Elizabeth Yarnell, Author, Innovator, Naturopath, Speaker
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Is Your Sunscreen Safe?

Are you sure that your sunscreen works and is safe for your family’s skin?

The Environmental Working Group’s brand new review of 1,572 products found that 3 out of 5 sunscreens offer inadequate protection from the sun or contain ingredients with significant safety concerns. And for the first time, they also review sun-protective lip balms and lotions.

The EWG identified fewer than 100 products that offer very good sun protection with ingredients that present minimal health risks to users. Leading brands like Coppertone, Banana Boat and Neutrogena fared poorly.

Remember to look for safe sunscreens without oxybenzone, a hormone disruptor, and with sun blocking minerals like zinc and titanium.

I’m happy to see that my favorite sunscreen by California Babymade the top 10 for safety and effectiveness. 🙂

Check out your favorite sunscreen with this handy widget and see how it ranks!

Embrace Your Curls, Don’t Chemically Straighten Them!

According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, chemical hair straighteners are some of the most toxic products that you can absorb through your hair and scalp.

With a pH of about 12, similar to that of household ammonia or soap, chemical relaxers are among the most caustic cosmetic products on the market, says the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit environmental organization that is behind the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Along with hair dyes, hair straighteners are the source of more complaints to the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors than almost any other product.

While I’ve never been one to use a chemical hair straightener, there have been many, many times when I’ve wished for a good solution to managing my wild tangle of curls and frizz. You should see the shelves of half-used hair products around my bathroom — if you’re not someone who has struggled to control their hair for decades, then you might think it was overkill.   🙂

Luckily, my sister introduced me to Ouidad products a few years ago, though it wasn’t until I made the trek into a Ouidad salon a few times that I got the right cut and the hang of how to style it. Now I can celebrate my curls instead of curse them. I’ve even entered the Ouidad curl contest — you can help me out by casting your vote below and passing it along.

Here’s to beautiful curls without toxic chemicals!

Natural Underarm Deoderant

One of the bloggers from 5280 Magazine recently posted about how her aluminum-based antiperspirant/deoderant is leaving ugly yellow stains in the armpits of her white shirts. While her biggest complaint was that these stains were ruining her clothes, my concern centers around the aluminum in her deoderant.

Aluminum is a heavy metal that is bioaccumulative, that means that once it enters your body most of it doesn’t leave (except through breast milk, scarily enough). Accumulation of aluminum builds up over a lifetime and can cause neuro-degeneration, along with other problems. So far, aluminum toxicity has been linked to Parkinson‘s, Alzheimer‘s, and — particularly from antiperspirant/deoderant use — breast cancer.

For years I have been searching for a viable alternative to aluminum-based deoderants and antiperspirants to use in our sweat-phobic culture. For a while I used the Crystal Body Deodorant, which you wet and apply to your armpits, but I was never very satisfied with how it stopped sweat or managed odors.

For a few months I tried Tom’s of Maine Natural Long-Lasting Deodorant, the Lemongrass scent, but didn’t like the way it interacted with my body’s chemistry, mostly it made my sweat acrid smelling. Yuck! (I really like Tom’s of Maine Natural Care Toothpaste, though!)

Then I stumbled across this video from down under on Youtube by HighOnHealth about using “soda bicarbonate” as a deoderant. I thought I’d give it a try and spent several hours scouring several grocery stores before realizing that we call it “baking soda” in America. Since more than one grocery worker sent me to the soda pop aisle to find “bicarbonate soda,” I don’t feel all that foolish. Well, kinda.

Anyway, I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now and have to say that I really like it. I definitely seem to sweat less, and due to the anti-bacterial properties of baking soda, I seem to be odor-free. Watch the video and she’ll give you a step-by-step demonstration of how to use baking soda as a natural underarm deoderant.

I confess, I’m hooked. Let me know if you try it, or if you have other solutions/suggestions for natural sweat control!

High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Sugar

The Corn Refiners Association would like us to believe that ingesting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is as natural for the body as eating an ear of corn. They even snail-mailed me a whole package filled with convincingly-assembled literature after I wrote a post critical of HFCS, not to mention their slick television campaign showing teenagers drinking sodas and talking about how “natural” HFCS is.

Luckily, we, the purchasing public, are not so easily fooled.

High fructose corn syrup is the result of a highly complex chemical process conducted in a laboratory — this stuff does not occur naturally on our planet, it has to be synthesized. Just knowing this should be setting off warning bells.

If you read Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, you know that we overproduce corn in this country, and in an effort to help our farmers add value to the US corn crop the University of Iowa developed a host of corn byproducts, including HFCS.

A sample of products made with high fructose corn syrup
A sample of products made with high fructose corn syrup

HFCS exploded on the market in the early 1980s because it was cheaper than sugar and had a longer shelf-life. Coincidentally, the obesity epidemic in this country really began to build around this time (it really exploded in the 1990s). In the last twenty years, HFCS has captured 56% of the sweetener marketplace. Hmmmm…. Could there be a connection?

There have been enough complaints stirred up about high fructose corn syrup in products that some companies are responding to customer demand by switching to real cane or beet sugar, including Snapple, Ocean Spray, Log Cabin Syrup, and some Pepsi products.

Is it better to ingest products made with sugar than those made with HFCS? In a word: Yes.

And no.

While sugar will be metabolized much better than HFCS, it can still carry a glycemic load and can spike blood sugar levels and then send you crashing down afterward. The most preferable way to eat sugar is to have sweet things following a healthy meal, when the stomach has other foods in it to buffer the digestion. The least perferable way to eat sugar is on an empty stomach.

Most unfortunately, I did see recently that soon all of the sugar beets in this country will be genetically modified beets. Sigh.

When I purchase sugar to use at home, I choose raw, unbleached, organic cane sugar.

Gardening with Vermiculite

I was taught to mix potting soil with vermiculite when preparing pots for planting for better drainage and I’m sure I inhaled some of the vermiculite dust along the way. Once I was even enveloped in a cloud of dust when I dropped the bag accidently.

These days my husband supplies me with dust masks to wear when performing nasty airborne chores like cleaning the litter box or mixing rocks with soil, but I’ve often wondered if my early stupidity would lead to lung problems decades later, the way asbestos exposure leads to mesothelioma cancer down the road.

Laura Hasha of Mesothelioma Info sheds some light on this subject in today’s guest post on vermiculite and mesothelioma:

Vermiculite is a versatile mineral commonly used in agriculture and home gardening as a soil aeration product. It is popular among gardeners, especially those who grow their own fruit or vegetables because it has a very low density and is extremely lightweight. Those two properties make it an ideal additive for soils that are very dense or highly compacted.

The addition of vermiculite to aerate such soils increases moisture and nutrient retention. In fact the material is one of the main components of the popular square foot gardening technique.

Production

Vermiculite mines are typically large, open pit excavations from which rocks containing vermiculite are collected through the use of heavy machinery. These rocks are transported to a processing plant where they are then crushed and screened repeatedly until reaching a desired size. These flakes are then graded for size and type before being shipped to exfoliation plants where the material is heated in furnaces that reach temperatures of 1600-2,000 degrees F.

Similar materials

The most similar material to vermiculite is perlite which is produced by hydrating obsidian. When heated it expands and many companies that produce vermiculite produce perlite as well.

Vermiculite Controversy

In Libby, Montana a commercial vermiculite mine exposed people because the material was contaminated with a form of asbestos known as tremolite. The mine later sickened the town resulting in deaths from asbestos related diseases such as mesothelioma.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency purchased 16 different vermiculite containing products from the Seattle area and found 5 of the products contained asbestos fibers.

Asbestos formations can occur within close proximity of vermiculite and four of the major formations in the United States have been confirmed to contain asbestos. But it is important to note that vermiculite is not a form of asbestos and exposure to vermiculite from a non-contaminated source poses no known health risks.

*** Thanks for the info, Laura! I wish it made me feel more confident that my previous vermiculite inhalation will not lead to cancer, but I guess it would depend on if that particular vermiculite product that I was using contained asbestos.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my journey into natural health and safe products it’s that there are so many things in our daily lives that can harm us that I should focus my attention on the things I can change in my life and not the things I can’t.

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