At last!

For years I have had to endure the physical effects of so-called 'hygeine' products. Scented disinfectants and air 'fresheners' make my eyes sting, and upest my stomach Most perfumes are little better. De-odourants etc give me a senstaition like someone sticking pins in my armpits, even so additive-free ones.

And when I shampoo my hair, my scalp develops crusty weepy scabs which weep pale yellow fluid!

I don't have particularly sensitive skin, I can get away with dipping my hands in caustic soda solution for instance. (OK I rinse it off, but still!) Nor am I particulary bothered by many traditional 'bad' smells, horse/cow manure for instance don't bother me at all.

I even at one time used to test chemicals used in tyre manufacture, which include all sorts of noxious substances like rescourcinol.

The only thing there which produced symptoms similar to those I get from 'perfumes' etc was carbon disulphide, which is a nerve toxin which can be absorbed through the skin, but I was dealing with the pure chemical in 2+1/2 litre bottles!

Undersandably this means that I avoid such things as much as I can, and sometimes this does mean that I pong just a little, but frankly (and I know that this is a bit of a cliche) I quite like my own body odour!(Provided of course it isn't in the form of a three day old vest. But then again that's not really me is it?)

Fortunately as a man I can get away with the odd 'masculine musk'. Well bloke are supposed to smell a bit aren't we!

I also recall that several years ago, I remember a college lecturer pointing out that (after analysing the content) what is found in many perfumes, were it found in the waste pipe of a factory in anything like the concentrations in the perfume, would result in the closure of the factory on safety grounds.

What is worrying is that this also applies to many food additives, and worse, no one knows what the effects of combining these chemicals will have. (Here's a tip, never put that pink stuff sold as 'ham' in supermarkets under a grill. Ham is not pink, it is grey. The colour is a chemical additive, which becomes toxic when exposed to heat!)

You might imagine that with my aversion to these hygeine products I would have a terrible compexion, and really terrible hair, but not so. In fact when I tell people I am almost 50, they don't belive me. I grow my hair long, and young ladies seem to rather like playing with it. This causes no end of problems with the other half. I don't do anything to encourage them honest (Although I think that secretly she rather likes the idea )

So maybe avoiding all these chemicals is actually a good thing

Here here.

I am loving the expose of these so called "natural" pure products.

We are an ecover household and I am very very careful about what I use on my kids, shampoos with no parabens etc.

However, I am furious that CH4 have tested breastmilk and "shocked" us all by how many toxins are in it, without actually testing any baby formula and horrifying people by how many toxins and contaminants are in that!! Obviously they covered thier backs by saying that Breast is still best, but they didn't give anything to compare it with and this leaves an air of doubt for some. Grrrr!!!!!

I will be watching next week with interest....

It is difficult to make objective comments on this programme because it was so poorly researched and contained so many factual errors. At the beginning the presenter acknowledged that the concentration of a chemical is the most important factor in determining if it is a hazard or not. However at no point was any mention made of the significance of any concentrations of any of the chemicals found in the products or in the participants.
There was an obsession in the programme with "man made" chemicals,whereas in fact, many naturally occurring chemicals pose as many, (or as few) threats. Worse,the programme actually failed to distinguish man made from natural,since it claimed that (sodium) fluoride, formaldehyde, and limonene are mand made where in fact they are all "natural" chemicals. Indeed the presence of limonene in a cosmetic is usually as a result of a natural plant oil being used,as limonene is a component of many essential oils. It along with 25 other natural chemicals have to be declared on cosmetic labels as potential allergens. Substituting "natural" chemicals for "man made" ones is absolutely no guarantee of reducing the very low risk that correct usage of these products poses. All in all the understanding of the programme makers was very poor and I'm disappointed that Alastair Hay would put his name to such a charade.
I am an independent scientist with no conflict of interest to declare.

Yes Profnick,

Very true, however, let's hope it does at least make poeple think about what is in their beauty and cleaning products and look out for slightly less damaging alternatives.

I am also disappointed that they didn't look into the chemicals that are in disposable nappies and what they can do to when in such close contact with skin as absorbant and fragile as babies have.

The programme website clearly states that the ingredients of all cosmetics sold in the UK are regulated under the EU Cosmetic Directive (1976) and use of the consituent chemicals, are now regulated under the new REACH regulations....strange it wasn't mentioned on the programme!

Hi continuum mom,
I totally agree with your comment re breastfeeding - what about the plastics in baby bottles and teats, they didn't mention anything about that! I am currently breastfeeding my 2nd child and seem to be in a minority where I live - am just waiting for the comments from all the formula feeding mums about this!

Toxic breastfeeding? I think that wil only make the many women who lac in the knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding turn even easier to formula. Not impressed. I would love to watch a program informing the 80% of mothers/to be in England the great facts about breastfeeding. As a teenage breasfeeder myself I worry that many young girls infact ALL teenage mothers I know and have seen whom bottlefeed do not get educated about the benefits. Not just teen mums,..most new mums in general don't know all the benefits and research that prove the natural way is best. But anyhow...enough of me ranting on. Just a thought.

quote:

Originally posted by pixie wings fairy dust:
Toxic breastfeeding? I think that wil only make the many women who lac in the knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding turn even easier to formula. Not impressed. I would love to watch a program informing the 80% of mothers/to be in England THAT FORMULA FEED(over breast)the great facts about breastfeeding. As a teenage breasfeeder myself I worry that many young girls infact ALL teenage mothers I know and have seen whom bottlefeed do not get educated about the benefits. Not just teen mums,..most new mums in general don't know all the benefits and research that prove the natural way is best. But anyhow...enough of me ranting on. Just a thought.

Good for you pixie - our health visitor said that none of her teenage mums even considered breastfeeding as an option which is very sad as they don't know what a fantastic thing they are missing out on both for their babies and themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by pixie wings fairy dust:
Toxic breastfeeding? I think that wil only make the many women who lac in the knowledge of the benefits of breastfeeding turn even easier to formula. Not impressed. I would love to watch a program informing the 80% of mothers/to be in England the great facts about breastfeeding. As a teenage breasfeeder myself I worry that many young girls infact ALL teenage mothers I know and have seen whom bottlefeed do not get educated about the benefits. Not just teen mums,..most new mums in general don't know all the benefits and research that prove the natural way is best. But anyhow...enough of me ranting on. Just a thought.

You should be really, really proud!!
I had my bay at 36yrs and I think it was much easier for me to be commit to bf than young mums. I'm not putting young mums down, I just think it's easier when your older because you can talk to some of your own friends who have already bf. Young mums are more likely to be the 1st out of their mates to have a baby, and it must be much harder without friends who know how to support you and can give advice.

Why don't they teach us about bf in school???

Catherine,
I'm sure your products are indeed natural and do work. However the key point is that just because something is natural it doesn't mean it's automatically safe. I'm sure you realise that all your products are regulated, (cosmetics by the Cosmetic Products Directive, cleaning agents by the Biocides Directive and candles under the REACH regulations). Your cosmetics for example require safety certificates based on their ingredient list even if its 100% natural.
This is because regardless of the synthetic/natural components they are all chemicals which need handling safely. Essential oils do have the properties you mention but at very much higher concentrations than for example synthetic antibacterials. So which is " better" high concentrations of "naturals" or tiny concentrations of "synthetics". It's all in the dose not the nature of the chemical.

I am a scientist with an avid interest in natural cosmetics (I make and sell them too) and would like to add some (hopefully) points of interest.
I totally agree with Profnick in that the information about Limonene being a dangerous chemical is very misleading. Limonene is in fact a natural constituent of many essential oils and has to be listed by law on cosmetic labels. In fact many of the long-sounding names at the end of ingredients lists are also natural constituents of essential oils.

Anhydrous products (those without water) are fine but once water is added to a product, that becomes a breeding ground for potentially dangerous bacteria, yeast and mould.
What should be more concerning are the claims from some ‘all natural’ companies that they use Vitamin E or Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) as preservatives. Vitamin E is an anti-oxidant and prolongs the shelf life of other oils – it does NOT preserve against bacteria and mould. GSE has been shown by several studies to be ineffective, on its own, at preserving against bacteria, yeast and mould. Some brands of GSE do in fact have a (sometimes undisclosed) synthetic preservative present. The shelf life of products preserved with Vitamin E or GSE will be a few weeks maximum.

Some other preservative systems include enzyme-based blends. The problem with these is that enzymatic reactions require specific temperature and pH levels – fine when formulating the product but what about when you leave your product on the bathroom shelf, near a radiator or in the sun?

‘All-natural’ preservatives are available, such as those containing essential oils and plant extracts but, as Profnick explained, these constituents have to be present in high concentrations to be truly effective and these quantities can cause sensitivities and allergies.

Parabens and Formaldehyde do possess risks but there are other synthetic preservatives available that are Parabens and Formaldehyde free and run fewer risks.

I, for one, would be happier knowing that my product is as natural as possible but is adequately preserved.

Yes I was disgusted to see them testing breastmilk then saying it was full of toxins etc (like this won't put people off breastfeeding who have little knowledge about it) Why didn't they do a bottle feeding comparision????? Shame on you Channel 4!

I watched Sarah Beeny's Beauty Addicts: How Toxic are you last night with growing disbelief. Her theory was that "man-made chemicals" were harmful and that everything else was just fine. Reference was constantly being made to chemicals. But just stop and think everything is made from chemicals, you me, the plants, the animals and the food we eat. But by implication all that was non-natutral was harmful a theory that does not bear careful examination. She went down the well trod but scarcely proven "cocktail" route that we have no idea what this mixture is doing. What the cocktail description usually implies is that, while individual substances may be considered safe at current levels of exposure, they may interact with each other and create unforeseen effects. But the natural world is a ‘cocktail of chemicals’ so our bodies are used to dealing with a mix of substances. The same processes of storing, neutralising, breaking down and excreting occur when we encounter new substances.

She focussed on parabens and aluminium salts and implied they caused sexual deformities or cancer. However the Channel ç web ssite for her programmme states:

"Neither of two leading cancer charities, Cancer Research UK and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, support this theory. Instead, they point out that it was a very small study, and it did not compare parabens levels in breast tissue from women who did not get breast cancer. Instead, they quote a large US study which failed to show that women who use deodorants or antiperspirants were more likely to get breast cancer.

Once again, Cancer Research UK is sceptical, pointing out that the study was small and it did not compare aluminium levels in the breast samples with those in other parts of the body, or with levels in healthy women without breast cancer. They say that, while breast cancers are more common in the upper outer side than in other parts of the breast, this is most likely to be due to the fact that this is the area which contains most breast tissue."

The programme looked at the levels of "man made chemicals" in blood and breast milk but failed to adequately point out just what was being measured here. It was somewhat unclear but the Greenpeace bolood study found pesticides and flame retardants in parts per billion (ppb). What is a ppb?
A part per billion is equivalent to one grain of sugar in an Olympic swimming pool; or one blade of grasson a football pitch. Moreover, the fact is that our bodies are able to process and excrete harmful substances. The presence of a chemical in our bodies does not mean it is doing harm. Our bodies contain traces of many substances that we are in contact with, natural and synthetic, some beneficial and someharmful at certain levels. Actually our bodies contain more than a trillion atoms of uranium and hundreds of these atoms are radioactively disintegrating every day? (It sounds a lot but is truly tiny.) All is coming from a perfectly natural source:, food as uranium occurs naturally in soil.

They even found DDT banned for since 1972. It can be argued that DDT was over used from the Second World war onwards where it was used to prevent massive outbreaks of typhus. Since the ban driven by Rachel Carson's book silent Spring, which confidently expected the extinction of over 40 species of American bird, over 90 million people have died in the third world from Malaria. It is equivalent of 80 busses loaded with children going over a cliff every day. The effects on wildlife have since been shown to be reversible and probably overstated in the first place. Greenpeace have now printed a grudging acknowledgement of this fact.

And then on to hypospadia a common birth defect and growing out of control, a quick look at the web will show you the reason for this is not known and to lie the blame at the feet of "man-made chemicals" is specious and has no data to back it up. It has actually been linked to a vegetarian diet as well.

Interestingly Elizabeth Salter-Green, one of the programmes experts called stated in a 2004 UK meeting in that mother's milk was the most dangerous substance an infant might ingest" but that even so she has proudly breastfed her own kids. Ms Slater-Green is Toxics Director for WWF and could not reasonably be seen as neutral.

By the way the largest source of endocrine disruptive chemical comes from animals which constantly excrete them into the environment /(that means you and I as well) and from the contraceptive pill passing via urine into the sewage system. This has only counted domestic and farm animals, the burden from wildlife is just not known.

If you want to save life stop people smoking. Or indeed, reduce motor engine based pollution which kills 1 in 17 Europeans i.e. hundreds of thousands of lives. This is far removed from the estimated 4000 lives per annum lost to known (mainly asbestos cases dating back many years) or unknown causes which the EU translated into "unknown chemicals". The statistics behind this latter claim have been roundly trashed by independent bodies such as the Hayek Institute.

So before I went to bed I had a hot cocktail of butanol, iso amyl alcohol, hexanol, phenyl ethanol, tannin, benzyl alcohol, caffeine, geraniol, quercetin, 3-galloyl epicatchin, 3-galloyl epigallocatchin and inorganic salts. Otherwise known as a cup of tea. Note that the concentrations of these and about 1-200 unkowns vary in concentration depending on where it is grown.

I washed my hands with soap containing linalyl acetate (51%) and linalool (35%) with small amounts of α-pinene, limonene, 1,8-cineole, cis- and trans-ocimene, 3-octanone, camphor, caryophyllene, terpinen-4-ol and lavendulyl acetate in it. Otherwise known as Lavender Oil turned off the light and thought, it would have been better if shae had stuck to property programmes.

Blythboy,
Thank you for filling in some of the remaining errors in this programme that I hadn't covered. Your posting is exactly what this appalling programme wasn't; well argued, and backed up with supporting statements. Incidentally as I'm sure you're aware DDT has very low mammalian (including human) toxicity and is a very safe and specific insecticide, (not denying the environmental downsides of course)which has been reinstated as the only effective control measure in some countries still plagued with malaria.

I thought it was quite sad that only one side of the story was investigated in this programme.

For example, I noticed that one of the products the girls were introduced to as a supposedly natural alternative, is actually one that I am familiar with. I bought a jar of this moisturiser (no names) earlier this year and the label did not comply with the current eu/uk cosmetic legislation, it was a water based product which did not contain any preservative and which carried a shelf life of about a year... except that the jar they sent me was about 3 months out of date. I queried with the company about whether they could prove to me that their product was properly safety assessed (required by law) and was met by a very hostile response. After several very unsatisfactory emails I then received no reply whatsoever.

I considered this so called natural product (and to be fair it did not contain any synthetic chemicals) to be extremely unsafe. It could quite easily be growing some very nasty bacteria which would do a lot more immediate harm than the perceived threat from a build up of synthetic chemical.

I too try to cut down the amount of chemicals I use in daily life, however spotting the real dangers is not so black and white as this programme made out.

I have a problem with the programme on two levels. Firstly, the idea the man-made automatically equates to evil. It must be bad because it is not natural. There are many natural things which are highly poisonous, e.g. Ricin from Caster Bean plants. Deadly-Nightshade is natural but you wouldn't want that in your shampoo. In fact everything is poisonous it is just a question of degree.
Secondly, the fact that we can measure the presence of something in such small quantities does not automatically indicate that their is significant risk.
For example, in every breath you take there is a good chance there is an atom of Plutonium, one of the most toxic materials on the planet. This doesn't mean that you will die from radiation sickness. The token scientist on the programme even said that the levels of the chemicals detected in the breast milk of the two mothers were the lowest he had seen and completely normal.
The programme completely dismissed the fact cosmetics or any other product undergo a battery of tests to ensure that they are safe even to the extent that people can misuse the product and still be safe. Natural products do not need the same rigourous safety measures.
While further research may show that certain chemicals are harmful under certain circumstances it is scientific research that will determine this and not programme makers who clearly know nothing about the subject.

I watched this last night and as it ended I was so incensed that I had to join up here!

I run a business selling natural alternatives and am horrified by the imbalances shown. No mention was made of the full range of uses of soap nuts, or the fact they they are not great on whites - they'd have done a better job on the jeans, or the bloke! Looking at the t-shirts used I'm not convinced that even an aggressive bio powder would have shifted those *stains* - and we have no idea what they were - grease? blood? chocolate?

As for the breast feeding segment, I just shudder to think how many Mums are now out buying formula as a result.

While I agree that the program has many short comings it is still nice to see someone presenting the other side of the argument. We are, after all, bombarded with advertising and media that hard sells cosmetics and mass produced toiletries. Just watch any advert break or open a women’s magazine and there will be examples of expensive advertising campaigns making you believe you can not live without their products. Like the old cigarette adverts of the past, what is not mentioned is that these products contain chemicals that build up in your body.

I believe the program was trying to make the point that nobody can actually say for certainty what effect this build up of chemicals are having on us or our children.

While I agree that the program might have shown breast feeding in a poor light, surely that is missing the real point, which is; if you are breast feeding and your body is full of chemicals then your milk is too.

Elizabeth Salter-Green, one of the programmes experts has said that mother's milk was the most dangerous substance an infant might ingest. According to Time magazine, before becoming pregnant Ms Salter-Green had samples of her blood, and fat taken for analysis. The analysis showed many contaminants, some in high levels, that were known to be harmful to developing foetuses. Ms Salter-Green took the obvious logical decision to stop using the products that were contaminating her. Before starting to breast feed her daughter Florence, Ms Salter-Green once again had her blood and fat cells analysed, as they were back to normal, she breast feed her daughter; happy in the knowledge her milk was not contaminated. Surely that is one of the points being made by the program? Most people are unaware of the levels of contaminates in their system but alternatives are available.

For example I know people who have family histories of cancer, these people try and avoid carcinogenic substances as they believe it would be wise, but how many people in the same situation are completely unaware that their toiletries may contain such ingredients?

My own move to products containing non synthetic ingredients started after developing CFS or ME as it is still often called. At the time many alternative health books suggested that limiting my exposure to daily toxins and chemicals might help me feel better, quicker. It did, and inspired me to start my own business; Pure Skin Care.

Initially it takes a long time to find products that are free from synthetic ingredients and only contain natural ingredients that are safe and ecologically friendly. That was and is, our mission, our criteria for stocking a brand, luckily there are a growing number of manufacturers whose products do meet these high demands and offer alternatives for those people who would like to use them.


Debbie

Has this topic suddenly been turned into an advertising section? One post has already been removed for, from what I saw, blatantly advertising their site. Now here's another one. I'm making a determined effort not to advertise mine and am just trying to put the point across that totally natural is not always safe, cosmetics-wise.

That's exactly why I haven't linked to or mentioned mine by name. It's just a background for my opinions and thoughts.

quote:

Originally posted by sammyk6:
Has this topic suddenly been turned into an advertising section? One post has already been removed for, from what I saw, blatantly advertising their site. Now here's another one. I'm making a determined effort not to advertise mine and am just trying to put the point across that totally natural is not always safe, cosmetics-wise.

I agree that totally natural does not always mean totally safe or ecologically friendly. I always suggest checking each ingredient on something