A quick guide to vetting your personal care products!
Did you know that the average woman uses 12 products with 168 different ingredients every day (Environmental Working Group)?!
Pretty crazy, right?! This lack of government oversight allows personal care companies to use any adjectives they please when it comes to describing their products, even if it’s blatantly inaccurate. Meaning that products branded as “natural” or “organic” could actually contain harmful toxic chemicals. In fact, makeup is a source of heavy metals…for example, lipstick is a common source of heavy metals, preservatives and other synthetic chemicals!
The more we’ve learned about the lack of regulation in the beauty and personal care industry, the more effort we’ve put into vetting our products for toxic ingredients.
Below is a list of a few of the most toxic chemicals we keep an eye out for in vetting our everyday beauty products:
Fragrance: companies are not required to disclose the ingredients that constitute as “fragrance”- its usually made up of tons of other toxic chemicals including pthalates.
Parabens: a toxic preservative and endocrine disruptor. Look out for any words that end in paraben.
Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES): can cause irritation and allergies
Pthalates: abbreviated to DBP, DEHP, and DEP. they are endocrine/hormone disruptors commonly used in nail products, and they hide in ‘fragrance’
We’ve slowly but surely been swapping out our products for non-toxic versions, discovering so many incredible AND effective clean beauty/skincare brands along the way.
Some of our faves are:
Beauty:
Illia
Kosas
PYT
Alima beauty
Lilah b
RMS Beauty
Maison Louis Marie (best non toxic perfume EVER!)
Skincare:
Youth to the people
OSEA
Indie lee
Tata Harper