Artificial fragrances lurk unmarked in many of your household cleaning products. These fragrances can be bothersome as they leave residues, irritating when they are allergens, and harmful when they pose known health risks.

“Fragrance affects us all. For some, it can enhance a moment, invoke a memory, or even improve a mood. As consumers, we seek it out in all kinds of products we use in our everyday lives. And for many of us, there’s a positive sensory experience associated with fragrance. But unfortunately, this may not be without consequence. In addition to the potential health consequences of certain fragrance ingredients linked to cancer, interference with hormones, and reproductive harm, a significant portion of the population suffers from fragrance-related allergies.” Women’s Voices for Earth, “Secret Scents: How Hidden Fragrance Allergens Harm Public Health,” February 2013.

Bothersome, Irritating, and Harmful

Fragrances are just bothersome when they leave a residue. I’ve been writing about residues and the consequences for your cloth diapers, so you probably have an idea that residues of oil, minerals, or any other substances can hold on to nasty stink. It’s just strange to me that we allow ourselves to be convinced that we need to spray fragrance around our homes or plug oil burners into our outlets. Both of these leave a film on the walls, the fabric of furniture, and everywhere else in our houses. That is the least of what artificial fragrances in household products do.

Worse, artificial fragrances are often allergens. Even some cleaning products formulated to be allergy-safe have unlisted ingredients that are known to cause problems for those with sensitivities or allergies. There is a lot of work being done right now to expose then remove allergens from household products.

Worst of all, though, are the toxic chemicals in household cleaning and freshening products that expose us to a long list of harmful effects. We don’t even know all of the effects because these chemicals are not tested and approved for use.

Naturemom works hard to help you remove toxins from your home by choosing carefully which products to sell at bynature.ca and by educating customers about the problems with conventional products. She told me that if she could convince parents to do just two thing to keep toxins away from their children, those would be: 1) ditch artificial fabric softeners, and 2) don’t use fragrances that are sprayed around the house. Those artificial fragranced plugins are her worst nightmare.

So, you avoid the problem ingredients, right? Not quite so easy. You can’t avoid them because toxic fragrance ingredients aren’t on labels. Now what?

Disclosure of Ingredients

Have you ever noticed “fragrance” as an ingredient on shampoo, cleaners, or laundry detergent? What is “fragrance”? Can I get a Material Safety Data Sheet on that? No, of course not. Manufacturers are not required to list individual ingredients. They argue that proprietary blends must be kept secret.

Sure it’s a problem that manufacturers include toxic ingredients in their products marketed to clean our houses, but it’s an even bigger problem that they aren’t required to disclose ingredients. How can I stay away from allergens, irritants, and even neurotoxins or carcinogens if I don’t know what is in these products? I can’t—unless I read studies that have independently tested these products for the offending ingredients.

Some manufacturers argue that their websites (or side project websites, away from consumer traffic) are the best place to list ingredients. That just makes the information more difficult to find when we make our buying decisions. Deep on those websites where they are difficult to find and even more difficult to download to your phone while you are shopping, a couple of manufacturers have provided master ingredient lists. These lists don’t help me know which products to avoid because of specific allergens, though. They are not helpful in the way that we as consumers need help.

Listing ingredients on products should be the standard. Some companies (Clean Well and Seventh Generation) use peel-back labels to list all of their ingredients. The methods are available. Not listing ingredients is a choice that large manufacturers are making because it masks their inclusion of toxic chemicals.

Simple Actions You Can Take

• Go through your house, pull up the Environmental Working Group database, and check every household cleaning, freshening, laundry, kitchen, bathroom, floor, furniture, and other product. Ditch the toxic cleaning products.
• Use simple ingredients like boiling water, vinegar, and lemon to give your house a cleaner clean.
• If you want to add fragrance to your homemade cleaning products, use natural smells, such as orange peels in vinegar for cleaning, or add essential oils, that contain no undisclosed chemicals. When you control what you smell, you can avoid anything that causes allergies or sensitivities for your family members.
• Learn about chemicals of concern and the chemical body burden. The research and campaigns below will give you a lot of information to share with your friends and family.

Consequences of Artificial Smells

One of the consequences of all of the conditioning to artificial smells is that you begin to believe the underlying message: your smell is wrong. If you or your house are stinky, there is a remedy for that. Find the source and clean it up. Doesn’t that sound simple?

Research
A 2007 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found pthalates in air fresheners, even those labelled “all natural.”

In a 2011 study, Women’s Voices for the Earth looked at toxic chemicals in popular household products, including not just air fresheners but laundry detergents, all-purpose cleaners, disinfectant sprays, and more.

Women’s Voices for the Earth created the report card The Dirt on Cleaning Product Companies to show what major manufacturers are doing about toxic chemicals in their products.

Campaigns & Organizations
NRDC Take out Toxics campaign points out that 80,000 chemicals permitted in products in the U.S. have never been tested for health effects.

Safer Chemicals / Healthy Families is a coalition of professionals, businesses, advocacy groups, and others. This is an active organization you can follow on social media for alerts about toxics and efforts to remove them from household products. Safer Chemicals / Healthy Families lists the major chemicals of concern and their consequences.

Women’s Voices for Earth Secret Scents campaign focuses primarily on the issue of allergens used as fragrance ingredients in common products.

Women’s Voices for Earth What’s That Smell? campaign focuses on chemicals of concern used as fragrance in cleaning products.

Image © Erik Reis | Dreamstime.com

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Triclosan, a chemical added to many dozens of household products, has been in the news this past week as a new study finds that the chemical weakens muscle by interfering with the movement of calcium in cells. Data from the study “provide strong evidence that the chemical is of concern to both human and environmental health.”

Where are the environmental protections that we rely on? Earlier this year, the Canadian Ministers of Environment and Health announced a finding that “triclosan is not harmful to human health, but in significant amounts can cause harm to the environment.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control Fact Sheet on Triclosan still says, “More research is needed to assess the human health effects of exposure to triclosan.” Despite the slow-moving national regulation of chemical additives, the research finally seems to have reached a tipping point.

Environmental Working Group, in their 2008 report on Triclosan, recommended removing the chemical from all consumer products. That might seem an extreme conclusion at first. For those companies that add the chemical to dozens of products, it might seem impossible to discontinue its use. Continued research and persistent pressure have brought us to the point where a ban on triclosan seems possible, even probable.

Claims As a Germ Killer

Triclosan has been added to consumer products as a germ killer. We know it best as an ingredient in anti-bacterial soap. Does antibacterial soap work better than other soap to kill bacteria? No, dozens of studies have found that triclosan does not work better than plain soap.

It’s Not Just Soap

You might think you would find this so-called anti-bacterial pesticide just in anti-bacterial soap, but it is used in consumer products throughout your house: toothpaste, toys, filters, vacuums, cart covers, and even hockey helmets.

A few of the products containing triclosan include: Colgate Total, Revlon ColorStay LipSHINE Lipcolor Plus Gloss, Faberware Microban Cutting Boards, Fellowes Cordless Microban Keyboard and Microban Mouse Pad, Biofresh socks, Playskool toys (Stack ‘n Scoop Whale, Rockin’ Radio, Hourglass, Sounds Around Driver, Roll ‘n Rattle Ball, Animal Sounds Phone, Busy Beads Pal, Pop ‘n Spin Top, Lights ‘n Surprise Laptop), Ticonderoga Antibacterial pencil, Bauer hockey helmets, Miller Paint Interior Paint, Dupont Air Filters, BioEars earplugs, Petmate LeBistro feeders and waterers, Infantino cart covers and baby carriers, Bissell Healthy Home Vacuum, Rival Seal-A-Meal Vacuum Food Sealer, CleenFreek SportsHygiene Yoga Mat. (See Beyond Pesticides for their list of products containing triclosan, and see the SkinDeep database for a list of cosmetics that include triclosan. Check the Good Guide for product ratings, and download their app so you can scan bar codes as you shop.)

Especially as more research shows potential harm from triclosan, you might find that the chemical disappears from some of these products. As Beyond Pesticides points out, “many companies are quietly taking triclosan out of their products Remember to always refer to product labels to determine whether triclosan is contained in your product.”

Getting Rid of Triclosan

As with so much of the chemical body burden resulting from the experimental innovations of modern synthetics, chemicals accumulate in our bodies. There is a way a woman can rid herself of these chemicals: breastfeed. That’s right. Triclosan and other chemicals are found in breastmilk then passed to babies. It is unlikely we can prevent all exposure to Triclosan and other dangerous chemicals without a complete ban from consumer products, but we as individuals can limit our exposure by understanding the products that use these chemicals and avoiding those products.

Environmental Working Group recommended in 2008 that Triclosan be banned from all consumer products. Just this week, Johnson & Johnson announced that they will remove Triclosan from all products by the end of 2015. Consumer pressure does work to remove these dangerous ingredients from the products that surround us. It helps us all to vote with our dollars and avoid products with experimental chemical ingredients, but we also need to keep up the pressure as consumers to encourage changes like this.

Naturally Antibacterial

As you pack your child’s school bag, if you are looking for naturally antibacterial cleaners that do not add to your child’s chemical body burden, consider Clean George (Made in USA) and Graydon (Made in Toronto). Both products use essential oils as the antibacterial ingredient.

Image © Umiterdem | Dreamstime.com

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When the U.S. CPSIA banned certain phthalates in children’s sleeping products, I think they had in mind primarily sucking products. Pajamas count here, too, since there could conceivably be soft plastics in surface decorations or in the skid-preventing patterns on footie pajamas. Kids can suck those, but they aren’t designed to be sucked. Basically, because very young children put so much in their mouths, everything made for children under 3 becomes a suckable item.

It’s not a bad thing to avoid plastics in pillows, blankets, and all of the other sleep products for kids, but it is just silly to consider that an organic cotton blanket is subject to testing for soft plastics. It is not difficult to see why manufacturers and retailers who are concerned about toxic chemicals in children’s products are still unhappy about the U.S. law.

Still, I’m using the CPSIA as my guide this week for switching from products that contain plastics to plastic-free products for feeding, sleeping, and toys for children.

Easy Plastic-free Changes

As with my plastic-free feeding recommendations, the easiest changes we can make are to switch to plastic-free products that do much the same thing as the plastic products. These are the painless changes.

Vinyl-free bedding

Whatever our blankets and pillows breathe out, we breathe in all night. Because of the sweet, carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting smell of vinyl chloride, it is particularly important to get vinyl out of bedding.

A lot of parents are concerned about leaking diapers and wet beds. There are a couple of ways to approach this problem. Use a diaper that doesn’t leak or use a mattress pad. A vinyl-free mattress pad is a start, but it isn’t necessarily plastic-free, since a lot of waterproof items still have microfibers or polyurethane laminate or both. The truly plastic-free, waterproof mattress pad is wool. A wool changing pad will work if your baby doesn’t move much during the night, or a larger wool blanket can but put under the sheets to prevent leaking into the mattress.

Baby blankets of 100% cotton or 100% soft, merino wool are naturally absorbent. They will keep your baby warm enough while still breathing to avoid the wrapped-in-plastic feeling in the morning.

Pajamas

As with blankets, natural materials are the least toxic choice for your sleeping child. You don’t need soft plastic printing or decorations on the pajamas, you don’t need microfiber for absorbency, you don’t need toxic fabric treatments. It isn’t easy to find untreated, natural fiber pajamas, but it is worth the effort.

Sucking

A baby gets more than nutrition from breastfeeding. They suck for comfort. There are plastic breast-substitutes available, but letting a baby suck is the natural, stuff-free way to go. ByNature.ca held off stocking pacifiers for almost 5 years, but customers asked time and time again for an all-natural, non-toxic option they could trust. So, they stocked the Natursutten pacifier in natural rubber, the safest pacifier on the market. NOTE: If you are planning to breastfeed, it is highly recommended that no pacifier or bottle be introduced until you have a strong nursing relationship established.

Diapers

Nighttime diapering is not mysterious. All it takes is enough absorbency and enough leak protection. Trying to use the same diapers for 8-12 hours that a baby wears during the day for 2-4 hours is asking for an accident, so don’t! It is easy to adjust absorbency of cloth diapers. You will need to adapt to your baby’s needs—how long does she sleep, when does she wet at night and how much. Start with 2-3 organic cotton prefolds and a nice, Canadian-made, 100% wool Aristocrats wool soaker and adjust from there.

That ammonia smell that can become very concentrated in a baby’s diaper by morning may cause chemical reactions in soft plastics. Polyester, polyurethane, and other polymers are broken down in the recycling (depolymerization) process with, among other chemical agents, ammonia. (Feedstock Recycling of Plastic Wastes, José Aguado and David P. Serrano, p55.) So, avoid plastics in diapers and diaper covers in order to avoid this particular science experiment.

Those are a few, simple first steps to take, but this is still a STUFF-oriented approach. After I finish by writing about toys tomorrow, I will follow with further steps at the end of June in our second week of focus on plastic.

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Two Big Issues with Plastic Use

The first issue, off-gassing.

New car smell. You know that characteristic smell and that of a new shower curtain or plastic doll. You may be smelling the sweet, mild smell of vinyl chloride, which is used to make PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Short-term exposures can cause dizziness and headaches, while long-term exposures can cause liver damage, cancer, and reproductive effects. The smell tends to go away over time.

The polymers (long chains of molecules) that make up soft plastics are more likely to have unreacted monomers (single, unchained molecules). Outgassing happens as unreacted chemical monomers are released. Once the unreacted monomers are released, the smell is more mild or even undetectable.

We get used to the smell and even crave it to trigger memory. What else could explain the desire to buy “New car smell spray”? Some people sniff glue, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Vinyl research is extensive, and research on other soft plastics is building. We’ve trained ourselves to crave what is harming us.

In the case of outgassing, there is no further chemical reaction necessary to release the toxins since they are not chained to the polymers. We might detect their release as smell, or they might leach into our water from plastic single-use water bottles or plastic linings of reusable water bottles.

The second issue, chemical reactions changing the plastic.

Unreacted chemicals in plastics can be released, but there can also be new reactions that change the plastics and allow the release of further toxins. Putting an acidic food like tomatoes in a plastic lined metal can will create a reaction. BPA (bisphenol A), a plastic chemical that “functions like a synthetic estrogen,” has been found in canned foods. This is the endocrine disruption that has been in the news for years. Unsafe levels of BPA are also found in 1 of 3 cans of infant formula.

Another issue, closely related to the second, radiation.

If you leave plastic water in the car in the sun, microwave food in plastic containers, or leave plastic toys in the yard, there could be a reaction between the ultraviolet light or the radiation and the plastic. Heating plastic can degrade the chemical bond. That chemical reaction could then leave toxins in the plastic that can be released.

In a microwave, the particular dangers come with fatty foods cooked at high temperatures. Even the most conservative advice urges us not to let plastics, like thin plastic wrap, touch foods in the microwave.

These are only a few of the possibilities. Frankly, like so many toxic situations in our world, it’s overwhelming. But, the point of today’s post is to consider eco baby steps.

Danger Areas

The U.S. CPSIA bans six phthalates in children’s products, three permanently and three pending further review. Those plastic chemicals banned are prohibited in children’s toys and child-care articles, which includes feeding, sleeping, and sucking.

Following this logic, I’ve divided products into three areas to discuss plastic-free alternatives: feeding, sleeping, and toys. Today, feeding. Sleeping and toys will follow in the next two days.

Easy Plastic-free Changes

The easiest changes we can make are to switch to plastic-free products that do much the same thing as the plastic products that have become so common over the past half century. There is little lifestyle change required to make a switch to plastic-free feeding products.

Glass

Some of the choices for babies and children are the same for the whole family. The changes we have made in the past couple of years are: have milk delivered in glass bottles, use glass containers for leftovers, and buy more products, especially ALL tomato products, in glass jars. Our county recycles all clear glass, and, though we don’t have curbside pick-up, we make a monthly visit to our recycling center to drop off everything we have collected.

The switch to glass is easy. Before there was plastic, there was glass. When plastic is banned, glass will still be with us.

ByNature.ca already carries glass baby bottles, and glass baby food jars are coming soon. Despite calling them “baby food jars,” these small glass containers (the big photo at the top of the post) are perfect for holding spices, cake decorating supplies, or small amounts of leftovers.

Stainless Steel

For serving, stainless steel is a great option because a child can drop it, and it won’t break like glass or ceramics can. ByNature.ca has a big variety of cups, dishes, and feeding accessories in stainless steel, including a cool divided tray in the shape of a bus. The one thing that really surprised me the first time I saw it was a stainless steel straw. Brilliant!

Another easy way to avoid plastic while dining out is to carry flatware with you. When I built my 72-hour bug-out bag of essentials, I saw a huge collection of different kinds of travel flatware. Some of them were camping utensils that hook all together, which can be a convenient way to keep from losing the occasional spoon in the bottom of your bag, but I choose a heavier set that came in its own snapping case. After I use and wipe down the utensils, I can just tuck them in their case and take them home to clean the utensils and the case. You don’t have to be so fancy. Just throw a few sets of flatware in a reusable cloth bag like the Planet Wise mini wet/dry bag, which is just the right size and can handle any mess you tuck into it.

Those are a few, simple first steps to take, but this is still a STUFF-oriented approach. After covering sleeping products and toys this week, I will follow with further steps at the end of June in our second week of focus on plastic.

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What better time to start our Focus on Plastic. Be sure to see today’s post on plastics hit you coming and going.

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We need to face the costs of plastics at both ends of the chain: in oil and gas exploration and in the toxic effects on our lives.

What Is Plastic Made Of?

Chart my husband learned from in school

The news is full of heartbreaking stories about the consequences of oil and gas exploration and production. Since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I see more headlines about “our addiction to oil.” We need to expand that. When we talk about breaking the addiction to oil, we have to talk about plastics. Oil should not be mistaken as just an issue of gasoline and transportation. Our dependence on plastics for everyday household products are a huge part of our need to push to find new sources of oil and gas without adequate safety nets.

When we see photos of tar balls on beaches and oil slicks covering hundreds of miles, we need to consider how we are working to lessen our dependence of petroleum products. When we see costs of seafood go up dramatically, we need to consider whether the alleged convenience of throwaway plastics has been worth those externalized costs.

I’ve just been shocked and almost overwhelmed to see the consequences of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. We all need to make the connection between petrochemical products, including plastics, and the devastation that we are seeing on the news.

What Is So Bad About Plastic?

Beyond the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, if we can even come close to beyond that, are health and environmental issues that follow from exposure to some plastics.

There are two approaches to the safety of plastics, the cautious approach that says it’s important to prove safety before use and the more common approach that it’s important to prove risk before removal from use. In general, safety advocates and environmentalists are taking the cautious approach and business and regulators are taking the risky approach. More and more, though, the cautious approach is becoming the mainstream approach.

In just the past two weeks, I have seen several major efforts by mainstream news to document toxic plastics. 60 Minutes ran a story on phthalates, the plastic softeners that make flexible plastic flexible (“Phthalates: Are They Safe?”); The New Yorker ran a story on BPA (bisphenol A) and other toxic plastics (“The Plastic Panic”); and yesterday I noticed that CNN is running a special on plastics (“Toxic America”). Once the story has hit these news outlets, people are aware and the approach tips far more toward the cautious approach. I’m even starting to hear more people in the mainstream calling for banning the more suspicious plastics from use.

Oil & gas and plastic industry lobbyists in these documentaries say that either the materials are safe because it hasn’t been proven otherwise or the regulations allow use of the materials so they’re just fine. They imply that there is no proof of risk or harm, but the scientific evidence showing risk and harm is building. The U.S. President’s Cancer Panel, for example, issued a report recommending strengthening U.S. federal chemical laws, increasing funding for research, and stepping up enforcement. The frank approach of the study is alarming, as it should be.

The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread. One such ubiquitous chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), is still found in many consumer products and remains unregulated in the United States, despite the growing link between BPA and several diseases, including various cancers. “Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” p5.

Parents should understand that the burden of environmental toxins, including plastics, is not shared equally. “[C]hildren are far more vulnerable to environmental toxins and radiation than adults” because of their smaller body mass and their rapid development. “To a disturbing extent,” the panel writes, “babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’” This pre-pollution is causing alarming changes, particularly in boys as soft plastics (phthalates) mimic some human hormones and have been shown to disrupt normal development, feminizing some males. (Of the recent stories, the 60 Minutes pieces goes into this in the most detail.)

Our use of plastics in so many products has been a giant experiment on the human race and on the earth. The data from that experiment are coming in, and the results are not good for us.

Plastic may be pervasive in our lives, but WE make the choices. In most cases (I’m excepting many medical situations—for now), we can use alternatives that don’t carry as many risks.

Special thanks to Taina of Plastic Manners. She is blogging her efforts to give up plastics for a year. She doesn’t have children, but she gets a lot of comments on her blog from parents. She encouraged us to cover the effort to eliminate plastics from babies’ and children’s lives.

Image © Bidouze Stéphane | Dreamstime.com

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It’s been interesting to follow the story of Pampers Dry Max in the news and on blogs in the past couple of weeks—too many interesting aspects to name them all—but what has slapped me in the face is how little I know about how mainstream parents think. I have been shocked to see parents say things like “this giant company wouldn’t make a product that is anything but safe for my child because it would be bad for business.” So many parents said similar things that I realized this is actually a common assumption.

A massive company whose primary interest is maximizing profit is likely to make products JUST SAFE ENOUGH to find balance between safety (or litigation costs) and the production and materials that give the best profit margins. That’s good business, right? So I’m told.

It turns out that I’m one of the skeptical ones who doesn’t assume that corporations have my children’s health and safety as a priority. This seems to put me outside the mainstream.

Shocking!

So, even carrying the weight of my new-found discovery that I am too skeptical to be mainstream, I am going to suggest that there are whole areas of the children’s product market where soft plastics and chemicals of concern are not ubiquitous. I must have the risk gene because I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it is possible for parents to raise their babies plastic-free. No, it’s not really a flimsy limb. People all around me are raising plastic-free babies.

How, I wonder, does a plastic-free, reusable, natural material childhood seem so far outside the boundaries of possibility for so many parents? I’m a bit stumped how to create any change in that. I don’t think the argument of hormone disruption reaches everyone. Maybe 60 Minutes will begin to change that.

Then what? Will parents rush to buy wooden rattles and cloth books?

Ubiquitous

I suspect that the argument will be made not that all products have soft plastics as ingredients but that all PEOPLE have soft plastics as ingredients.

The shift in perception that is needed to result in less exposure to the offending ingredients of soft plastics is so massive that it is almost overwhelming along with all of the other choices we need to make in a hyper-industrial world. When I hear parents say, “I grew up fine and my kids will be fine, too” as an excuse not to limit exposures, I wonder what it will take to convince them that we aren’t living in the same chemical world. When even typical—not extreme but typical—levels of phthalates in the body of a pregnant woman can disrupt especially the male reproductive system and this doesn’t result in screaming, arm-waving alarm on the part of mothers, I don’t really know what will reach them.

The good news is, you can reach the people around you with the message of safe, natural toys. You can talk to the parents you meet about chemical exposures.

Frankly, you can talk to parents about how adorable you find a natural rubber giraffe or a wooden fish rattle, and that is likely to reach some for whom the toxic exposure argument will mean little.

Whatever it takes to reduce the chemical body burden on our pre-polluted babies.

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Z Recommends (ZRecs) has been covering Pampers DryMax as children’s product safety issue. After their original warning, they expanded coverage to

• Part 1, a history of how the current disposable diaper landscape came to be the way it is
• Part 2, the range of diaper rash reactions, both the kind on babies bottoms and the rash reactions of the company itself
• Part 3, an analysis of the materials science of a disposable diaper
• Part 4 (due today), the social media component of the story

For anyone concerned about the issue of potential harm to babies and the story of how one sad disposable diaper company allowed a public relations fiasco to ensue, this series is essential and fascinating reading.

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Do you know which cosmetics are safe during pregnancy? Do you know which skin care products are safe for your baby? What you don’t know can hurt you and your baby.

When I was reading materials for my post last week on Mother-made Baby Care Cosmetics, I found a fascinating statement.

All Earth Mama Angel Baby products are now rated “zero” on the Skin Deep database, a guide to cosmetics and personal care products from the Environmental Working Group. “We know of no other company that manufactures products for pregnancy or baby with an entire product line rated zero,” said Melinda Olson, CEO and founder.
“Earth Mama Angel Baby Rated Zero on Skin Deep Database,” Organic Products Retailer, September 2009.

It is extremely helpful to parents and parents-to-be to see all ingredients and all concerns, even minor concerns, listed in one place. Seeing a whole line of products with green zeroes is very reassuring.

The Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database is a project of the Environmental Working Group. I follow a lot of the good work they are doing to compile data that helps consumers make informed choices. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Skin Deep Database cover just one of their areas of research. Their goal is simple. They want to eliminate “the use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects, and other health problems.”

Which companies are making safe cosmetics and baby care products? They list companies that have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, pledging to meet strict standards. They go through a few clear steps to be sure that you know the ingredients in their products.

What’s the Problem?

Because of the levels of environmental toxins, we are exposed to toxic chemicals through the air and water. We also, mostly unknowingly, bring toxic chemicals into our homes through nearly every consumer product, including those that we put directly on our skin. We can’t always avoid the air and water, but we can make informed choices about cosmetics and other consumer products.

It helps to know the chemicals of concern and check labels. Only today I found myself buying a major brand cosmetic (deodorant!) for my son rather than the eco healthy brand because only the plain jane big name did not have one of the ingredients I was trying to avoid. We didn’t get antiperspirant, just deodorant, hoping that would avoid some problems. I wish I’d checked the database before I went because the eco healthy brand got a score of 2 in the database, and the big name clean as a whistle brand got a score of 6. Now I wish I had just worked harder to convince him to use a crystal. Lesson learned: check the database while you are in the store if you are mobile.

Pregnancy

In pregnancy, the chemicals that have been absorbed by the body of the mother will be passed on to the developing fetus. That is an unfortunate and unavoidable fact. We as mothers can at least avoid adding to that chemical load during the delicate time of development.

Avoid in particular

• parabens because they are oestrogen mimics
• phthalates because of potential premature birth
• ultrafine particles because they can enter the lymphatic system
• accutane or retinoic acid because of potential heart defects
• high-dose vitamin A (anti-aging) because of potential birth defects

Keep in mind that I’m referring to cosmetics in this post, but any toxic chemicals in cleaning products, paint, air fresheners, and on and on can still cause problems. Without panicking or becoming paranoid, become aware of your choices and the ingredients most important to avoid.

Baby

With babies, the issue is again development as well as avoidance of the toxic tipping point that could cause “serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility and birth defects.”

The list of chemicals that can be harmful to babies and children is at least several hundred long. Browse the Skin Deep baby care section for a long, long read. Once you see all of the alarming toxic ingredients in so many baby products, recall the zero rating of Earth Mama Angel Baby products

With babies, just stick with brands that have signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics or check each product for toxic chemicals before you commit and buy. Do the research first, and you will have a much better chance of helping your child avoid adding to the toxins they carry just by living in a toxic industrial world.

Image © Hughstoneian | Dreamstime.com

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