what’s in our products? – parabens

Almost all personal care products today contain parabens. Parabens are preservatives. They extend the shelf life of our products. Without preservatives, most of our skin care products and cosmetics would either have to be kept in the fridge or used within a few days.

It is the water content in products that make them susceptible to spoilage. Water makes an ideal environment for mould and bacterial growth, and when we open our skin care products, air borne spores come in contact with the water and can potentially grow (this is why pure body butters are easy to make and preserve, there is no water). Parabens have bactericidal and fungicidal properties that prevent bacterial growth once personal care products are opened, thus preserving the product and extending its shelf life.

When it comes to natural skin care alternatives, preserving products is a big issue. As consumers, we have expectations as to the shelf life of our products. But natural preservatives don’t give the same results as parabens. Things in nature aren’t meant to last forever. As a compromise, many natural products do include parabens as their only synthetic ingredient. As far as natural preservatives go, a popular alternative is grape seed extract and special ‘upside-down’ packaging can create a natural vacuum, helping to preserve products.

The debate is still raging about how safe parabens are. Mainstream claims are that parabens are completely safe, and testing that shows otherwise tends to be “inconclusive”.

The potential danger of parabens is that they are classed as endocrine disrupters: chemicals that mimic hormones (particularly oestrogen) and therefore upset the hormone balance in our bodies. Our endocrine system runs every function in the body. A small imbalance in one hormone can result not only in an imbalance in other hormones, but also in other systems in our body. These imbalances can affect our overall health.

Studies have revealed that some breast cancers are a result of high oestrogen levels and as parabens mimic oestrogen, increasing the overall oestrogen in our body, there is a link between using parabens and breast cancer. Some tumours have been found to have high levels of parabens in them.

Other possible side affects of parabens include allergic reactions and skin irritation.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide whether the chemicals in your products are appropriate to use or not. I’ve tried to give somewhat of a balanced view, although it’s obvious I think nature is best. I think it’s good to be able to make informed decisions about what goes on or in your body.

Personally, I choose not to use products that contain synthetic chemicals. While they may prove to be safe, we have no evidence of safety yet. Many of the current claims that parabens and other synthetic chemicals are safe are, in my opinion, based on faulty logic.

Firstly, the statement that these chemicals are safe because they occur in our products in very small doses doesn’t take into account the compounding factor. These parabens are in everything, including some food products. Because of this, we are getting anything but ‘small doses’.

No study has ever assessed the long term affects of using these chemicals either alone or in relationship with the other synthetic chemicals in everyday products. While these compounds may really be safe, we just don’t know that yet, we don’t know what a lifetime of constant exposure does. We don’t know the affect of one synthetic compound mixing with another (or multiple others) within the cells of our bodies.

And finally, there is the often quoted faulty logic of direct correlation. We assume that if there is no immediately discernable cause and affect, then there is no cause and affect at all.

This logic just does not do justice to the complexities of life and in this case the human body. Just because someone doesn’t immediately develop cancer from using “synthetic compound X”, doesn’t mean that the cancer that they develop later in life was not at least in part caused by continual exposure to low doses of the synthetic compound.

Assuming that no immediate and direct correlation equals no correlation at all is very short sighted.

There are many other common chemicals in our personal care products (actually there are over 10,000 synthetic chemicals in common use in personal care products of which only about 11% have ever been ‘tested’). Some of these chemicals are know to be carcinogenic but are still found in our products. However, Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, petroleum and parabens are the top three most common synthetics. Avoid these and you can make a safe bet that you are avoiding the multitude of other chemicals.