Day 143 - Paraben There, Done That

Ditching All of the Hazardous Children's Personal Care Products

I know you've heard me go on and on about the nasty carcinogenic petro-chemicals in makeup, shampoo, nail polish, kids' babywash and the like, but get ready to hear it again. This week, the folks over at Today's Mama will be featuring my little ol' blog and I wanted to be sure that any of the moms that surf over to my site are made aware of the possible chemical dangers lurking in their kids' bath and body products. (Those of you who are regular readers may be excused, but don't forget, there'll be a quiz on Thursday.)

Many personal care products marketed for infants and toddlers contain a myriad of chemicals that have been proven to carry certain health risks. In fact, some chemicals still allowed in US products have actually been banned in other countries, due to their toxic nature. These chemicals are easily absorbed into the blood stream through our relatively porous skin and new research shows that they spend a lifetime accumulating in our bodies. Scary? Yes. Especially when you consider that we're rubbing this crap all over our little kiddos on a near daily basis. But the good news is - you do have lots of options available and, fortunately, you don't need to be a chemist to find some safe alternatives.

A very simple way to determine the toxicity of the products you're using on your little ones is to surf on over to Skin Deep, a database of personal hygiene products compiled by the Environmental Working Group. There you can simply type in the product name and get a hazard rating, ingredient list and description of possible health concerns related to the item. They even have a great Parent's Buying Guide that will help you quickly find safe alternatives for your children's personal hygiene products.

So, if you're a mom who stumbled on my site and this is the only post of mine you ever read, please, please - take a moment to look up the products you are using on your child and make sure they are the safest ones available. It only takes a moment or two of your time to check them out and the benefits of doing so are great.

Just last night I found a nasty product that I will be ditching in favor of a kinder, more gentler alternative. The kids' bath upstairs had a bottle of Kandoo Foaming Hand Wash which gets a hazard rating of 6 out of 10 on Skin Deep's Database. In fact, according to the site, 90% of liquid hand soaps have fewer health concerns than this soap! Freakin' YIKES!


Savings:

I can't really quantify the environmental savings here, other than to say that if it's not safe to put on my kids' skin, then it's probably not a very good idea to put those chemicals into our lakes and streams either. And we all know that the sewage treatment facilities simply cannot remove all those chemicals that flow down our drains.


Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5

The Skin Deep site makes checking out your products a simple task and a lot of the alternatives are readily available at your local grocery or drug store. But be forewarned - you may have to wander over into the weird crunchy granola health-nut aisles in your local Krogers to find some of them!


**Special thanks to Beth Terry over at Fake Plastic Fish for bringing the awesome Skin Deep database to my attention! Hope you're enjoying your retreat!