From your hair wash to your makeup and body wash. Everything you use on your body and your skin may have toxic ingredients in them. These ingredients can cause many problems with your body. They can cause skin problems like acne and rosacea, disrupt your hormones and even cause cancer.
It is up to you as a consumer to be informed and to try and avoid products that have these toxic chemicals in them. When you eliminate these toxin filled products from your life and start using clean products instead, your over all body health will improve.
You can start by changing one personal care product a week to a chemical/toxin free version. As an example, you could try changing your shampoo, then the next week change your conditioner and go from there. Over time you will have changed all your personal care products to a clean and toxin free version. Start reading your personal care product labels when you go shopping.
One product that you should stop using right now are perfumes and colognes. Do not buy or use anything labeled with parfum. Products that are labeled with this are nothing but a cocktail of hundreds of toxic chemicals. Companies that produce perfume, do not have to disclose or label the chemicals that were used in the making of there scent. The chemicals in these commercial perfumes and colognes are typically carcinogens and hormone disruptors.
Here are the top ten toxic chemicals that you should look to avoid in your personal care products.
Top Ten Toxic Chemicals:
1,4 Dioxane
“ Look for SLES and PEG compounds such as xynol, cetearth and oleth on labels ”
Artificial Musk
BHA and BHT
“Butylated Hydroxyanisole and Butylated Hydroxytoluene”
Chemical Silicones
“Siloxanes”
Triclosan
“Watch out for anything that has “Microban” on the label”
P-Phenylenediamine & Paraphenylenediamine
Parabens
Petrolutum
“Known as Petroleum Jelly”
Phthalates
Formaldehyde
“Look for DMDM Hydantoin, Diazolidinyl Urea, Imidazolidinyl Urea , Methenamine ,
Quaternium-15 and Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate on labels”
There is a great website called Environmental Working Group that has an excellent app that you can use to rate the hazards of your products.
https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/search.php?query=burt%27s+bees&h=Search
Here is a printable you can print out or save on your phone to use the next time you go shopping for your personal care products.