The Ugly Side of Pretty

[R.B.]

http://www.healthy-communications.co...eofpretty.html

The Ugly Side of Pretty

By Rebecca Ephraim, R.D., C.C.N



“I don’t pay much attention to the ingredient lists, I just know what works for me,” said Shelley Carpenter, when asked what she looks for in her personal care products. Thinking a little harder, she adds, “I’m allergic to most perfumes, so I stay away from smelly stuff. But I couldn’t pin it down.” This begs the question, “Who can?” After all, how many of us have the time or inclination to scour the ingredient lists of our moisturizer, deodorant, body lotion and any of the other products we slather on daily?

Carpenter, 45, bases her choices of personal body care products primarily on how her skin immediately reacts to them, and second to that, their functionality. Her skin, beautifully clear and alabaster, erupts into a red, scaly rash at the slightest provocation and she’s aware from years of trial and error that certain products set this in motion.

But beyond skin eruptions and rashes, emerging science suggests that untold numbers of cosmetics and personal care ingredients may be silently and insidiously promoting cancer, ravaging women’s reproductive functions and causing birth defects. Known by hundreds of long, intimidating chemical names, these ingredients are in the products we shower and bathe with, rub, spray and dab on our bodies, unconsciously, day-in-and-day-out.

It’s the day-in-and-day-out part that’s of most concern, since these toxic ingredients leak their poisons through our porous skin and into our bodies bit-by-bit. “There’s not one smoking gun that we can point to and say ‘it’s that personal care product, that deodorant, that nail polish that is going to give you cancer,” said Jeanne Rizzo, the executive director of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund. “We can say the cumulative exposure — the aggregate exposure that we all have to a myriad of personal care products containing carcinogens, mutagens and reproductive toxins, has not been assessed.” .........................................