PGC Day 2: An Adventure to CVS Health (aka CVS Health Hazards Galore)
Today I learned allll about chemicals in body products and was pretty shocked and scared by my findings! This video is crazy informative about everything cosmetic & chemical related - http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-cosmetics/ I highly recommend watching it! Basically, if you're products aren't certified as organic, its likely that they contain high numbers of toxins, carcinogens, allergens, and other harmful ingredients. Want to know a main ingredient that I found out is in Herbal Essences shampoos? PETROL. As in when you lather up your shampoo, your actually putting fuel on your head, and your skin is your most absorbent organ, so you best believe that stuff is making its way inside your body! Yikes!
If you're interested in some of my experience, here's the story of my Greenest challenge for the day...
For this challenge, my friends Morgan, Sarah, and I went on over to CVS in Saratoga Springs, NY to check out the health risks or benefits of our favorite conventional beauty products.
My friend Sarah chose her favorite face sunscreen that she wore a lot this summer while working as a camp counselor, Neutrogena Clear Face Broad Spectrum SPF 30 Sunscreen.
We looked the sunscreen up on the EWG Skin Deep app and discovered that it has a hazard rating of 4- it is a moderately hazardous beauty product. Sarah didn’t seem too surprised. She said that she knew the sunscreen “wasn’t all-natural”. However, one of the ingredients, oxybenzone was rated as an 8- a very high hazard risk. We then researched oxybenzone on the EWG site and found some pretty scary results… Oxybenzone is a sunscreen ingredient that is linked to “biochemical or cellular level changes, endocrine disruption, bioaccumulation, ecotoxicology, and organ system toxicity”. It also banned in some Japanese cosmetics. Sarah was, rightfully, pretty upset by this. She said that she felt “tricked”. She knew that the product wasn’t all natural, it never claimed to be organic or plant-based, but she had no idea that all summer long she’d been putting something on her face that could potentially harm her and even disrupt the functioning of her endocrine system.
Morgan was not so psyched about going next. She had picked out her favorite mascara, Maybelline Mega Plush Volume Express Mascara, and was worried that the results about its ingredients would be similarly unnerving.
We researched the Maybelline Mega Plush Mascara on the EWG Skin Deep App. The mascara had a hazard rating of 3, moderately hazardous, and had no high hazard ingredients. Morgan was visibly relieved and even smiled at the news. “Yay! No scary ingredient’s like the oxy-thing in Sarah’s sunblock”, she teased. However, I looked at the moderately hazardous ingredients on the ingredient list and realized that I recognized 2 of the mascara’s ingredients from my research for today’s Green challenge, phenoxyethanol and sodium laurel sulfate. So I looked them up again and shared with Morgan my findings from earlier. Phenoxyethanol is a chemical preservative that is used in many skin products. It is a colorless oily liquid that is produced in labs. Continued exposure to phenoxyethanol has been linked to organ toxicity, contact dermatitis, and worsening of eczema (Paiskincare.com). Sodium laurel sulfate is an “elmulsifier and foaming agent commonly used in cosmetic products”. SLS has been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, organ toxicity, skin irritation, and endocrine disruption (Livestrong.com).
When I shared this information with Morgan, she looked disgusted, to be honest. Her face was scrunched as if she had just smelt something terrible. “Are you serious?” she said, “That’s considered moderately hazardous? It’s linked to cancer?” I showed her the article from LiveStrong.com and she just shook her head, clearly upset that her favorite mascara happened to do more than give her “mega plush” voluminous lashes, it was also exposing her body to a known carcinogen, sodium laurel sulfate.
The three of us were all understandably freaked out by our findings; clearly many of our go-to body products were also go-to’s for toxins to gain easy access to our bodies! What to do?
Well… Morgan, Sarah, and I are going to try to go green! At some point in the next few days the three of us decided that we’re going to Healthy Living Market in Saratoga Springs to purchase some toxin-free, lovely organic body products! Also, we’re going to pick up some ingredients while we’re there and make ourselves some organic DIY facemasks. Here’s the recipe I found online at beautyhigh.com –
Bananas are known for their high levels of potassium, so it makes sense that applying the super fruit to your skin would do nothing but greatness. Vitamins A, B, C and E along with numerous minerals are also found in bananas. Use this mask to moisturize, get rid of dead skin cells and best of all, fight wrinkles.
1/2 banana
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon water (plain water)
Directions:
1. Mash banana until there are no clumps.
2. Add in honey and water and blend together.
3. Coat face in mask and let sit for 20-25 minutes.
4. Rinse with warm water and follow with a moisturizer.
Psyched to try this out! I will post pictures of the DIY organic face wash adventure to my Tumblr blog/Instagram when I make it!