Choosing natural beauty products is a no-brainer if you want to protect your skin and your overall health, says Joanna Evans. Here are six simple tips for picking nontoxic beauty and personal care products
Standard beauty and personal care products contain all sorts of nasty chemicals that can end up in your bloodstream after being inhaled, ingested or absorbed through the skin. Hormone-disrupting phthalates and parabens are some of the key chemicals of concern. Phthalates have been linked to endometriosis and early menopause,1 while parabens have been implicated in breast cancer.2
According to women’s health expert Marcelle Pick, many chemicals the beauty industry uses can also cause inflammation, leading to older-looking skin and blemishes. Swapping your standard, synthetic-based products for natural, nontoxic ones is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle to promote hormonal balance and clear skin, she says.
Here are six tips to help you make the switch.
Go for products made only with 100 percent natural ingredients whenever possible. Check the list of ingredients on the label or the website you are buying the product from and look up any you’re not sure of (the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, ewg.org/skindeep, is a useful resource). As a general rule, choose products with a short list of simple, natural ingredients you’ve heard of rather than a long list of unpronounceable, unrecognizable ingredients.
Look for products certified organic by reputable bodies, such as the Soil Association, Cosmos or USDA, to reduce your exposure to potentially harmful pesticides.
Avoid products with “fragrance” or “parfum” on the ingredients list, unless it comes from a natural source like pure essential oils. Added fragrance could mean a long list of synthetic chemicals, including hormone-disrupting phthalates, are hiding in the product.
Other ingredients you’d be better off avoiding include parabens, sodium lauryl/laureth sulfate, petrolatum (petroleum jelly) and synthetic sunscreen ingredients like oxybenzone. To steer clear of microplastics, avoid anything with poly in the name (like acrylates copolymer, polyacrylamide and polypropylene). But if you choose all-natural formulations, you shouldn’t have to worry about synthetic nasties like these.
There’s an abundance of beauty brands out there committed to making only naturally derived, nontoxic products. These are a few we love:
There are now a number of online stores selling a carefully vetted selection of natural beauty and personal care products for the conscious consumer, from various brands. They do most of the hard work of tracking down clean products for you, but you can also check the full ingredients list of a product on the websites and look up any you aren’t sure about. Here are a few sites to try:
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