Everyone that knows me knows I am rather obsessed with healthy food and, more importantly, healthy ingredients. Like, I read the back of EVERYTHING, I buy organic where at all available, I avoid refined sugar as much as possible, preferring instead to sweeten things with honey or agave nectar. I believe in food that nurture and makes a difference to your health. I have written countless articles on the issue of food and health. I have read A LOT about these topics and I want to make sure my family and myself always eat food that do our bodies good. This does not mean that I never have a treat- or more importantly that I will never let Nahla have treats (the baby/child/sugar/healthy diet discussion is HUGE and I will come back to that again!) I know that a muffin every now and again is not going to ruin a diet that overall is very healthy. I have no doubt too, that indulging in a pizza when out for dinner every now and again will also not make a difference. But overall, obsessed none the less.
This to an extent also goes for chemicals and unsafe stuff we not only put into our bodies, but also on them. On average a woman (myself included!), will apply as many as 15-20 different products to her skin/hair/body in the course of a day. Many containing chemicals and toxins that are absorbed into our bloodstream. I try to think about this when I choose my beauty products, but sometimes wanting to look good and wanting products that make a visible difference win.
But my attention was caught by this article published on Lil Sugar this week. It made me edit Nahla's toiletries ASAP. Read and learn; educating yourself is the best thing you can do as a parents as it enables you to make better choices and educated decisions about all things related to your baby.
Article by Christie Haskell:
5 Dangerous Chemicals In Your Child's Bath
Stop! Put down the baby wash you're using! Have you read the ingredients? More importantly, do you understand what some of them are?
A lot of soaps advise against ingestion (duh) and while for some, the worst baby will get is a tummy ache, others have some nasty chemicals that really should be avoided ... and not just because your baby could eat them, but because what goes on the soft skin can be even more absorbed than what goes in the mouth.
"Those same chemicals, if eaten, are likely less of a hazard because they travel through your body's many cleansing methods, like the enzymes in your saliva and stomach, as well as your liver and kidneys," says Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician and founder of the Dr. Mercola's Natural Health Center.
When you put these things onto baby's skin, especially with pores and sweat glands wide open from the warm bath, they go straight into the bloodstream and body tissues with little to no filtering whatsoever. Baby's skin may absorb even more than her digestive tract. Eek.
Even scarier, want to know who controls the ingredients? Well, no one. The FDA says companies should police themselves and, if something hasn't been tested and proven to be safe, to simply write, "The safety of this product has not been determined" on the label. The FDA tests ingredients in shampoos just as much as herbal remedies and foods -- that is to say, they have so little say that it's essentially a joke. They've only reviewed a mere 11 percent of ingredients commonly used in soaps and shampoos, and 99 percent of products have ingredients that have never been tested but are potentially hazardous.
So that leaves it up to you, the consumer. What ingredients should you be on the lookout for, and why? I've listed the top 5 offenders and the reasons they should be avoided.
#1. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS)
This ingredient creates all your nice lather and suds ... as well as working as a fabulous degreaser for car washes and garages. Wait, what? Ick. It's also a neurotoxin, mutates cells, can cause reproductive harm or failure, skin and eye irritation, and maybe even cause cancer. Just what you want to rub on your baby's belly, right? Yeah, not so much.
#2. Dioxane
This ingredient is linked to breast cancer in lab rats. It's there to make the SLS less abrasive and more foamy. Gee, great.
#3. Diethanolamine (DEA)
This known carcinogen is especially dangerous for pregnant women, as it blocks the absorption of the nutrient "choline," which is essential to brain formation. It can be dangerous for babies as well.
#4. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
Yeah, the same thing you avoid in food is being rubbed onto your head, usually under the name of amino acid, yeast extract, or glutamates. Why is it bad? It's shown to cause headaches, dizziness, and stomach discomfort after ingestion. Now that we know that being absorbed through the skin is often as bad or worse than eating something, it's not really a good thing to have in your shampoo either.
#5. Propylene Glycol
This strong skin irritant can cause liver abnormalities and kidney dysfunction, and yet it's in your shampoo ... and anti-freeze, coolant, de-icer ... ick.
Before you buy new baby soap, pop on over to the amazing Cosmetics Database's list of baby soap, and write down the names of some of the non-toxic ones. On a scale of 0-10, 0-2 means low/no hazard, 3-6 means moderate hazard, and 7-10 means high hazard. There's a complete breakdown of each ingredient of concern for every product as well, so you can determine which things you're concerned about.
I hope this shook you up as much as it did me- and inspires you to pick better and safer products for your beautiful baby! And, for that matter, for you!
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