Skincare Products Immunity to Government Oversight

Our skin, the largest organ in the body and its first line of defense against infection, can present a supreme paradox of conflicting issues.  While the skin is often viewed as a barrier, it really acts more like a sponge, absorbing a multitude of common chemicals we're exposed to daily.  We're talking here about inadvertent and undeliberate exposure. 

Then we add the deliberate stuff.  The average woman, in her lifetime, will ingest about four pounds of lipstick.  We're not going to horrify you with the details of how it's made, and of what.  No one really knows for certain how many chemicals affect us over time, or how they react in our bodies in combination with each other.  There are some well known dangers and these chemicals are to be avoided.

Phthalates, for  example, are a class of hormone disrupter that no woman of child bearing age should ingest.  They're commonly found in artificial fragrances and they cause birth defects, sperm damage, and the feminization of baby boys.  That's what is known about them at this time

The USFDA has a list of some 10,500 cosmetic and skin care ingredients in common use by the cosmetics industry.  Almost 90% of these skincare products have never been evaluated for safety by the FDA; not by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Board, or by any publicly accountable institution.

Well, of course manufacturers of cosmetics and skincare products are hardly interested in depleting their customer base by plying us with harmful and destructive skincare products.  But complex chemicals in cosmetics, with potential unknown side effects, should really lead us to follow the Precautionary Principle; that is, if you won't eat it, don't put it on your skin!

The European Union is light years ahead of us on this one.They have banned the use of more than a thousand personal and skincare product ingredients for use in cosmetics and skincare products, and they aren't done yet.  Anything they suspect may cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive ills, or other serious health issues gets red lined.  By contrast, our own USFDA has banned only ten of these ingredients for skincare products.

Here in the U.S., the majority of skin care products are hurried to market in response to our unrelenting pursuit of perfection and demand for improvement on the products that have gone before and failed to deliver as promised.  Hope springs eternal and most of us will pay any amount within reach for the blessing of flawless skin.  And the cosmetics and skincare products manufacturers are eager to accommodate us.  With promises.

Now consider this:  Most of a cosmetic manufacture's costs are in the packaging of the product and in bringing it to market.  Nearly always, the cost of the packaging exceeds the cost of the ingredients by far.  Add to that the advertising expense and all ancillary marketing costs, and you can easily see that there is little money in the package for the cost of the ingredients.  So they take shortcuts.  Lots of them.  And the consumer pays.

That seems to leave us with three choices.  One: We can continue to hope for the best and keep on buying the stuff on the strength of a marketing firm's high powered presentation of the allegedly fabulous results obtainable with this brand new and improved elixer of beauty.  Two:  We can learn to make our own natural skin care products, emulating the high priced salons that do just that.  Doing this can save us a bundle and it isn't all that difficult.   And three:  We can do our homework and dig out the one or two manufacturers of skincare products that actually do produce safe, naturally derived, and effective solutions to our skin problems; all at a realistic cost.

So what is it going to be?  The answer to that seems to lie in how much time, money, or both, we're willing to invest.

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