Amazon icon Audible icon Autographed icon Book Bub icon Booksprout icon Buy Me a Coffee icon Email icon Facebook icon Goodreads icon Instagram icon Mastodon icon Patreon icon Periscope icon Pinterest icon RSS icon Search icon Snapchat icon TikTok icon Tumblr icon Twitter icon Vine icon Youtube icon LinkedIn icon

Tag: skin deep database

Organic Cheater Brands: Watch Out for Toxic Skin Care Products

I don’t know about you, but I’m always personally disappointed when brands I thought I could trust turn out to contain ingredients that are hazardous to my health. It makes me feel disgusted with big companies and the way they play fast and loose with our health, especially when they know better.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) has prepared a spreadsheet summarizing “Organic Cheater brand” products and their Hazard Rankings according to the Environmental Working Group’s “Skin Deep” Cosmetic Safety Database.

The tabs at the top of the spreadsheet list various brands horizontally: click each tab to view that brand’s product scores from the Skin Deep” database. By far the majority of fake organic products score in the “Moderate Hazard” category.

Conversely, Dr. Bronner’s Skin Deep product scores show that the vast majority of true NOP-certified (USDA’s National Organic Program) organic personal care score in the safest “Low Hazard” category.

A couple of brands, Jason “Pure, Natural & Organic” and Nature’s Gate “Organics”, even had some of their fake organic products score in the unsafest “High Hazard” category.

Perhaps even more disturbing, two of the “organic cheater” brands who are the subject of OCA’s Complaint to USDA NOP, have reneged on their signed promise to provide product and ingredient information to Skin Deep so that their products’ safety can be assessed. Those brands are Eminence “Organic” Skin Care and Head “Organics”.

Another two brands, while they have not reneged on any promises, have also decided to not submit product and ingredient information to Skin Deep: Ilike “Organic” Skin Care and Surya Sapien “Organic”.

As noted in the Complaint, all these brands utilize surfactants made in part or entirely from petrochemicals as primary cleansing ingredients, which contain no organic agricultural material whatsoever. Eminence in particular deceptively claims that Alpha Olefin Sulfonate, the primary cleanser in its “Organic Stone Crop Bodywash”, is from a “plant source,” when in fact this cleanser is commercially available only in pure petrochemical form.

Both Nature’s Gate and Eminence do produce a few true USDA NOP certified organic products under their respective brands. However, the vast majority of their product lines are not certified under the USDA’s National Organic Program, because their main cleansing and moisturizing ingredients are generally based on conventional or petrochemical, rather than organic agricultural, material.

As a general rule when shopping for organic personal care, check for the USDA seal to be sure you’re buying true organic personal care rather than fake organic products.

VIEW THE ORGANIC SKINCARE PRODUCTS SPREADSHEET

Natural Petroleum-free Mascara

I’ve been searching for a good mascara that wouldn’t coat my lashes with a film of petroleum. Recently, a salesclerk at Vitamin Cottage pointed me to No Miss Natural Mascara.

I have to say that I’ve been very pleased not only with how it goes on, but also with how it stays on and how easily it comes off with soap and water.

Other natural mascaras I’ve tried have left me with heavy black smudges below my eyes as the makeup sank off of my lashes. Some have gone on so gloppy that I’ve had to use several cotton swabs to mop up the mess when my upper lashes flicked wetly against my eyelid.

While I confess that I am not a mascara expert — my lashes used to be so long and thick that they would brush the lenses of my sunglasses so I never wore mascara until recently! Alas, they thinned after childbearing. Sigh. — I have tried the top pick by many beauty magazines (Maybelline) and many other brands both conventional and natural (including Prescriptives, Aveda, CoverGirl, EyesLipsFace, Clinique, Loreal, etc.).

The thing is, I have been concerned about conventional mascaras for a while. Why? Let’s take Almay’s Amazing Lush Lash mascara, as an example. Almay claims to be “hypoallergenic,” which I have often interpreted as “cleaner.” My mistake.

This Almay mascara garners a 7 (10 being the most dangerous) in the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics Skin Deep database of cosmetics and includes this warning:

Ingredients in this product are linked to:
yes Cancer
yes Developmental/reproductive toxicity
yes Violations, restrictions & warnings
yes Allergies/immunotoxicity
yes Other concerns for ingredients used in this product:
Neurotoxicity, Endocrine disruption, Persistence and bioaccumulation, Organ system toxicity (non-reproductive), Multiple, additive exposure sources, Irritation (skin, eyes, or lungs), Enhanced skin absorption, Contamination concerns, Occupational hazards, Biochemical or cellular level changes

Yep: I find those pretty frightening words for something I intend to paint onto my eyelashes and let soak in all day. Hence my search for a better mascara.

No Miss All Natural Mascara is as good a product or better then the conventional kind, and ever so much better for my body and the environment. Let me know if you’ve found some other great natural mascaras!