Ever been to the store to buy a bottle of shampoo or lotion? How about a cosmetics counter at the local mall for a lipstick? Ever try to read the label for the ingredients? Oh, you need your glasses, you say? The font is so small as to be nearly illegible?
Or, worse, the list contains ingredients that are hardly pronounceable, much less recognized as commonly used words:
Butylated what???
If you are curious enough to continue reading here, we will provide a wee bit of useful information about butylated hydroxytoluene (also known as BHT) and its cousin, butylated hydroxyanisole (if you guessed BHA, you win the prize!).
Those two cosmetic ingredients sound like something from a chemistry lab belonging to Dr. Frankenstein, which is fairly accurate. Both are synthetic antioxidants used in cosmetics as preservatives, particularly in moisturizers and lipsticks.
No one likes moldy, slimy, unpreserved lipstick! Bacterai, mold…. Yuck!
Unfortunately, neither ingredient is considered totally safe to use. BHA is often found in foods but is a possible human carcinogen. BHT is also a food additive but is also found in household products, industrial additives, pesticides, and plastic and rubber. BHT may interfere with hormone balances, affect kidney, lung, and thyroid function, as well as alter blood coagulation ability, and cause behavioral problems in children.
The European Union prohibits the use of BHA as fragrance ingredient, while California requires warning labels on products with BHA, as a possible cancer causing agent.
Maybe you are wondering if an antioxidant in your lipstick is worth the risk. You should wonder.
The David Suzuki Foundation notes, “U.S. researchers report that one in eight of the 82,000 ingredients used in personal care products are industrial chemicals, including carcinogens, pesticides, reproductive toxins, and hormone disruptors. Many products include plasticizers (chemicals that keep concrete soft), degreasers (used to get grime off auto parts), and surfactants (they reduce surface tension in water, like in paint and inks). Imagine what that does to your skin, and to the environment.” http://www.davidsuzuki.org
We recommend reading the list of ingredients for all your cosmetics. Knowing what you are putting in your hair, on your skin, on your lips and eyelids can make a difference in your life.
We will be looking at p-phenylenediamine in a future post.