lungs.
Most skin care products on themarket contain hundreds of synthetic additives whose safety is based
on animal, not human, studies. These studies usually analyze the action of separate ingredients applied
on an animal’s skin in enormous doses for short periods of time. Granted, humans are unlikely to
encounter such doses. But many of us are loyal to cosmetic products. As a result,we are exposed to
small doses of the same toxic chemicals for decades. No one can tell how daily applications of
SPF50 sunscreen may impact our health ten years from now—apart from pale skin and possibly a
lower risk of skin cancer—simply because these sunscreens have been introduced quite recently, and
clinical studies do not cover long periods of time.
Chemical industry insiders say that only small amounts of potentially toxic ingredients are used in
cosmetics, from 1 to 10 percent, or just a few micrograms. Medical researchers today are concerned
about the long-term, snowballing effect of small doses of questionable chemicals that people absorb
from products used consistently over long periods of time.
Let’s say you have been using a fruit-smelling shampoo that contains 1 percent of potentially
carcinogenic diethanolamine (DEA), a surfactant that helps to stabilize foams, every day for five
years. That is 2ml of DEA per 200ml bottle of shampoo. You may have switched from brand to
brand, picking a “volumizing” or “energizing” shampoo variety, but core ingredients remained the
same (emollients, penetration enhancers, and shine-boosting silicones). With daily shampooing, you
end up using nearly an ounce of pure, industrial-strength DEA in a year. Now imagine that you pour a
glass of this transparent, gooey substance over your head and start massaging it vigorously into your
skin. Then you wash it off with a stream of hot water so this goo spreads over your freshly scrubbed,
warm, and unprotected body. Does it make you feel healthy or more beautiful?
Skin can absorb up to 60 percent of substances applied to its surface.
Part of the problem is that no laboratory has ever found a human volunteer to participate in a study
that would involve voluntarily rubbing your head with undiluted diethanolamine—whether derived
from coconut or petroleum. Only rats can handle this tough job. A recent study by a team of
researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that fetuses of pregnant mice
that were exposed to DEA showed slower cell growth and increased cell death in parts of the brain
responsible for memory. Simply put, they were smaller and less smart. This happened because DEA
has a similar structure to choline, a molecule that is needed in large quantities for normal brain
development (Niculescu et al. 2007).
When potential cancer-causing poisonous chemicals are absorbed by the skin and carried with the
blood all over the body, the offending chemical can interact with other chemicals in our system.
Sometimes these reactions produce substances that provoke cells to evolve in the wrong way,
resulting in cancer. Diethanolamine can combine with amines present in cosmetic formulations to
form nitrosamines, among them N-nitrosodiethanolamine, which is known to be highly carcinogenic.
Toxic ingredients may lead to many other serious diseases, including allergies, fertility problems,
diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. In the best-case scenario, they may worsen existing acne or cause
an allergic reaction that resembles acne. If you do not understand that toxic chemicals in cosmetics
make us sick and age prematurely, you will remain a victim of the chemical industry, and it is not
good for your skin or the health of the planet.