10/09/2012

Oh no! Who Put 'Sad' and 'Guilt' In My Lotion?

Hello, everybody!!!

Sorry I've been scarce!  October is always my craziest, busiest month.  There's my husband's birthday, my birthday, my daughter's birthday, two of my sisters' birthdays, my brother-in-law's birthday, and family always visiting for all the birthdays, and the getting ready for Halloween, and trying to get out and enjoy October since it's the best month in Ohio, weather-wise, and and and...  I can't breathe.  Phew.  Luckily, it's just a month and I will be back to being a depressed, hermit shut-in before you can say Dia de los Muertos.

Anyway, I thought I would take this opportunity to talk to y'all about something y'all super-wanna talk about...




I get questions about this stuff all the time...  variations of which chemicals to avoid, how to avoid animal testing, how to find natural products, blah blah blah.  People really want to pick the right thing, so it does what they need AND doesn't cause them guilt and/or anxiety about poisoning/abusing themselves or animals or the whole planet.  

I am going to preface this by saying that my feelings on these topics aren't going to be popular.  That's fine!  We can all think different things and still be pals!  

I've read a lot about cosmetic industry standards, terminology and what you have to do to be allowed to use certain terminology, and I am married to a chemical engineer who will always spend 45 minutes explaining the minutia of any little question you ask about chemicals, and also will go all Mr. Wizard on you and lay it down if you slip up and say some buzzword that is essentially bullshit marketing.  Dude can even tell you what's in the tanker truck by looking at the little number on the back.

Unfortunately, much like with everything else in the world, it is sobering and depressing to actually know what's up.

Animal Testing:  The little bunny that means "no animal testing" doesn't really mean that the products with the icon were made without animal testing.  Now, I will say that they probably weren't-- most cosmetics companies have all their formulating done by an outside lab, since most people starting businesses don't have the extra money laying around to start a scientific laboratory and pay scientists to test everything they make.  Instead, they decide what they are going to make, meet with a lab who helps them formulate, and the lab makes everything. So, the company itself doesn't do animal testing.  EyelashBunny brand rabbit mascara probably doesn't even test directly on animals themselves.

The other thing is that every ingredient you put in a cosmetic item has something called a Material Safety Data Sheet.  Every ingredient in every product has been tested, and every ingredient has information on file that shows that ingredient is safe to put on humans.  Every one.  The thing is, a lot of ingredients were tested before people started paying attention to things like animal testing, so most ingredients were tested on animals at one point.  Olive oil and beeswax and the most hippie-natural stuff you can imagine were tested on animals.  Basically, when a company puts a bunny on the label, it is just marketing.  They want you to feel good, so they put the little bunny on it to say they don't test on animals.  Of course they don't, they don't own labs, and even if they did, you don't go around wasting money retesting ingredients that already have MSDSs.

Just for shits and giggles, this is a screenshot from the website of the company that lets you put the bunny on your product...



The logo just means they want you to feel good about buying the product.  Nothing there about the logo being important because it's important to be nice to animals, and nothing there saying the logo even means that no animals were ever harmed on the road to making that product.

Are you picking up what I'm laying down?  Companies saying they don't do animal testing is like you saying that you are totally cool for the environment because you don't personally have an oil rig to suck the oil from the earth to make gas for your Honda.  Even Stella McCartney, who is pretty well-known for being concerned about animal welfare issues, has the perfume/cosmetics leg of her company under the control of L'Oreal, who is adamant about being allowed to test on animals.  The Body Shop is owned by L'Oreal, too.  I'm not saying it's wrong to care about animal testing, but it's impossible to say 100% that there is no animal testing in a product, and if someone is telling you their product is morally pure, they are just trying to tickle your spot to get your wallet to open.

Organic Products:  "Organic" is a term that is applied to food items, and is regulated by the USDA.  The USDA has no jurisdiction over the cosmetics industry, period.  Cosmetics have some areas that are regulated by the FDA.  The FDA cares about the colorants you use, and if you make medical claims about your cosmetics (which is a no-no), but aside from that, the cosmetics industry is largely unregulated.  The FDA can't say something is organic, and the USDA can't say something is organic if it's not a food item.  SO, if you read the ingredients on a cosmetic item that is labeled "organic", and the ingredients aren't comprised mainly of food ingredients, like avocado or honey or whatever, then the label is bullshit.  If the organic certification isn't from the USDA, it's bullshit.  Whether or not you want to use products that are made of food is up to you, but don't make the decision based on a meaningless claim from a company that is trying to lube up your wallet.  There are other agencies that will bestow cosmetic items with organic labels, but those are all agencies that are put together BY THE COSMETIC COMPANIES.  You can trust them, right?!?!

Natural Products:  "Natural" just means that the product is made from stuff like essential oils and waxes and flowers and shit.  No harm in buying natural products, if that is what gets your goat.  Something to keep in mind, though, is that it is pretty easy to have allergic reactions to plant-based, natural ingredients, so if you are the kind of person who has a tendency to get allergic reactions to stuff, you might not want to buy something that is natural.  Also, just because it's natural doesn't mean it is superior and/or safe...  Arsenic and uranium and poison ivy are natural, too.

Parabens and other scary chemicals:  This is where I get all nihilist on y'all.  

Parabens are used as preservatives in cosmetic items.  People have been worked up lately because scientists found parabens in breast cancer tumors, and they are thought to mimic estrogens, so everyone freaked out and don't want them in their shit anymore.  The thing is, despite the scientific findings, they haven't established a link between parabens and the formation of breast cancer.

If it makes you anxious, avoid it!  The thing to keep in mind, though, is that other preservatives just don't work as well as parabens, so you might run into issues with the shelf-life of products made without parabens.  Additionally, a lot of parabens are naturally-occuring chemicals, so take from that what you will.

There is a well-documented link between smoking and cancer, but you can smoke your whole life and not get cancer, or you can smoke your whole life and get cancer from exposure to a different chemical or the biological lottery or something else that isn't smoking. Right now, there isn't a documented link between cancer and parabens, just the existence of parabens in some tumor samples they checked.  It's entirely up to you whether or not you accept the risk of using products with parabens.  Personally, I don't find the scientific evidence compelling enough to make a point of avoiding them.  It's not like I'm never going to get cancer if I avoid parabens... I very well might, and I am 100% definitely going to die someday, so I am the head counselor at Camp Don't-Give-A-Fuck.  If scientists present some solid studies that establish a definite link, then sure, I might try to phase them out, but picking every little thing out of my life that might someday give me cancer, maybe, is a massive project that I just don't care to take on.  It borders on hyper-vigilance, and I just don't need another mental problem to add to the pile.  

If you care, you care, if you don't, you're probably still going to be fine (but you're gonna die either way.)

In Closing:  When it comes to cosmetic items, I've made my feelings pretty clear... Stuff I use to clean myself and moisturize and perform general hygiene is as bland and hypoallergenic as possible, because I have a tendency towards getting itchy skin problems and acne.  I keep it simple and just use a facewash and moisturizer/SPF, so my exposure to chemicals is minimized by just not slapping a mountain of shit on myself.  I'm not using a wash and a separate exfoliant and Victoria's Secret lotion and some Bath and Body Works body spray and face cream and serum and separate SPF and eye cream and wrinkle treatment.  I use the same 3 things all the time, and I use them to the bottom, then I recycle the container, and that's pretty nice to the earth.  I just don't think every manmade thing is dangerous, and I know that a lot of manmade chemicals are just isolations of things that occur naturally in plants or fruits, that wouldn't be shelf stable if they were used in their natural form.  If there is an article in a scientific journal that says my moisturizer is a definite cause of growing two extra sets of tits, I will stop using it, but I don't fret about every single little thing.  Makeup is just makeup, I buy what I like because, even if the markup is a bit silly, it is what it is.  I'm not going to buy a red lipstick and have it apply purple, or buy a nail polish and open it up to find that it's colored petroleum jelly.  Makeup doesn't benefit from straight out lying to you like skincare items do.  

I'm not going to trip because there isn't a bunny logo on my shampoo, and then have the groomer wash my dog with who-knows-what.  I'm not going to freak out because there is carmine in my blush, then go out and eat shrimp.  I'm not going to refuse to buy something I want because it isn't natural, then go drink 2 Diet Cokes while I watch Antiques Roadshow.  I'm just mellower than that and try to be philosophically consistent, even if my philosophy is "who cares?!"  If you're worried about particular things, because you're vegan or trying to be more green or whatever, do your thing.  Read the labels and buy what makes you feel good, but don't believe every thing you read on a bottle, because a lot of it is unregulated.  Just because there is a little picture of a leaf in the logo, and the plastic is all unbleached brown-looking, doesn't mean they aren't trying to sweet-talk you just to get your money.

56 comments:

  1. This is my favorite post of yours thus far.

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    1. Preach! I work at Lush and there's a lot of pressure for things being vegan and all-natural. I don't care if something claims to be made from flowers and sunshines, I care if it works!

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    2. i just don't like being bullshitted. don't pee on my head and tell me it's raining. just lay it out and let me decide.

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  3. Great post! I used to work in the freight industry and we had a couple of big name beauty related supply chains as accounts and it used to crack me up that their shipments were always handled as hazmat. Of course that is because of things like polish remover containing acetone and acetone being flammable, but it made me laugh nonetheless. Back then I could also tell what was in the truck by the hazmat placard number but not anymore.

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  4. Yeah, this mirrors my sentiments exactly. Being a pseudo-scientist and all, I'm a little more skeptical of labels and whatnot. After a little bit of research (and logic), you discover that half of it are just meaningless marketing strategies to get you to buy shit. "Natural" products probably drive me bananas the most. "Fucking anthrax is natural!" says the girl typing on her silicone and petroleum-based plastic piece of technological wonder. It's easy to guilt and fool people. We want to do what's best, but realistically, it's not within our control. Buy your makeup in whichever way allows you to sleep at night, I guess, but know that, ultimately, it really just doesn't matter.

    tl;dr: I agree.

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  5. Can I sign up for Camp Don't-Give-A-Fuck?!
    Maybe as like, the lunchlady or something?

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    1. http://www.polyvore.com/diy_halloween_sexy_lunchlady/set?id=60748618

      You're welcome.

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  6. This is the most reasonable post on makeup I have ever read. Great job!

    Also, it's funny that you have so many October birthdays -- that means a lot of people were getting frisky at the end of Christmas vacation, right? I'm 9 months pregnant right now though, so I might be biased.

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    1. October 5th (my daughter's birthday) is actually the date with the most birthdays! She was conceived on NYE. haha. Totally explains why October has so many birthdays. :D

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  7. All the label "natural" means is that the ingredients are carbon-based. Think about it.

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    1. "organic" means carbon-based. a rock isn't organic, but it is natural, and some things are both natural and organic, like a dog turd.

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    2. Ha! That made me laugh out loud at work. Thanks Natalie. Love this post, really opened my eyes about something I have never put much thought into.

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  8. Anonymous10/09/2012

    I dig this post the best thus far!
    I argue with folks all the time about this very topic & always do I get branded the insensitive one since I don't fall face first first into marketing hype (i.e. the bunny logo).
    I stand my ground on subjects like this even though I know it tweeks the tails of the green posse.
    My Dad was a chemical & mechanical engineer before he went on to get a few more degree's in various sciences just to kill some free time. Anyways, at one lab he worked at, he was always bringing home naked rabbits for us kids to love on & coo over.

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  9. Anonymous10/09/2012

    Ugh, preach it. I honestly just try not to buy the cheapest, crappiest makeup I can find, because generally whatever is in "cheap and crappy" makes my skin break out, and I know I am allergic to a few things (mostly natural, actually), so I try to avoid those, but otherwise I don't get all janky over that shit.

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  10. Natalie Dee,

    I have been a fan of yours since I discovered your comics in 2001. Your artwork (which I compulsively saved because I didn't understand how the internet worked) gives the reader a tiny peek at your personality BUT NOW! All the wonderful things I ever thought about you are confirmed. You are such a no-nonsense, you-get-what-you-see, logical lady. I really appreciate this post. Everything you wrote makes sense to me and you explained it without getting political or preachy. I was worried "Stuff I Put on Myself" would end up all girl-talky like, "oh, which boy should we call next? Tee hee hee!" I am so glad to have been wrong. Thanks for sharing your down-to-earth insights with us.

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    1. agreed! im just really glad you started blogging again, i had missed it.

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    2. I totally agree Jenna....I hardly wear any cosmetics, but I love this blog because it's smart and funny. And this post is my fave, because I am a scientist who is fucking sick and tired of people getting their shit in a knot about "chemicals" and insisting that "natural" products are better. Every fucking thing in the universe is made out of chemicals, for sobbing out loud. I also hate when people say "I won't eat anything if I can't pronounce all of the ingredients". Oh really? You won't eat alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) or cholecalciferol (vitamin D) or cyanocobalamin (vitamin B12)? Get your head out of your asses.

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  11. Wait...have you only been online since 2004? Anyway it was since I started my DeviantArt account and I used this image as my avatar of a cartoon guy wearing a pink shirt that said "cool" with his tongue sticking out. There was also one I suggested for my friend of someone sticking their head with scissors and blood coming out. I just checked my dA account and it says I've been a member for 8 years so yeah, 2004 I guess. My bad! Thanks internet!

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  12. preeeeeeeeeach! Miss Dee, this (amongst other reasons) is why you are tops. <3

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  13. i am so happy that you exist.

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  14. Should I feel guilty about consuming this information from outside of my 100 Mile Radius? Has your logical thinking been tested on pugs? Tell me why I should feel bad about everything I enjoy! AaAAAAaaah!

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  15. This post is awesome! I'm a biochemistry student so I love reading the labels, and chemicals and all that nerd stuff. I'm so tired of people thinking that "organic" and "natural" mean magical, perfect, safe. Sometimes, man-made can be great, and natural can be harmful. And toasts can give you cancer, did you know that?

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  16. What a fabulous post with great relevance to my life as a former vegan, and also having recently seen Pink Ribbons, Inc., which is a cool documentary about breast cancer fundraising culture and stuff, but they basically end it by telling you LOOK, IT'S ALL THE WEIRD SHIT IN YOUR PERSONAL CARE ITEMS EMBALMING YOU FROM THE INSIDE OUT AND TURNING YOUR BOOBY CELLS AGAINST YOU ONE BY ONE. This prompted a few hours spent on the Skin Deep database reading about how titanium dioxide might be accumulating in my body and vitamin a (which is in like every skincare product ever) might also do some other weird shit D: D: D:

    Anyways, great post.

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  17. I really like what you said here. There is something that doesn't add up to me though. If the policies on animal testing are unregulated, why doesn't every company just have the little bunny? For instance, recently I heard about a company, I think it was Urban Decay, getting a lot of negative press because they were considering no longer being "cruelty free". Why didn't they just keep saying they didn't test on animals?

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    1. the thing with the bunny is that your product is supposed to not have had any animal testing done on its ingredients after a certain date. so, urban decay has the bunny, but selling in china would mean that they were going to have to retest the products in order to enter the chinese market, so it would have tested post-animal-testing-no-no-day. (i am not sure if that would have meant that they would have lost the designation in the states.) people who care about the bunny got upset about them having to test... if nobody noticed, they would have gone ahead and done it, because they were on track until they got pressure from their customers. anyway, they still didn't actually do the testing themselves, and every ingredient in their list was animal tested anyway, just before the date.

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  18. Urban Decay was going to start selling in China, and in China, animal testing is required. UD couldn't just keep saying they weren't doing animal testing if they knew that their products would be tested on animals. People aren't that stupid. ;)

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  19. Great post! LoveloveLOVE your blog you awesome, no-nonsense lady!

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  20. Great post. Someone needs to explain these things, too many people get ripped off from something that is basically lying to them.

    There was a great episode of W5 (I'm canadian, its like dateline kinda) where they compared the ingredients in organic/natural products to the regular old versions of those same products (everything from makeup to diapers). Needless to say that the ingredients in both "organic" and "classic" products were virtually identical, chemicals and all. And when they confronted the company exec the answers were usually in the vein of "get out of my face" and "take it up with the government, they make the rules". Lovely....

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    1. You'd think that the Canadian government wouldn't have to pander to big business after taxing the hell out of us always.

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  21. I like this post. I'm kinda like "tell me when your makeup company starts testing on old man republicans, because then I will definitely buy it." But otherwise, I tend to buy what smells, feels, looks and acts good - guilt not included. Thanks for being a voice of reason. (I live in Seattle, so I tend to hear a lot of non-reason of the organic-hippie variety)

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    1. Same up here in Vancouver. How will the hippies feel superior to everybody without the bunny telling them they are?

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  22. Fantastic post, Natalie.
    The bunny logo thing never occurred to me. I like to feel better about things like that, but I usually just buy the stuff I like & consider it a bonus if the bunny's there.

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  23. thank you for this post! I used to work in cosmetics at walgreens and would get requests all the time to recommend a paraben free prod, or natural products and I never understood the paraben business. I now work for a high end skin care line and customers wanna switch to a different line because its "more natural" i wanna be like.... really?

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  24. Anonymous10/10/2012

    Having ingredients in a product that were tested on animals is not necessarily a bad thing. The first purpose, obviously, is to insure that the chemical is as safe as possible for use on humans before it's even tested on humans. The second purpose is not as well known - the EPA requires that every chemical be registered, and in order to be registered, the chemical has to go through a plethora of testing. This testing is done not only to determine how toxic it could be to humans, but how toxic it could be in the environment; that requires at a minimum that the testing be done on fish and plants, but other testing may be required as well. So is testing on animals sad? Yes. But, doing testing on 50 fish humanely in a lab could prevent the deaths of 100,000 fish in the environment.

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  25. I love this post! My husband is a debator by profession (so he researches a lot) and we frequent the beauty aisle together because I have yet to find something that I really like that isn't going to bust my wallet in half, and he likes looking at all the lables and researching what I'll be putting on my face/lips/eyes etc...thank you for being informative and I also like your no nonsense lay it out there attitude...it's very refreshing to know other people are out there that really don't worry about every little thing!!

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  26. you crack me up. Great post.

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  27. I have little to no interest in cosmetics but I love comics and it is refreshing to read about a grown up topic from a female point of view that could potentially be contentious, and instead of resorting to a an e-version bitchfest I've read a lot of well rounded, informed opinions. Yay for 2012 and Natalie Dee

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  28. I imagine that all of the various petrochemicals commonly used in lotions and other cosmetics falls under "parabens and other scary chemicals," but, since scaly skin season is approaching in the grand State of Wisconsin, and I will be slathering myself in all sorts of heavy duty moisturizer a few times a day in the coming months, they've been on my mind lately.

    I know next to zilch about chemistry, and most of the research I've done online always leads back to sites trying to sell something, so I've not discovered anything useful. I'm sure all of these chemicals have MSDSs, and most of my reservations are probably related to scientifically ignorant thoughts like "Ew, I'm rubbing fragranced gasoline all over myself."

    So, that returns me to the original question: is it a "bad" idea to cover your skin in dead dinosaur-based moisturizer all the time? Is there a "better" alternative? I'm aware that "bad" and "better" are totally subjective terms here.

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    1. personally, i try to use moisturizers that are pretty basic-- cocoa butter, argan oil, emu oil... not for any magic reason other than i think they moisturize pretty well, and then if i am still dry i will seal that stuff in with something waxier. i don't really avoid petroleum, i've never read anything linking it with anything in particular, and we've been using it for a hundred years. the bottles your products are income from crude, too, and so do the plastic pipes that bring the water to your sink. i am open to reading anything that says petroleum-based skin products are dangerous, but my (admittedly brief) research into it doesn't pull up very much more than people saying you shouldn't use it because "yuck."

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  29. No link between parabens and breast cancer? I'm sorry but that's when I had to stop reading your post. You're a great writer, but check your facts, parabens can in fact even make cancer tumors grow. But as long as YOU ask you're hubby then we're all safe. Thanks!

    "It demonstrates that if people are exposed to these chemicals, then the chemicals will accumulate in their bodies. Their detection in human breast tumours is of concern since parabens have been shown to be able to mimic the action of the female hormone oestrogen and oestrogen can drive the growth of human breast tumours."(http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/12/paraben-chemical-linked-to-breast-cancer_n_1202144.html)

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    1. Not great on reading comprehension, huh? This just means that there COULD be a link: parabens 'can' act like oestrogen, oestrogen 'can' make tumours grow. No evidence that parabens 'can' make tumours grow is provided here. They even put 'link' in inverted commas in the headline!

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    2. nicky, you are quoting an article that was about the article i read before writing this post. i don't pull stuff out of my ass, i don't say anything if i haven't read about beforehand (in a publication that's not the huffington post.) also, nowhere in my post did i say that i asked anyone about anything. i can read and understand what i read, i ask advice when it is something i don't know enough about to make an accurate statement, like when i am talking about the differences in chemical compositions of different ingredients. you show me the article where it says that there is a definite link between parabens and breast cancer. if you know so much about medicine and science, you should know that a hypothesis based off one study or experiment is not sufficient to make a case. if a study leads people to believe there is a link between x and y, they do further studies to prove or disprove that hypothesis. don't get snarky, it doesn't look good.

      aside from that, you have some issues if you read my blog and think i am making a single statement telling anyone what to do. i'm not here to keep anyone safe, and i never said i was. in fact, if you wanted to buy a gallon of wholesale parabens and drink them, you can make that choice. the point of this whole post, and this whole blog, is that you should empower yourself and decide to do whatever you want to do. nobody tells me what to do, and i don't tell anyone what to do. like georgia said, work on that reading comprehension.

      thanks, georgia.

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  30. I am grateful for this post. Hilarious and true.

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  31. thanks for this! I am one of the people worried about parabens, but until organizations I truly trust (such as the Mayo Clinic) start warning me, then I've made the decision to just go for it. of course it doesn't hurt that several of my very favorite cannot-find-a-suitable-replacement-for cosmetics contain them. I mean you're right: if I should be that worried about this thing, then maybe I should stop doing every single other thing that is bad for me: living in the city (pollution), eating prepackaged food, drinking alcohol, etc etc.

    years ago, I made the decision to wear antiperspirant because I sweat like crazy and without it I smell like a teenage boy, and when I thought about it I decided it was the least of my chemical worries. now I realize that parabens probably should fall into that same category. thanks for putting this into perspective!

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  32. I was reading up on the skin data base and doing some research about alternatives to paraben preservatives and found out that many of them, like grapefruit seed extract, could actually have parabens IN THEM! As in the supposed natural preservative could have been preserved with parabens, but then don't have to list that on the ingredients! Implying they don't work properly as preservatives themselves. It was never a big issue for me, but I've officially joined Camp Don't Give a Fuck.

    Other note, thanks for the recommendation of Cerave. That stuff is kicking my skins ass. In a good way.

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    1. blueberries have naturally occurring parabens in them while they are sitting there on the fucking bush before anyone touches them.

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  33. Thank you for the straight dope on an utterly confusing topic.

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  34. There is a good amount of evidence about women of reproductive age having more phthalates in their system and phthalates being more widespread in the population than once believed (Blount et al., 2000 "Levels of seven urinary phthalate metabolites in a human reference population"). There is a lot of evidence that phthalates are reproductive and developmental toxicants in rats, particularly rats exposed when they are young. And there is evidence about the human health consequences; that "prenatal phthalate exposure at environmental levels can adversely affect male reproductive development in humans"(Swan et al, 2005 "Decrease in anogenital distance among male infants with prenatal phthalate exposure."; Main et al., 2006 "Human Breast Milk Contamination with Phthalates and Alterations of Endogenous Reproductive Hormones in Infants Three Months of Age").

    If you plan on having kids or are nursing, you might want to avoid them (which is tough, cuz they are in a variety of things and can be labeled as whatever the company wants http://www.ewg.org/node/20975). The companies can't even dump 10 pounds of this stuff into the environment, but they can can put hundreds of thousands of pounds of it into nail polish every year. That sucks royally, and I can't not care about it.

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    1. phthalates and parabens aren't the same thing, and my post didn't say that no chemicals are bad for you. i said that you have to be informed about what you are putting on your body, and you decide what is important for you to avoid. if you don't want phthalates, then don't buy them. live the dream. exactly zero times i said "nothing is bad for you, all the chemicals are fine to chug."

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  35. Leaping Bunny certification DOES actually mean something, the PETA one does not.

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    1. i said what leaping bunny means. it means none of the ingredients were tested on animals after some date (i believe some time in 1987.) i also said that means absolutely nothing, because nearly every ingredient on the list WAS tested on animals prior to that date. the company with the bunny certification wouldn't have tested on animals anyway, because most cosmetic makers don't have their own labs, they have contracted labs formulate their products. nobody tests ingredients on animals once the initial tests were completed and the ingredient got its MSDS. retesting ingredients is a waste of money, and you can't do it in your basement. the bunny is just there to make you feel good, they're patting themselves on the back for not doing something they wouldn't have needed to do or been able to do anyway.

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  36. Anonymous10/17/2012

    When I was in college I had a job at a factory that made cosmetics for Sheseido. My job was basically reading, interpreting and organizing MSDS's. You're absolutely right and I'm glad you (or Drew) have the knowledge to share with your readers. People don't want to hear that they're being misled, which is why misleading people is so easy.

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