case with parabens. In response to negative publicity surrounding new scientific evidence of the endocrine disruption potential of the paraben family of preservatives (methyl, butyl, propyl) and the discovery of parabens in breast cancer tumors, many slick chemical manufacturers quietly removed parabens from their ingredient panels and replaced them with other toxic chemical preservatives.
This is a common maneuvering trick in the personal care and household products industries. When too much negative press appears about one particular chemical, many companies switch to different chemicals and then (now, here’s the slick part) begin to advertise that their products are “paraben-free” or “sodium lauryl sulfate-free” or “propylene glycol-free,” etc… Consumers think, Wow! - I’ve found a really healthful product.
This is just a small portion of the pollution in our body care products and we not only have problems there, there is also cosmetics and household products, so what can we do to combat this poisoning of America? Despite having federal regulations in place for organic food, the USDA has, thus far, declined to step in and regulate the use of the word “organic” for body care, cosmetics and household products. In order to get more attention for this vital health issue, we must continue to press our legislators and anyone who will listen to push for more regulation. Any manufacturer can label their product “organic” or “natural” and have a litany of toxic chemicals in their ingredients.
We also have to push for technologies that eliminate heavy metals in the processing of any products. Just like what has been done with lead used in stabilizing vinyl for kids lunchboxes. And, there are also organizations that one can join to move this agenda forward. There is the Campaign For Safe Cosmetics which is a coalition of public health, educational, religious, labor, womens, environmental and consumer groups with a goal to protect the health of consumers and workers by requiring the health and beauty industry to phase out the use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other health problems and replace them with safer alternatives.
The important thing first is to be aware. Be conscious of and learn all that you can about what you use in and on your body. If we don’t know what the ill effect of all these consumer products have on our bodies and our health, how will we know how to protect ourselves and how to stop it? We can also support real activists who have lived the nightmare of cancer and learned to educate themselves about all the poisons we subject our bodies to daily. There is a website of a couple who went down this road and ended up making their own “organic” bodycare products because they couldn’t find them anywhere. It’s called “Terressentials Organics.”
Check them out. They use only ingredients that the USDA permits in certified organic food. And, since I have only touched on this subject, you can find a ton of information on other toxic chemicals in consumer products on their site. It will surprise you. At any rate, I hope I have piqued your interest. After all, this is your health we are talking about, and you don’t really realize how precious it is until you lose it.
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New Scientist
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Associated Press
‘Human Guinea Pigs wanted for drug company testing program. Good pay. Call 999-_ _ _ _.’’ This, in a Sunday newspaper ad, ran years ago. I met a guy (a poor struggling watercolor painter) who answered the ad. His refrigerator had two gallon-size jugs full of golden-showers liquid that he had to take in to their lab. He refused to tell me how much money he was getting or any details of his guinea pig job. He feared competition for the work! //Hah, hah — what work? All he did was pop their pills.//
Also, years ago I read somewhere about convicts testing cosmetic products for drug companies on their skin for pay. Low pay, of course. Controlled setting? — hey, these guys are jail-yard smart. I can’t remember any details. I don’t know if drug companies still do this. Is it/was it legal?
My main point is to question the testing part. How good were the tests unsupervised? And did the Food and Drug folks and the public faithfully accept these ‘clinical trials’ for those drug products? O Well, O well, O well, Oooooo so well…so what do you think, Cerebral, if this is still the practice?
Now it’s ‘scientific results’ turn after the above ‘clinical trials research’ comment. But first: Tune in to old-time radio on AM 1710 Antioch. Better yet on Apple’s itunes > Radio > Talk/Spoken Word >AM 1710 Antioch OR >Mystery Play 1-Radio (be sure to Turn On Visualizer under Views for in-tune-sync fireworks graphics) and pay attention to the commercials also presented with such shows as The Shadow, Dragnet, Superman, The F.B.I., Gangbusters — and you’ll wonder how people could be so gullible back then. //Four out of 5 doctors smoke Chesterfields//Our scientists undertook a month’s study of one-year smokers of camels that shows no evidence of throat irritation//more and more of the same//
I consider tobacco companies as drug companies and the same ‘clinical-studies-show’ tactics are being used in a refined way today by other drug companies to fool us, especially government health protectors, even Frank Zappa. My father used to say: “FIGURES LIE; LIARS FIGURE.” How so true!
The methods of scientific research have changed; the methods of drawing scientific conclusions have changed. Answer this question: You may have seen a bus card sign that says something like 27,000 people will die from smoking cigarettes in the next five minutes. Oh yeah, tell me another tale. How do they know? Did they canvas the funeral homes and take a five-minute census, counting bodies, one by one? Let’s get real for a moment: this is not a scientific fact; it is merely statistical. I studied statistics for a semester in college, all about whether the odds of drawing an outside card or an inside card to make a straight are the same or what? What more in edcuation can you expect from W&J?
Unfortunately, today, science research is all numbers, and numbers-dealing. Even blind surveys to hide the purpose of a study from a subject, to assure ‘scientific’ accuracy is number-crushing. And, the results can be drastically changed, afterwards, by reshaping the parameters of the study. The demise of certain subjects is called, I believe, statistical percentage of error. This even fits carved on a tombstone. //Here Lies Richard Roe, Died of a .01% statistical Percentage of Error During Scientific Heart Research//
Today’s statistics may be of even high-caliber research, such as in running out the odds in Texas hold’m poker dealing.
BUT STATISTICS IS NOT SCIENCE.
Today’s new, ‘modern scientific methods’ are used by every drug company worth its salt, the sort of ‘scientific research’ taught in schools and used in ‘labs’ everywhere where statistical results are falsely presented as facts of science. //old-time radio show commercial: scientific studies have shown that 97% of woman who use Lux soap have lovely facial skin//similar spiels today//
Check out the original meaning of THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH METHOD, and –zongs!– you will be flabbergasted. In a science drive to truth, you first set up an imagined hypothesis, for which you devise experiments to prove your hypothesis. Then, upon failure, the next step is to…. You may ask yourself how did researchers go so wrong?
Advertising Folks? Maybe it’s the academic community’s fault. Anyone can do statistics maybe 99 out of a 100 (whoops there I go, guilty as the rest!) However, maybe only one out of 1,000 can do science. So, if a school wants to make turnover money, it might be best to graduate a whole class of statistical ‘scientists’ each year rather than one scientist-scientist a decade.
Please note that the real scientific method is still and always was, and always will be used in hard sciences like Physics.
O Two, O Four, O Six, O Eight, O nine, O Whoops! — O Cerebral, your thoughts?
–eoj–
An example of the scientific method in drug research follows: Instead of the statistical approach, the scientific method was used in developing the first polio vaccine in 1952 by Jonus Salk. //“the whole U.S. Army…needed a flu vaccine at once to help win World War II”// For the scientific method steps Salk used, which I believe are never used by the drug companies any more, can be found at google > Jonus Salk > TIME 100: JONAS SALK. By the way, in that issue TIME Magazine named Albert Einstein as the person of the century. He too used the scientific method of research — Thank Gawk, he wasn’t wholeheartedly into statistics unless he played poker. A theoretical scientist, not a practical scientist like Edison. Thank Gawk, Tom didn’t use the statistical approach either because we’d still be sitting in the dark and couldn’t even use statistics to play poker. Salk was a practical scientist, too. I don’t think he had time to play poker or play the horses. He ran through college too fast and probably didn’t take a semester of statistics.
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Don’t kick sand in my face, Cerebral, because there’s a problem. I mean, there’s this argument:
Toots believes in using sun screen/block lavishly, even between the toes. I don’t use any at all. I don’t want chemicals on my skin. Toots calls out to me:
“Want to borrow some SPF 8 NoAd?”
“Is something wrong with you? You can’t stay out in the sun too long!”
“Are you trying to do yourself in by getting cancer?”
I say to Toots:
“You’re the one who’s going to get cancer! SPF 8 CANCER!!!”
WHO’S RIGHT, CEREBRAL? ME OR TOOTS?
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Upon research for your sunscreen, I found quite a bit of information concerning your question about its health risks. It is hard to tell what is the lesser of the two evils — cancer from UV damage or the chemicals in sunscreen. What did come up is what to look out for when choosing a sunscreen.
“Read… [the] …labels to see if they contain any of the following toxic chemicals: imidazolidinyl or imadazolidinyl urea, diazolidinyl urea, sodium hydroxymethyl glycinate or hydroxymethyl glycinate or benzylhemiformal.” - taken from above.
Also look out for parabens and nono-materials.
I would go with the moderation outlook on this issue. Sun is not bad for you in general. As long as the exposure is in moderation it will actually do good. Sun’s light helps the body generate Vitamin D for your body to help combat cancers. The other piece of information I can give is measuring your chances of cancer. Does your family have a increased risk, or do you have a skin type that burns significantly easier then most? If the answer is yes, you may want to wear sunscreen since you may have a higher chance of sun caused cancer.
With all things being equal, I say don’t overly fear the sun and keep everything in moderation. Our bodies, if healthy and physiologically normal, have the great ability to protect itself from the sun. On the other hand, our bodies are not built to withstand the constant bombardment of chemicals.
Does that help?
Chemistry 301 huh? That’s three years of chemistry. I’ll be in the drug store aisle of sun screen/block stuff forever.
But you did scare me.
I will opt for a time like half an hour to an hour a day. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but it’ll have to do.
Thank you. Anybody who lives in Texas must have had a required course in cemistry and petrolem. //joke//
Bad Breath or Die? From mouthwash? Is there any mouthwash available that’s safe and somewhat sweet and tingling? Risking a lawsuit, Cerebra, can you give us some okay brand names?
Ooo Sooo, my guess is that none of the mouthwashes are good for us. Why? Because isn’t the mucous membrane tissue that lines the mouth, nose, throat one of the fastest gateways past the “barrier” into the brain?
There is a type-of name for those formulated pills that dissolve rapidly thru the membrane of the mouth and work the fastest. Heart medication I think, and I think Melatonin comes in such a form (other than regular) used under the tongue.
Ooo Sooo, a better-watch-out warning: I think maybe the chemicals in your mouthwash most likely, I should think, are hitting your brain hard and bad, read bad! //Cerebral?//
But hey Cerebral! I have a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide that says: “also for antiseptic gargle or rinse, mix Hydrogen Peroxide with equal amounts of water.” Is this Hydrogen Peroxide/water mouthwash our answer to better, safer, non-poisonous health?
Other thoughts: What about cough drops (active and “inactive” ingredients like red #40 for cherry flavor)? suck-candy like lollipops and M&M’s? Toothpaste? Flavored dental floss. Even soda pop with artificial “natural” flavors.
Again, my original question: Is there a brand name safe mouthwash? What’s the lowdown, by Gawk!
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I recommend Tom’s of Maine body care products for any of your needs. It is what I use and they do a great job of keeping their products clean of chemicals.
Here is a link to their site. Tom’s of Maine.
Fortunately, your membranous tissue is the quickest way for chemicals or whatever to get into your bloodstream, but not passed your blood brain barrier. Only certain molecules are allowed passed that barrier no matter the application, unless the barrier is damaged.
Sublingual application is what you are thinking of, by the way.
Unfortunately for your warning label, but fortunately for your brain, you are misunderstanding the physiology of the blood-brain barrier. Here is a quote from Wikipedia.com:
“A major challenge for treatment of most brain disorders is overcoming the difficulty of delivering therapeutic agents to specific regions of the brain. In its neuroprotective role, the blood-brain barrier functions to hinder the delivery of many potentially important diagnostic and therapeutic agents to the brain. Therapeutic molecules and genes that might otherwise be effective in diagnosis and therapy do not cross the BBB in adequate amounts.”
If it keeps out these pharmecuatical agents, it will keep out most ordinary chemicals… except mercury!
Hydrogen Peroxide is perfectly safe for a mouth wash.
Bottom line, try to stay away from anything that is processed. The more natural it is the better.
Damn it, I can’t keep up with all your adjectives and pronouns… who is Gawk again?
If you are asking me, I suggest the Tom’s stuff and Giovanni body care products for everything else. Hope that helps.
Cerebral–
Thank you for breaking down my comment and going over it section by section and setting me straight. It was interesting.
Gawk is for me the Life Force. I equate it to the sound a goose in the wild makes when startled. And I try to imitate the Gawk sound. It is definiitely not God. IT IS LIFE HERE AND NOW.
This topic seems to be a dumping ground for me. There was a topic on ‘Health Alert: Plastics May Make You Fat.’ This is a sort of extension in a way. Can chemicals used to manufacture plastic bottles leech into the contents of body care products. Plastic containers, not glass? I believe that even soda bottles have a ‘used by date’ stamped on their plastic containers. Why?
And if it’s because of leeching, are there such dates on shampoos and other body care products too related to the container holding up or leeching? I don’t know. I don’t think so.
My question: what is the danger of leeching of chemicals used to make plastic containers into liquid and cream products?
You may laugh and think this may be a to-do about nothing but may I remind you that it is believed that the Romans drank from cups that leeched enough and used often enough to affect the Roman Enpire elite from within. Was it lead, silver or gold cups? For us, is it PCB or something similar kind of leeching today??
I always end up with my head spinning because I have no clue where to go or what to do with this type of information some times. I don’t know if ignorance is bliss or that knowing this allows you to avoid it as much as possible, but you can’t hide from all of this crap. And that, at times, is quite depressing.
Plus, you can’t trust our government as they have the companies at their best interest. You can’t trust the companies because they have the bottom line at their best interest. This world is not the same world that I was led to believe as a child, and I want my money back!
…and I want my mommy back!
A preliminary government report in the news today has found that a chemical used to make baby bottles and other shatterproof plastic containers could be linked to a range of hormonal problems,
The federal National Toxicology Program said Tuesday that experiments on rats found pre cancerous tumors, urinary tract problems and early puberty when the animals were fed or injected with low doses of the plastics chemical bisphenol A.
More than 90 percent of Americans are exposed to trace amounts of bisphenol, according to the CDC. The chemical leaches out of water bottles, the lining of cans and other items made with it.
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I didn’t know body care products can be so dangerous… perhaps we should learn how to make our own soaps… that way you can be sure that it’s safe