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| Is Your Shampoo Killing You?
The jury is out on whether chemicals in personal-care products endanger your health |
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By Tod Goldberg
 Psycho/Courtesy Paramount Pictures |
Washing your hair used to be so simple. You’d wake up, turn on the shower, grab a bottle of Breck, and lather away. Every few years, a fad would come along with some perplexing ingredient such as mink oil added to the mix and legions of men and women would contend that their hair never felt healthier or more bountiful. So it’s not altogether surprising to know that another fad has swept through the world of hair-care products: widespread belief that shampoo ingredients can kill you or, barring that, cause untold disease and suffering.
A typical bottle of name-brand shampoo is indeed filled with chemicals. However, in recent years, widespread panic on the Internet has focused on two common ingredients: sodium laureth sulfate (widely referred to as SLES) and propylene glycol. SLES, in particular, has been singled out as the most dangerous, with studies on animals noting a propensity for the chemical to cause significant eye damage even when not absorbed through the eyes. In addition, SLES has been shown to cause skin irritation, and some studies implicate SLES in premature hair loss. Propylene glycol sounds just as terrifying, if not more so, with reported kidney and liver damage, irreversible deafness in animals, seizures in epileptics, and countless other horrors.
Common cosmetics also are a virtual minefield. The Environmental Working Group — a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C. — has identified numerous everyday cosmetics and personal-care items that it says contain carcinogens that may lead to breast cancer, including denture products, cuticle treatments, eye makeup, body-firming lotion, and your basic container of Vaseline.
Claims of toxic personal-care products are not to be believed, says John Bailey, executive vice president for Science of the Cosmetic, Toiletry & Fragrance Association (an industry trade group comprising more than 600 companies) and former director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors.
“This is what you would call an Internet hoax,” Bailey says. “Sodium laureth sulfate is used in shampoos as the cleaning or emulsifying agent. [The hoax] derives from a misperception that, because these chemicals are used as materials in cleaning agents found in other types of cleaning settings, they aren’t safe. People play on the perception that if these chemicals are used to clean floors or fabrics, then their use in cleaning your scalp is therefore somehow harmful. There are myths that these chemicals cause cancer and other effects, and this is simply not borne out by the data.”
Makers of “natural” products use toxicity warnings to market their products online. But “natural” is not a designation regulated by the FDA or the USDA, which means “natural” products can contain as many chemicals as items without that moniker. The government regulates processing and ingredients only of items marked “organic.” How these claims can be made, however, without legal remedy is quite simple, Bailey says: The chemicals in question do cause verifiable problems, but not in the miniscule concentration found in your shampoo.
“When you look at the safety data for a pure chemical — especially a cleaning agent like SLES — when it’s used at its purest, highest concentration level, it may produce an effect in test animals. But it’s simply not relevant to the use of that same material in a consumer product,” he says. “There’s a disconnect, perhaps intentional, between acute, high-concentration effects and the actual used-conditions of the finished product. You have one in a pure form and another used in a much lower amount in a controlled setting. It’s perfectly safe and has a long history of safe use. There’s nothing there to support a concern on the part of consumers.”
Similarly, while it’s true that propylene glycol is used as a base ingredient in de-icing formulas for aircraft, one would not be able to rub their scalp across the wing of a 747 and achieve the same result.
Experts outside the cosmetics industry, however, are not swayed. “Because the FDA doesn’t require cosmetic products to be approved as safe before they are sold, companies can put unlimited amounts of toxic chemicals in cosmetics,” says Jeanne Rizzo, executive director of the Breast Cancer Fund. A recent study conducted by the Environmental Working Group concluded that of 7,500 personal-care products tested, 80 percent contained impurities linked to cancer and other health problems.
It certainly makes good sense to limit any exposure we might have to cancer-causing agents, even in limited quantities. And U.S. consumers are scrutinizing what they’re putting into and onto their bodies with far more fervor than ever before.
Katherine DiMatteo, senior advisor to the Organic Trade Association, says that reducing your exposure to all chemicals by purchasing organic products can only help you. “You’re getting a product that is reducing your exposure to toxic and persistent chemicals,” she says. “Because our skin is absorbent, anything we put on or near our skin affects our health.”
National and boutique brands have heard the call. Depending upon where you shop, it’s not unusual to find both standard shampoos and their organic brethren sharing shelf space. Popular brands such as Aveda and Avalon have long trumpeted their Earth-consciousness.
Because of widespread testing and vast experience with the ingredients regularly used, Bailey says that cosmetics, including shampoos, are the safest products you’ll use every day. “These are not products intended to have therapeutic or nutritional effects,” he says. “As the law says, [these products are intended] to cleanse, beautify, promote attractiveness, and alter the appearance. Those effects can be achieved very safely.”
iStockphoto.com/Luca Di Filippo Protect Yourself
The Environmental Working Group offers these tips to protect yourself and your family against potentially damaging personal-care products:
- Focus on the ingredients.
- Read labels and check the fine print. Tone down your soap. Choosing a milder soap can reduce skin dryness and the need for artificial moisturizers.
- Steer clear of fluoridated toothpaste for children younger than 6 years. Avoid products with added fragrances.
- Lighten up on dark hair dyes, many of which contain coal tar ingredients.
- Avoid baby powder, which can cause lung damage if inhaled regularly.
- Simplify your life by using fewer personal-care products.
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