The Truth about Cosmetics By Dr Stephen and Gina Antczak, authors of Cosmetics Unmasked

Finally, someone in the cosmetics industry has owned up to the fact that many cosmetics do not live up to their claims. On October 18, 2000, Anita Roddick, founder and co-chairman of Body Shop, confessed to the Cheltenham Literature Festival, that many cosmetics are useless, repeating her comments the following day on national television and in the press. She said that moisturisers work but all other lotions are pap. She stated that, "There is nothing on God's planet, not one thing, that will take away 30 years of arguing with your husband and 40 years of environmental abuse. Anything that says it can magically take away your wrinkles is a scandalous lie."

This article is taken from the book ' Cosmetics Unmasked.' The book explains why you should be more informed about the toiletries and cosmetics that you use every day, the difficulties in finding this information, the hidden dangers within many of the cosmetics which we take for granted and how to avoid them. It covers a wide range of topics including skin care, hair care, colorants and fragrances, baby products, animal products, animal testing and everything else you want to know about the safety of cosmetics and toiletries. It contains details of over 2000 cosmetic ingredients that are potentially harmful and many of which are included in the products we use everyday. It exposes the truth behind the marketing hype and it explains the science of cosmetics and toiletries in simple, everyday words.

Are cosmetics bad for your health?

Many of the articles we have read, and a number of other books we found on this subject, are sensationalist and scare mongering. They tend to focus on what their authors consider to be the extreme hazardous effects of cosmetics and they often draw unscientific conclusions from certain studies and reports, which are out of all proportion to the true nature of the hazards. So it is important to point out first and foremost, that the track record of the vast majority of cosmetics is generally good. Our cosmetics and toiletries are subject to numerous restrictions and regulations to ensure they are essentially 'safe' for most people. And most people find they have no problems with most of the cosmetics they use.

The problem is that we do not live in a perfect world and what scientists may consider to be safe one day, could well be banned the next day on the basis of new research. Another problem is that some people may be allergic to some cosmetic ingredients and many people can become sensitised to them and find them irritating to their skin. There are so many chemicals used in cosmetics today, which have known adverse effects, that it can be difficult to avoid them. But the most important problem for the consumer is the difficulty in finding balanced, scientific advice to help them make up their own mind in choosing the product that is best for them.

Allergies and sensitivities

We are aware of a growing number of people who find they have a bad reaction to some of the cosmetics and toiletries they use. In 1994 the USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) carried out a survey into allergies caused by cosmetics and toiletries. Nearly one in four of the people questioned claimed to have suffered an allergic reaction as a result of using a cosmetic or toiletry, including make-up, foundations and moisturisers. So before going any further, there are some misunderstandings that should be cleared up.

The words allergy, sensitivity and hypersensitivity are often misunderstood and misused when describing a reaction to some cosmetics and toiletries. If your skin frequently reacts to cosmetic ingredients causing irritation such as soreness, itchiness, red blotches or sometimes a rash, it would be fair to say you have sensitive skin. These symptoms tend to subside fairly quickly when the affected area is washed or soothing lotions are applied.

An allergic reaction is quite different and occurs when your body's immune system is triggered into action by a substance that does not normally affect most other people. The symptoms may include itchiness, swellings on the skin, rashes, sneezing, excessive mucus secretions and muscle cramps. Although the symptoms are generally mild and subside fairly quickly, the reactions can be serious and require medical help. Hypersensitivity is an abnormal immune response, which can be extreme and sometimes life-threatening but this is rare. The best way to avoid having any bad reaction to a cosmetic is to avoid the offending product. This leads us to the next major problem.

How do you know whether a product is any good or not or causing you harm?

People have been kept in the dark when it comes to cosmetics. We can buy food, which the manufacturer will tell us is "free from artificial colourings, preservatives and flavourings" but the same standards do not apply to cosmetics. Quite the opposite. The blurb on the label might tell us that a product is "100% Natural" when it is not. They may start with natural ingredients but by the time the chemists have finished with them, they will be anything but natural. They couldn't be if the product was to work! For the most part, the marketing blurb on cosmetic labels is at best misleading and at worst, as Anita Roddick herself admitted, "a scandalous lie".

Have you ever picked up a bottle of shampoo or skin cream and tried to read the ingredients? The chemical names of many of the ingredients are completely meaningless to most people, even chemists. The full (systematic) name of a chemical can run into several lines and read like a sentence with comas, hyphens, brackets and numbers scattered between the unpronounceable, long words. To a chemist, the name is a precise description of the chemical structure and yields a great deal of information about a chemical. But cosmetics' and toiletries' manufacturers do not use systematic names. If they did, the list of ingredients would not fit on the label. Shortened versions of the names or trivial names are used but these carry no useful information unless you are in the know, which most consumers are not.

If you do become sensitised to a product, then there is the problem of tracking down the offending chemical. Most cosmetics and toiletries contain at least a dozen ingredients. One brand of sunscreen on sale in the UK lists forty-six chemicals and invites the customer to see the in-store list for further ingredients. How do you know which of these ingredients is either making you itch or your face feel as though its been burnt?

If we had to rely solely on the product labelling for our information, the best we could do is hope the product does what it says it will do, hope that it won't contain any of the ingredients that cause our skin irritation and buy it on a trial and error basis. For a while, we might convince ourselves it is working but how many of us take the product back and ask for a refund if it doesn't?

Does the product work?

Moisturisers and emollients

These products generally do live up to their claims to moisturise the skin but that is all they do and the effect is temporary. Any added vitamins, proteins or plant extracts will not "nourish" the skin (see below). How these products work is a huge subject beyond the scope of this article but basically, moisturisers add water to the hard, dry cells in the outer layer of your skin. This plumps them up and makes your skin feel softer and smoother, and it can even temporarily fill in fine lines. Emollients work by adding a waterproof layer of oil or grease (some of which are silicone oils similar to your furniture polish) to your skin, trapping the natural water content of your skin beneath it and preventing it from evaporating. Moisturisers work in the same way but they also contain anything from 20 to 80 percent water to speed up the process. The problem with many moisturisers is that they also contain many other ingredients to keep the oil and water mixed and to preserve it. Most of these ingredients are unnatural and many have known adverse effects. The simpler the product, the better it is for you. As Anita Roddick said, "In Tahiti the women have skin like velvet and they simply take a lump of lard and rub it into their bodies."

Advertisers make a big deal about moisturisers these days. They seem to suggest that everything should contain them and that without them we'll shrivel up into prunes. Lipsticks are proudly advertised as "containing 60% moisturisers". Of course they do - all lipsticks contain mainly waxy, oily and greasy substances.

Too much moisturising with added water can be a bad thing - just look at what happens when you stay too long in the bath! You may think the wrinkled appearance is due to the skin having dried out but it's quite the contrary. It's because your skin cells have absorbed too much water and have swelled up (like overcooked pasta) making your skin become oversized and loose (like Nora Batty's stockings).

Anti-ageing creams and gels

These simply do not work in the way that most manufacturers claim they do. If you really want to get rid of those fine lines and wrinkles, don't waste your money on expensive creams that don't work (and may have some nasty side effects) but spend it instead on some cosmetic surgery. This is certainly more expensive and involves a more invasive procedure but at least it normally works.

Anti-ageing creams contain chemicals such as AHAs and BHAs (alpha-hydroxy acids and beta- hydroxy acids) that dissolve the outer layer of your dead skin cells. This is why they are also known as exfoliants or skin-peelers. This process removes minor skin blemishes and helps to make your skin look smoother and younger. At the same time, the cream can help to fill and hide your fine lines. But the effect is only temporary and no matter how many times you use the cream or gel, it cannot permanently remove fines lines or wrinkles.

The body's natural reaction to the constant wear and tear of these skin-peelers is to grow thicker skin in much the same way that calluses develop on the hands of manual workers. Your natural reaction is to use more of the cream to maintain the appearance of fresher, younger skin. Before you know it, you are locked into a cycle of growing thick skin and peeling it off. This might be why manufacturers recommend you use the product every day for the best effect. Sometimes the skin-peelers are added to your daily moisturising cream but this fact is hidden within the small print of the list of ingredients. So you could be using them without knowing it and inadvertently become dependent on the cream. So the very cream you are using to soften your skin may actually be doing the opposite.

Another problem with skin peelers is that, by removing the outer layer of dead skin cells, they remove a natural barrier. This allows ingredients (not only in the creams themselves but also in the make-up you apply afterwards) to penetrate to the deeper layers of your skin where they may cause allergic reactions and irritation. Removing the outer layer of skin also removes the natural pigment which protects your skin from the suns rays allowing them to more readily penetrate your skin. This may cause your skin to age more rapidly defeating the whole purpose of the cream. Some people are so sensitive to these skin peelers that they suffer serious skin burns from using them.

The FDA estimates that there have been over 10,000 reports of adverse reactions to cosmetics containing AHAs and BHAs. The symptoms described include itching, burning sensations, severe reddening of the skin, rashes, swelling, blistering and bleeding. They can also lead to exfoliative dermatitis.

Bad hair days

Whatever the manufacturers may claim, three things are certain:

• all shampoos contain detergents - they wouldn't work if they didn't;
• all conditioners leave chemical deposits on your hair - that's how they work; and
• all the "magic" ingredients such as vitamins, proteins, amino acids, plant extracts, etc., have no beneficial effect on your hair whatsoever.

The main difference between shampoos for greasy, normal and dry hair is the amount of detergent they contain - shampoos for greasy hair contain the most and those for dry hair the least. As well as washing out the dirt and grime from your hair, the detergent will wash out your natural conditioning oils. These will return within six to twenty-four hours but most people can't wait that long and so replace them with unnatural oils by using conditioners. Because conditioners add extra oil to your hair, you will have to wash it more often. All this washing, conditioning and blow-drying can damage your hair contributing to your bad hair day. Try using a mild shampoo and no conditioner for a while - you might be amazed at how much more manageable your hair becomes.

If your hair has been damaged (by perming, overheating, etc.), or if you are one of those unlucky people who do not have enough natural oils in your hair, the oily substances in conditioners will help to make your hair look and feel much better. But no number of proteins, vitamins or amino acids will penetrate into your damaged hair shaft and repair it. To imagine that these substances can do what the marketing people suggest is just as ludicrous as trying to repair a crumbling house by hurling bricks and sand at it.

The FDA's Cosmetics Handbook states that, where cosmetic ingredients are declared as vitamins, this "conveys the misleading impression that these ingredients and products offer a nutrient or health benefit, and may therefore be deemed misbranded". For this reason, the vitamins are listed in the ingredients under their chemical names rather than their commonly understood vitamin names. For example, vitamin E would be listed as tocopherol. The EU has adopted a similar rule.

So what is it that is causing my skin to go red, blotchy and sore?

It can be any one or more of the numerous ingredients within a product. The main culprits are the fragrances which is why you'll find that products labelled "hypo-allergenic" tend to contain fewer of them. But beware, products that claim to be "perfume-free" do sometimes contain small amounts of fragrance to disguise the unpleasant smell of the other ingredients. The fragrances are listed in the ingredients as "parfum" and while this might sound simple enough, it means that the product contains rarely less than twenty and often between fifty and a hundred (mostly artificial) fragrance chemicals, many of which have known adverse effects.

The next nasties on the list are the colorants. Most cosmetics and toiletries contain artificial colorants, many of which have been linked to health hazards. There are 157 commonly used dyes of which 62 are not considered safe enough to be used generally in all types of cosmetics but they do (legally) find their way into many toiletries including soaps, shower gels, shampoos and conditioners, children's bubble-bath and even some baby products.

Next come the preservatives. Almost all of the commonly used preservatives have known adverse effects and for this reason, most have been restricted as to the amounts that can be used.

Then there are all the other ingredients. There has been a number of scare stories about the most common detergent used, which is sodium lauryl sulfate, and so a number of manufacturers tend to use the more mild detergent, sodium laureth sulfate. Then there are the foam boosters, the thickeners, emulsifiers, emulsion stabilisers, humectants, solvents, film-formers, UV absorbers (often to stop the artificial colours from fading), anti-static agents, anti-microbials, anti-corrosives (to stop the manufacturers' machines from rusting), to name but a few. And let's not forget the chemical and pesticide residues that don't have to be listed in the ingredients.

We were amazed to discover that a medicated shampoo we had bought specifically to treat psoriasis contained three ingredients known to cause contact dermatitis. No wonder it seemed to aggravate the condition!

If this sounds just too horrible and you decide to switch to products containing more natural ingredients then beware. Many natural ingredients can be also irritating to the skin. If you look at the ingredients of a product that contain plant extracts or other "natural" items, you'll tend to find they are listed after the most common ingredients. This means the product generally contains very small quantities of the natural extracts in question and that the manufacturer has probably added more preservatives and anti-microbials to prevent the bugs from flourishing in the more nutritious concoction. And just because you buy a product in a health food shop does not guarantee it will be any better. We found some of the worst of the culprits there!

But I've used cosmetics for years without any problem

By now, you might wonder whether you should throw your creams and cosmetics in the bin. Don't! It's not the intention of this article (or 'Cosmetics Unmasked ') to scare you or to put you off your cosmetics. Remember - the safety record of most cosmetics and toiletries is excellent. If you have found a cosmetic that suits you, then stick with it. Looking good can make you feel good and that's important. But if you one of the growing ranks of people who are becoming increasingly concerned about things like BSE and artificial chemicals in your food, then you might also want to know about things like the artificial chemicals and animal products in the cosmetics you use on your face and body.

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© Gina & Steve Antczak, 2001

This page was last updated, 3 January 2002

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