Young woman sitting and doing makeup in front of mirror in dressing room

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Welcome to Part II of The Detox Series: Beauty and Personal Care Products! Now, even if you don’t consider yourself to have many personal care products (YES, YOU!), take a minute to think about all of the products that you put on your body daily: soap/body wash, shampoo, conditioner, other hair care, deodorant, shaving cream, cleansers, toners, serums, lotions, sunscreen, make-up…for many, this list keeps going! If you read the article on Cleaning Products, maybe you did the suggested activity of pulling out all your products to check ingredients. If you have the time and energy to do that again with your self-care products, I encourage it! What things do you see in the ingredients list? Do you know what everything is or why it’s in there?

Some Scary Facts:

  • Ingredients are unregulated. Skin and personal care products in the U.S. are predominantly unregulated. The FDA is not required to do even basic safety testing of an ingredient before it is used in a product.
  • They may cause serious harm. Dangerous chemicals (asbestos, formaldehyde, aluminum and lead, to name just a few) found in personal care products are regularly linked to cancer.
  • They may be causing imbalances in your body. Many care products contain chemicals known to be endocrine, or hormone system, disruptors. This can cause all sorts of issues (more on this here) and can also sabotage your current healthy behaviors.
  • ‘On your skin’ means in your body. Your skin is an organ and it absorbs what you put onto it, some research has even said as much as 60-70%. The toxins on your exterior can then cause damage to your other systems such as the nervous, endocrine, or reproductive.

What Can You Do About It?

  1. Know what you are putting on your body! If you don’t recognize an ingredient, look it up!
  2. Go through all of your current products, check their ingredients, and consider getting rid of expired or unrecognizable products.
  3. Use resources like EWG.org to check the safety of products before you buy.
  4. Make your own safe products (even make-up!). There are SOOO many resources out there for DIY beauty and care products; click HERE and HERE to check out two of my favorites!
  5. Find products that have multiple uses so you ultimately reduce how many ingredients you are coming into contact with.

Have you been going through your products as you go through The Detox Series? Share what you found on our Instagram (@_GetUpAndDoSomething)!

Written by GUADS Staff member Kate with contributions from ewg.org