How toxic is your bathroom?

Your daily beauty regime could be taking years off your life!

Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did something amazing. It issued an unprecedented warning to the cosmetics industry that it was time to inform consumers that most personal care products have not been safety tested.

Where the US goes, the UK inevitably follows. If the FDA starts the ball rolling by flexing its muscles, it is possible that in the not too distant future 99 per cent of personal care products could be required to carry a caution on the label: "Warning: The safety of this product has not been determined."

What concerns scientists at the FDA and at environmental health organisations throughout the world

is the "cocktail effect" - the daily mixing of many different types of toxins in and on the body - and how this might damage health over the longer term.

Absorbed into the body, they can be stored in fatty tissue or organs such as the liver, kidney, reproductive organs and brain. Cosmetics companies complain of unfounded hysteria, but scientists are finding industrial plasticisers such as phthalates in urine, preservatives known as parabens in breast-tumour tissue, and antibacterials such as Triclosan and fragrance chemicals like the hormone-disrupting musk xylene in human breast milk.

Medical research is proving that fragrances can trigger asthma; that the detergents in shampoos can damage eye tissue; and that hair-dye chemicals can cause bladder cancer and lymphoma. An even greater number of substances in personal care products are suspected to present potential risks to human health from this known effect on animals.

If these problems had been linked to pharmaceutical drugs, the products would have been taken off the market. At the very least, money would have been spent on safety studies. But because the cosmetics industry is largely self-governing, and because we all want to believe in the often hollow promises of better skin and whiter teeth, products containing potentially harmful substances remain in use and on sale. Think it can't be that bad? Consider what goes into some of the UK's most popular toiletries.

(Source: The Independent, Monday, 24 October 2005)

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