What is the sum of your beauty products?

Most people have probably used some type of beauty product/ hygiene product, many people use it daily. Do you know what your beauty products contain then? Do you think of how many you use daily? Many beauty products available on the market today contain chemicals that are not good for us. It may be, for example, endocrine disruptors such as parabens, allergens and carcinogens. Although some products contain only a small amount of an endocrine disruptor, the total exposure to the substance is going to be greater if it is present in several products that you use.

A typical day in a woman’s life could for example look like this: One walk out of bed and throws oneself in the shower. In the shower one uses soap, shampoo, conditioner, face wash and maybe shaving cream. When coming out of the shower one uses facial toner, face cream, body lotion, deodorant, hand cream and possibly a foot cream. In the summer sunscreen is also used. After breakfast one uses toothpaste and mouthwash. Then it’s time for makeup and then one uses a primer, foundation, concealer, powder, mascara, eye liner, eye shadow, eyebrow pencil, eye brow gel, blush, highlighter, bronzer, lip liner, lipstick and lip gloss. The it’s time for the hair, then one uses heat protecting spray, hair spray and hair mousse. Then some perfume is sprayed and one is ready for the day. During the day, one might need to brush up on, for example, lipstick and powder. In the evening the makeup has to be removed and then one uses a makeup remover, face wash, night cream for the face and eye cream. Sometimes one will use self-tanner. The teeth are brushed with toothpaste before it’s time for bed. The next morning the process, whole or part of it, is preformed all over again.

If you take this example it will be over 35 different products and if one imagines that all of these contain at least one endocrine disrupter (which is actually not impossible) the sum of all these is 35 x endocrine disrupter. Not all people are using this many beauty products, some uses more and others less, but this is not an absurd example. This is something that many of course, do not even think about or know about. We as the consumers have a personal responsibility to read on the box what it contains before we buy it. Which of course is not an easy task, it can be very difficult to know what all the ingredients are and one have to look them up one by one.

The tip is to replace products one by one to products containing more natural ingredients or less harmful chemicals (which of course is easier said than done). Replace the products that cover larger areas of the body first, such as body lotion. Familiarize yourself with the contents and common ingredients, goggle what they are. Look at the ingredient list for words ending in -paraben and don’t choose these or look for products labeled “no parabens”. Products that are environmental friendly-labeled also tends to be better than those that are not labeled. Products labeled as organic may in some cases be better but there is no guarantee that they do not contain harmful chemicals, unfortunately, so always read the ingredients on them too. This is of course a bit time consuming, it would have been easier with an app that could just scan the barcode and make a risk assessment for you!