Danger in the drugstore: what women need to know about cosmetics.
The Guardian
March 13, 2014
Erin Switalski
Conventional wisdom says that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Unfortunately, that’s not the case when it comes to personal care products and cosmetics.
A study by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics indicates that women use an average of nine personal care products each day, exposing themselves to a mixture of over 100 individual chemicals. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that women had significantly higher levels of 10 of the 116 toxic chemicals they tested for than men. Three of the 10 chemicals were phthalates, a group commonly found in health and beauty products and linked to birth defects (PDF). In fact, almost any chemical – including those linked to breast cancer, hormone disruption, reproductive problems, and allergies – can be used in cosmetics.
