Wishes

I wish I'd had more time to post here before Eric and I left for our PCT adventure. The posts do take time and lots of research. It's not easy to find all the gory details about the carcinogens we come into contact with everyday.

So, please stay tuned because I will continue it after Eric and I complete the PCT sometime in October.

Skin, Your Largest Organ

When you go to the store and purchase shampoo, lotion, soap, fragrance, makeup, or sunscreen, do you consider whether or not that product is safe to put on your body? Do you assume that because it is there for sale, it must be safe for use?

Your Skin
Your skin is your largest organ. It acts as a waterproof, insulating shield, guarding the body against extremes of temperature, damaging sunlight, and harmful chemicals. Your skin also functions as a medium through which toxins are removed from your body. Despite the amazing features of your skin, ingredients from skincare products are absorbed in minutes through your skin and into your bloodstream. Many of the ingredients in skincare products are already known, or currently being found, to cause cancer. Why are these dangerous personal care products allowed to remain on the market? Because the FDA, which is responsible for regulating these products, spends almost no time, money or effort actually investigating the safety of such products. Instead, the FDA spends the vast majority of its time approving new prescription drugs.

Partial list of known harmful chemicals:

• Aluminum

• Artificial fragrances

• Benzophenones (dixoybenzone, oxybenzone)

• Cinnamates (cinoxate, ethylhexyl p-methoxycinnamate, octocrylene, octyl methoxycinnamate - OMC)

• Dibutyl phthalate

• Diethanolamine (DEA)

• Digalloyl trioleate

• Ethylhexyl p-Methoxycinnamate

• Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives such as DMDM hydantoin quaternium-15, and diazonlidnyl urea

• Isopropyl Palmitate

• Lanolin and Acetylated Lanolin

• Menthyl anthranilate

• Methylisothiazoline (MIT)

• Mineral oil

• Nitrites (caution: their presence does not have to be disclosed)

• Octocrylene

• Oxybenzone, benzophenone, benzophenone-3

• PABA and PABA esters (ethyl dihydroxy propyl PAB, glyceryl PABA, p-aminobenzoic acid, padimate-O or octyl dimethyl PABA)

• Padimate-O (Octyl dimethyl paba

• Para-aminobenzoic acid, PABA

• Parabens - (butyl-, ethyl-, methyl- and propyl-parabens)

• Petrolatum

• Phenol

• Phthalates

• Propylene Glycol

• Polyethylene Glycol (PEG's with any number)

• Salicylates (ethylhexyl-, homosalate and octyl-salicylate)

• Sodium Lauryl and Sodium Laureth Sulfates

• Talc

• Triethanolamine (TEA)

• Urea, Imidazolidinyl, Diazolidinyl Urea and/or DMDM Hydantoin

• Urocanic acid

List from http://www.best-mens-skin-care.com/ingredients.html

Pick One Product
It can be daunting to try to weed out products that are unsafe for your use. My challenge to you is to investigate one product that you currently use. Go to Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Reviews and check that one product and its ingredients. If it receives a low hazard rating, continue to use it. If you don't like what you see, use the above list to help you pick out a new product. Do your skin one big favor this week!

Products I use:

Aubrey Organics shampoo/conditioner

Avalon Organics hand/body lotion

Laef's natural and organic deodorant

Deep Steep organic hand soap

CitraSolve dish soap/multi-purpose cleaner

Seventh Generation laundry soap

Ecover stain remover

Badger sunscreen/chapstick

Living Downstream

I have read nearly half of Living Downstream by Dr. Sandra Steingraber in the last week and continue to be fascinated by the topic! It's led me to searching the internet and I stumbled upon more information.

Living Downstream is currently in development with The People's Picture Company Inc,. Here, I found a link to the trailer for the movie. It is short and well worth the download time. It gave me goosebumps.

Inspiring and powerful!

Toxins Don't Discriminate

There's a fable about a village along a river. The residents who live here according to parable, began noticing increasing numbers of drowing people caught in the river's swift current and so went to work inventing ever more elaborate technologies to resuscitate them. So preoccupied were these heroic villagers with rescue and treatment that they never thought to look upstream to see who was pushing the victims in.
(Dr. Sandra Steingraber; Living Downstream)

My quest to see what is upstream (like Steingraber's in Living Downstream) began in 2006 after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I began to ask myself, what is in the environment around me? How does this environment influence the lives of every person on this planet? Are we safe? Or do we blissfully go through our days blind to environmental hazards that are in the soil, air and water?

These questions have led me to explore the food I eat, the hygiene products I use on my body, the methods I use to clean my home, medications, the production of paper products, furniture and carpet, the clothing I wear, etc.

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 2006 Toxic Chemical Release Inventory (TRI) report, states that over four billion pounds of chemicals of varying toxicity were disposed of and or released in the United States. Roughly 75,000 chemicals are now in common commercial use and of these, only about 1.5 to 3 percent have been tested for carcinogenicity. According to the National Research Council, only 10 percent of pesticides in common use have been adequately assessed for hazards. Chemicals classified as known, probable, and possible human carcinogens are still allowed to be manufactured, sold, released, dumped, imported, and exported. It would be comfortable to assume such substances are automatically expelled from human society as soon as their cancer-causing potential is demonstrated, but this is not the case.

Given these statistics, it seems to me that the responsibility lies in the hands of the consumer to make educated choices about the products we use and consume. These series of blogs in the coming months will (I hope) provide a glimpse of what I have discovered. I am passionate about sharing what I have learned and how I have changed my life.