Personal Care Ingredients - Super Scary!
One part of my 2008 Year of Green adventures include weeding out any “un-natural, non-organic, etc.” personal care products. If you take just a few minutes go through how many products we use each day then the insane number of ingredients in each one you would be totally overwhelmed. Here is a typical day for me…
- Shampoo
- Conditioner
- Body Wash
- Toothpaste
- Deodorant
- Face Cream
- Face Lotion
- Eye Cream
- Body Lotion
- Hairspray
- Mascara
- Lip Gloss
- Concealer
My list isn’t even nearly as long as some folks but there are still 13 different products I am using on a daily basis. OK, so with about 20 ingredients (at least) per product that is 260 chemicals I am putting on each day. Yikes! Knowing that only about 10% of them have ever been tested for safety that is a little scary to me. Am I crazy?
So, as I make my way into this new Green year I am going to replace each personal care item with a natural/organic version when the product has all been used up (not throwing away full bottles of things is also very green of me!) I’ll keep you posted with how that is going. I am afraid that it may be a little expensive, but perhaps that is what it will take for me to loosen my dependence on artificial beauty products (also very green). Though, I really don’t want to be smelly (not green… or maybe that is super green!)
And for all you guys out there who think it is just the women using this stuff, think again. My husband has 10 different items he uses each day and one of them, his beloved shaving cream, has the ingredient “propane.” Now THAT is scary.