You know the one I’m talking about. I’m sure you can picture it now, a familiar sight flooded with brands that you grew up with and all the latest and greatest stuff too! You can smell about one hundred different scents just by walking from one end of the aisle to the other. Every type of cleaning agent and freshening product that you can imagine all within just a few feet of each other. The same goes for beauty products - foundations, creams, blushes, highlighters, eye shadows, contour kits…the possibilities are endless. Lotions, perfumes, nail polish, hair products, gels, and sprays…they’re all at our finger tips. Being a consumer is easier than ever, and you can be sure that you’re getting the best deal within seconds thanks to the ever-present internet! You can even have your whole shopping list delivered to your door! Talk about convenience!

But have you ever wondered what the heck makes up these products? Because curious minds want to know how those neon colors and overpowering fragrances are created! And beyond that, have you wondered what affects those products are having, or will come to have, on your health?! Have you wondered if those “natural” products really worked? Or if they were worth the extra money?

Do you remember the whole “your epidermis is showing!” thing going around back in elementary school or was it just my school? Someone would come up to you and say “your epidermis is showing” in a teasing voice. You would get all uncomfortable and self aware, checking for something wrong because you were 6 and didn’t know what an epidermis was….then they would yell out at you that it was your skin after a few minutes of watching you squirm. Well your epidermis is your largest organ and what you put on it (lotions, makeup, haircare, etc.) gets absorbed through your skin and goes into your blood stream. Which can be great - or terrible - depending on what types of products you are using. Same is true with your lungs and what you breath from your cleaners and air fresheners!

A study a few years ago revealed something shocking - The average woman puts on 515 synthetic chemicals on her body each and every day - Yes! You read that right - FIVE HUNDRED and FIFTEEN SYNTHETIC CHEMICALS. I honestly had no idea who that could possibly be accomplished when I read that headline, so I dug into the report to really understand what we are doing to ourselves.

“The study revealed that the typical woman uses about 13 different beauty products a day. Most of these products contain at least 20 ingredients and additives, many of which can have a detrimental effect on the body and skin. Perfumes alone were found to contain up to 400 different ingredients. Other products that were tested include lipstick, body lotions and mascara which contained an average of 30 ingredients each. Aside from aluminum, many of these products contain other harmful ingredients like synthetic dyes, fragrances, and parabens. When applied continually, the many beauty products that women use are exposing them to wide range of carcinogens.” - Natural News

Thankfully now there are sites and apps like the EWG.org/skindeep and Think Dirty that can tell you what is in your products and how toxic they are. These sites have information for cleaning products and beauty products - you just enter the name (or scan the code) of your products and the info comes up. They even go as far as showing what type of hazards are associated with the products i.e. allergies and immunotoxicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, cellular level changes, organ system toxicity, endocrine disruptors, cancer, and many more. Can you imagine if that type of chart was on the labeling of every product! Oh how the world would change!

How is this even possible that hazardous, potentially cancer causing ingredients can be found in the vast majority of our cleaners and beauty aides you may asking yourself - well it’s because regulations in the cleaning and beauty industries haven’t changed since 1938. Yes, it’s now 2018. The reality is that we are being experimented on each and every day by companies who are barely regulated and driven by profits. And so are our children. So it’s time to take matters into our own hands, vote with our dollars, do our research, and be our own best advocates.

If you’re ready to take control of what’s in your home and on your body - try making your own products at home! Get started with something simple like homemade deodorant, hair detangler spray, body butter, room freshener or multipurpose cleaning spray.

If you’d rather have things magically show up in your shopping cart you can start switching to brands that not only guarantee purity, but are fully transparent. There is a lot “greenwashing” out there, which is basically just marketing telling the consumer that things are “natural” but really aren’t. There isn’t a checks and balances scale within this industry so it’s easy to lie and trick the consumer. For our favorite cleaning and beauty supplies check out our shopping lists. You can also check out EWG.org/skindeep and follow along with clean beauty experts on social media like Organic Bunny, Gurl Gone Green and Agent Nateur. Also stay up to date on the latest measures to pass cleaner beauty laws and transparency in the industry!

If you are overwhelmed by all of this just start small. You don’t have to throw everything in the trash immediately, although I wouldn’t be mad if you did! But, once you run out of something, replace it with a cleaner alternative. After all as Maya Angelou said “When you know better, you do better”! So now you know! What are you planning to swap out first?

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