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THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT BEAUTY AND HYGIENE PRODUCTS UGLY THE TRUTH ABOUT BEAUTY HYGIENE PRODUCTS AND While awareness grows about eating organic foods to reduce exposure to toxins, it has some way to go when it comes to cosmetic, personal care and hygiene products whose chemical and often carcinogenic ingredients don't even have to be listed on the labels. 0 ordinary soap will do. We cleanse ourselves with a face and body scrub and pat our skin dry. Then we anoint it with revitalising cremes. A few sprays of deodorant to mask body odour (our natural sweaty odour that follows a hard day's work, it must be said) come next. Perhaps we then apply a dab of perfume or after-shave lotion. For about half of our adult and teenage population—yes, I'm referring to women—an entire regimen of "doing up" one's face follows: sunscreen lotion, foundation, highlights, lipstick, nail polish. The list goes on and on, for we are ignorant consumers of personal care products and cosmetics. Our ignorance starts where we fail to realise that the recipient of our vanity is our body's largest single organ: our skin. Indeed, our skin is far more than merely a cover for what lies beneath. It is a living sheath that breathes, at least as far as we allow it to. Consequently, when we slather it with crémes and lotions, its innate ability to breathe, and thus to live, diminishes. The damage is not restricted to our skin feeling smothered. An easily absorbing organ, skin actually sucks in compounds that we apply on its surface. If these compounds contain beneficial ingredients, there will be no ensuing harm. But if these products contain chemicals that are likely to have adverse effects on our skin and other organs of our body, especially a dangerous cumulative effect that results after years of use, our simple hygiene habits translate to a killer lifestyle bringing us closer to disease and death. So what do commonly used personal care products and cosmetics contain? It may come as a surprise, but these are often a cocktail of chemicals that act as carcinogens (cancer-causing agents), derma irritants (skin irritants), developmental toxins (toxins that especially affect the physical and mental growth of children), endocrine disrupters (substances that stop the production or block the transmission of hormones in the body and thus interfere with development), mutagens (agents that cause DNA mutations leading to either cancers or birth defects), neurotoxins (chemicals that affect our nervous system), reproductive toxins (agents that affect our reproductive system) and sensitisers (chemicals that cause allergic reactions in normal tissue after repeat exposure). Whew! Find this hard to believe? Before we take a closer look at what the above actually implies for your health, let's consider why these facts are so well suppressed. The number of consumers of beauty and hygiene products is ever-rising—and no wonder, for vanity is no longer women's sole prerogative. Men, too, have been effectively wooed by cosmetic giants who preach a "look good, feel good" mantra. Across developed nations of the West and rapidly developing, opening markets of countries in the East, ignorance and a false belief that equates development with looking good or glamorous, have a consumer-oriented population tightly in its grip. The result is a rise and rise in the profits of global cosmetic and personal care product corporations. Their success fuels still more aggressive advertising campaigns, influencing many more to fall prey to the need to "look good". Why is this happening? As opposed to asking why this is happening, the question should be why we are allowing this to happen. The fact that beauty and hygiene products are still not perceived as directly linked to our well-being (read health) contributes to the problem. We are, albeit slowly, becoming enthusiastic about organic foods and simultaneously cautious about chemical and pesticide remnants in the fruits and veggies we consume, as we know NEXUS + 27 A deadly cocktail of chemicals by Charu Bahri © 2006 Email: charubahri@gmail.com DECEMBER 2006 — JANUARY 2007 www.nexusmagazine.com