Lowering your Toxic Burden

The number of products we use daily add up so quickly and to think that means 168 chemicals on average each day – insane, right?

Let this image from Kayla Barnes marinate for a minute and pay special attention to the line about independent safety reviews not being required.

Yup, you read that right.

Did you know that while the US bans 30 ingredients from personal care products, the E.U. bans 1,400 ingredients?!

It’s infuriating that the beauty industry is virtually unregulated (the last legislation passed was in 1938!), with companies slapping buzz words and claims on products without proper safety measures.

So, what’s a consumer to do?

Information is power, so start by reading the ingredient labels on your products and investigating them on the EWG’s Skin Deep database.

Next, vote with your dollar and support companies that put your safety first by providing product transparency, ingredient screening and also ban harmful or questionable chemicals.

Just this week, a lawsuit against Sephora was announced for misleading “clean beauty” claims.

Claims mean nothing, so it’s up to us as consumers to do our own research and vote with our wallet for brands who prioritize safer regulations – these swaps can have a big impact on our health.

So much of the beauty industry can be so deceiving and that’s why I love the work I do with Beautycounter – not only because of our Never List, which bans over 1,800 ingredients (and growing) that will never be used in our safer, high performing products (one less thing to worry about for me and my family), but our advocacy work too.

We have been hard at work since 2013 advocating for more health-protective laws at a federal level and while progress feels like it’s been moving at a snails’ pace, the Personal Care Products Safety Act was introduced as a bipartisan bill in Congress last year.

Woohoo!!

Further progress has been slow, but this is a step in the right direction towards further regulation that will protect us all and ensure safer products across the industry.

We all deserve better and every action taken matters, so here’s hoping further progress and real change comes in the new year!