Organic Cosmetics

Kermit the Frog used to sing, “It’s not easy being green.”
My, how things have changed since then! Today, companies and products are scrambling to reposition themselves as “green.” It’s certainly trendy, but how much of it is just marketing? Stand at any drug store cosmetics wall and you'll see the color green on fresh new packaging, along with words like Natural, Pure, Organic, Mineral. But what do new color schemes and claims really mean? What's different about so-called “green” or “organic” or “natural” cosmetics?

It is intuitive to believe that something that’s truly “natural” (derived from natural resources like plants, oils, and minerals) is better for us than something synthetic, produced with petrochemicals derived from nonrenewable resources. Yet millions of us use myriad personal care products every day – shampoos, moisturizers, deodorants, nail polish, perfumes, hair sprays, and gels – that are loaded with synthetic ingredients, some with known and often damaging consequences.

But now there’s a growing awareness about the use of chemicals in personal care products. This is an important and timely conversation because there are no industry safety standards that define “organic” or “natural” personal care products. That means we all need to learn a whole lot more about the chemical concoctions we’ve grown up using.

For example, chemical additives like parabens and phthalates are widely used in many popular skin care products. Manufacturers use paraben, a chemical preservative, to extend product shelf life. Are we better off without paraben? We don’t know. Many consumers are concerned enough to stop using products with paraben, but the FDA has not determined that it poses a health risk.

On the other hand, we know that phthalates, industrial chemicals used as solvents in cosmetics like hair spray, deodorants, nail polishes, and perfumes are dangerous. Phthalates can be absorbed through the skin or inhaled, and there is concern that exposure to these chemicals could cause a wide range of health problems in people, including troubling hormone disruption and reproductive changes. Eliminating them from the products we use to care for our children and ourselves only makes sense.

There are other widely used chemicals – petrolatum, sodium lauryl sulfate, dimethicone – that we should know more about, too. It’s time to turn into skin product sleuths. Internet resources such as Skin Deep provide a database on the chemical content of thousands of personal products and rate them for safety.

Smart skin care companies are taking heed, and a growing number, like Burt’s Bees®, Aubrey Organics®, and Beauty Without Cruelty®, have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, pledging to make safer products that are free of harmful chemicals and to provide greater transparency to consumers about their products. This trend is good news for all of us.

Remember when food labels were first introduced and we had to learn to read and decipher them? Now when we peruse our cosmetic choices, we need to do the same thing and keep a list of harmful chemicals in purse or wallet for easy reference. And remember that, for now, “natural” is merely a marketing term.