The average American uses 8-12 products before they leave the house in the morning exposing themselves to over 100+ chemicals. Do you know what’s in your products?
After 10 years of studying nutrition, it had never even dawned on us to think about the products we used on our skin & hair. After all, we have never been ‘product’ people. We are pretty minimalistic at our house:
- Soap
- Toothpaste
- Deodorant
- Shampoo
- Conditioner
- Lotion
- Hand Cream
- Shaving Cream
- Sunscreen
- Moisturizer
- Mascara
- Pressed Powder
And as AcneFoundation.org explains, that’s a lot of product for people who don’t use much! Turns out we fit that statistic about the average American using 12 products/day.
Here’s what most people don’t realize.
While the E.U. has already banned or restricted the use of over 1400 ingredients from personal care products – here in the U.S., we only ban or partially restrict 30.
How is this possible? Well, it turns out, we have not passed any major Federal regulation governing this $60B+ industry since 1938!
That’s a serious problem guys. Not only because of what is allowed in the products we use every day, but because the FDA does not have the power to recall a product even after it is identified as unsafe. It’s also a problem because there is no definition of what ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ mean.
If you think you’re using safe products, please think again. A great resource to use is the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep Database. See what ingredients are troublesome & why. Then, start to make the switch to safer.
If you’d like some help, this is something we have become very passionate about & would love to help you shop safer. Reach out for a consultation with Karen to learn more about where to start, what ingredients to avoid & how to shop safer.