Taking Personal Care

Deirdre Imus has been concerned about toxins in food since she was a teenager. More recently, while perusing articles in scholarly journals about dangerous food additives, Deirdre, who is married to radio talk-show host Don Imus, discovered that some of those same toxic substances lurked in the health and beauty products she had been buying. "I started going through everything, reading every label, throwing out the products that contained harmful chemicals," she says.

Deirdre also discovered that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows cosmetics to go to market without prior third-party testing for safety. The agency has never required the $20-billion-a-year industry "to label its products with any warning of well-documented risks . . . nor has the FDA banned the sale of a wide range of unsafe products to an unsuspecting public," says Samuel Epstein, M.D., chair of the Cancer Prevention Coalition and professor emeritus of environmental and occupational medicine at the University of Illinois at the Chicago School of Public Health.

Here are three categories of problematic ingredients to beware of. (For details on chemicals with a star*, see "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly," in Green Guide #94).

Fragrance

When it comes to labels on personal-care products, the FDA requires that ingredients be listed, with one crucial loophole: The catchall word "fragrance" is allowed to cover up the many individual substances used in the perfuming process. This makes for no small exception, since fragrancing components are the most likely to trigger allergic reactions. These can include contact dermatitis, which is characterized by redness, swelling, itching and fluid-filled blisters, according to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD). Nor is choosing "hypoallergenic" products a fail-safe strategy. "The use of the word 'hypoallergenic' on labels is unregulated and therefore doesn't necessarily mean anything," cautions Joan Muratore, senior project leader at Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. (For more on allergens and labels, see sidebar at right.) And, despite statements such as that on Clairol's Herbal Essences website, which calls itself "your head-to-toe online guide to the Totally Organic Experience," the words "organic" and "natural" on labels are also not regulated with regard to personal-care products. More worrisome still, products that are perfumed with synthetic fragrances almost always contain a family of toxic chemicals called phthalates*.

Preservatives

This category of ingredients, used to prevent product spoilage, is the second most likely (after fragrance) to cause skin reactions. The vast majority of products rely on a family of synthetic preservatives called parabens*, which are common allergens. Also common are the formaldehyde*-releasing preservatives -- in Japan, the use of some of these, such as DMDM hydantoin* and imidazolidinyl urea*, is allowed only if the product carries a warning label.

Colors

Some of the FDA-approved coloring agents, listed as FD&C colors*, while sounding terribly safe and official, are anything but: some contain lead acetate*, a heavy metal* toxic to the nervous system; others are allergens or irritants, or linked with cancers.

Three Typical Products

Check out what's really in a shampoo and two other hair products promoted with lavish "natural" hype (comments in parentheses are ours):

1. According to the boldface marketing copy on the label of Clairol's Herbal Essences Fruit Fusions Revitalizing Shampoo with Pomegranate, "All Herbal Essences shampoos and conditioners use high quality ingredients derived from pure renewable plant sources and contain no animal by-products. Fruits grown under certified organic conditions--no petrochemicals or pesticides . . ." So far so good, right? We can be happy that Clairol uses certified organic fruits, which must indeed be grown without synthetic pesticides and petrochemicals in order to bear that claim under the National Organic Standards. But this shampoo is far from chemical-free, though a reader could think it is. Among the actual ingredients, listed in smaller, fainter print, we find the irritants sodium laureth sulfate* and sodium lauryl sulfate*, which can cause inflammation, fragrance (may contain allergens and phthalates), propylene glycol* (low-level irritant derived from natural gas, a nonrenewable resource), DMDM hydantoin* (a formaldehyde-releasing preservative), Red 33, Orange 4, Ext. Violet 2 (FD&C colors, which can cause irritations and allergic reactions).

2. The label on Aussie Mega Hold Mousse, a leave-on hair product, waxes rhapsodic about its "Australian Euphrasia . . . a flowering herb, found in Australian meadows and grassy plains." But it contains other, less bucolic ingredients: in addition to propylene glycol and DMDM hydantoin (above), it includes propane (flammable chemical), PEG-6 cocamide* and PEG-40* (both can become contaminated, forming a carcinogen), fragrance (this mousse was found to contain phthalates* in a study by the Environmental Working Group [EWG]), methylparaben* (preservative, common allergen).

3. Enriched with organic cornflower, angelica and thyme that come to us in "pure mountain spring water . . . blended with naturally-sourced holding ingredients," reads the ad copy for Herbal Essences Extra Hold Hairspray. Also listed are propylene glycol, VA/crotonates/vinyl and neodecandate copolymer (petrochemicals), Orange #4 and Ext. Violet #2.

You get the idea. For help in translating the labels on other products, as Deirdre Imus did, see "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly," for top ingredients to avoid. Having identified the worst chemical culprits, Deirdre canvassed health-food stores and online sources to find non-irritating, nontoxic, yet still effective personal-care products. Two she likes include Kiss My Face deodorant and Dr. Hauschka Neem Hair Oil. "But I'm the first to admit that most consumers wouldn't have the time I spent on the search," she says. In other words, the safety-conscious, green-minded consumer needs help.

And help is here. "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly," contains a list of personal-care products that are gentlest to the environment and ourselves. (For complete lists, see The Green Guide's product reports.) Unless otherwise noted, none of our recommendations contain known irritants or allergens. No products containing phthalates or known or suspected carcinogens made our list at all.

Once we've cleaned out our cupboards and kits, found safer alternatives and relaxed a bit, we can consider other ways to press for change. Deirdre has applied her research on purer products to a good cause: some of them, such as least-toxic cleaning products and J. R. Liggett's Bar Shampoo, are used at the Imus Ranch in New Mexico, which hosts children who are suffering from cancer or serious blood disorders. Deirdre has also founded the Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, where she launched a Greening the Cleaning campaign to introduce safer cleaning products to hospitals. (For more information, visit www.dienviro.com.) For our part, as consumers and citizens, we can demand that manufacturers clean up their acts and that government better protect and inform us about risks.