3 Ingredients to Avoid In Your Personal Care Products
Health problems and personal care products. Those two should not equate. Yet there’s no shortage of information about how many of the products we use on a daily basis actually contain ingredients that hurt instead of help.
Maybe you’re interested in finding cleaner, healthier, safer options for you and your family. But where do you start? It can feel overwhelming, for sure.
Here’s a quick start for three harmful ingredients you DON’T want in your personal care products:
Talc:
This ingredient is found in many powders. It can sometimes contain asbestos. This means it’s potentially carcinogenic, or cancer-causing.
Recently, Johnson and Johnson announced that their baby powder — a product that many people used for countless years — would be discontinued in the United States and Canada. Amidst numerous lawsuits, it’s no wonder.
There’s no way to know without sending a product to a lab whether it does or doesn’t have asbestos in it, so it’s safest to just steer clear. If you see this ingredient on any powdery-substances, such as foundation powders, blush, eye shadow, dry shampoos, or the like, put it back down and check out a talc-free alternative.
Fragrance/Parfum:
This is similar to the concept of “natural flavors” which is not an actual ingredient, but a label loophole that allows manufacturers the ability to lump a whole lot of who-knows-what into a product without actually telling us what it is (include link to my article what the heck is natural flavors).
The words “fragrance/parfum” are usually found on things like shampoo, conditioner, soap, perfume, laundry soap, deodorant, cosmetics, and need I go on?
The words mean absolutely nothing — they just hide ingredients companies don’t want the public to know about, and oftentimes they are hiding ingredients that have been shown to cause health issues.
Avoid these — it means you don’t actually know what’s in it.
Retinyl Palmitate:
This is synthetic Vitamin A.
There is some concern that it may speed the development of skin tumors and lesions on the skin in the presence of sunlight.
This is a problem, considering the fact that this ingredient can be found in lotions, sunscreens, and other skincare items that might be applied before someone heads out into the sun.
Your turn to take action (and get rid of those toxic products):
Check out your current personal care and home care items, and see if you have any with these three ingredients.
If so, maybe they can be the first ones you replace when you use them up.
If you are feeling particularly brave, go ahead and pitch them now and find new options.
I can help you with this!
Want help figuring out what other ingredients to avoid in your personal care products so you can clean out the toxins in your home that may be impacting your family’s health?
Check out my What’s In Your Products class. It’s available on-demand so you can go at your own pace, and you’ll walk away with an action plan for future shopping as well as ideas for products to make all on your own. The power to avoid harmful ingredients in your everyday products is in your hands! Here’s to healthier choices!