At the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database website, I looked up a cosmetic product that I use daily. I chose to look up Physicians Formula Mineral Face Powder. I was suprised to find that this product was rated a 6 out of 10 on the Hazardous Scale. This would be classified as a Moderate Hazard, and there are 81% more of facial powders that have lower concerns available to me.
The products used to make this powder are known to cause cancer, developmental/reproctive toxicity, allergier/immunotoxicity, and other contamination concerns. This suprised me because I always thought this product was more of a natural product. When the ingredients were broken down there was an equal range of green (low-level) and yellow (moderate) ingredients. There was one high-level ingredient and that was silica. With this came concerns for cancer, allergies, organ system toxicity and biochemical or cellular level changes. In addition to the ranking of this product, there was a 81% data gap, which is the measure of how much is unknown about an ingredient. This basically helps to determine the difference between the ingredients and similar products that may have been studied.
Overall, I thought this was a cool website to check out. It made me aware that the products that I once thought were safe to use, may not be healthy for me afterall! I will have to do more research on this site to determine what is the best possible cosmetic product that I can use.
Wow I would have thought that product would be pretty safe! Isn't it a bit scary that none of this information is on the product label anywhere? Very helpful site, I'm glad we all got a chance to use it.
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty amazing how terms like 'natural' and 'mineral' can actually contain these harmful ingredients.
ReplyDeleteI looked up my mineral foundation and it was relatively low in score. I think other products try to use the same name to instill the same safety perception as other products that are actually safe.
ReplyDeleteMy mineral product was really high too. I expected it to be low because of the name, but now I know how deceiving that can be!
ReplyDeleteA 6 isn't too terrible, my eyeliner was a whopping 9 out of 10! Gross! I think I'm going to take my laptop with me the next time I go makeup shopping!
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