Beauty and the chemicals

Beauty and the chemicals | What's wrong with parabens? | Aluminium – too close for comfort? | Triclosan – killing too many germs? | Phthalates – how plastic are you?

Between them, sisters Emma and Charlotte use over 70 beauty products per day. Personal trainer, Emma brushes her teeth six times a day, and rubs toothpaste on her teeth another 7-10 times, while office worker, Charlotte is never seen without full make up, her hair sprayed to perfection.

Both have dozens of lipsticks, face creams, blushers and other cosmetics, and keep their homes sparkling with the help of a range of chemical cleaners. Add the chemicals they breathe in travelling to work, and at clubs and restaurants, and they are each exposed to an estimated 2,500 chemicals per day.

Alastair Hay, Professor of Environmental Toxicology, at Leeds University, says

'We can probably look at individual chemicals and say that they're only there in very low amounts. But there are hundreds if not thousands of these chemicals in very low amounts that we're exposed to, and we have little idea about the effects that this mixture is having on us,' he says.

Elizabeth Salter Green, Director of the Toxics Programme at WWF UK, agrees:

'These worrying chemicals are found in the products in your bathroom – shampoo and conditioner. They're found in your sofa and your carpet. They're found in the tin can lining of that tin of beans you're going to eat, and they're found in many electronic products. So you are surrounded by them and exposed to them on an almost on an hourly basis, every day.'

Growing numbers of girls and boys are routinely using large amounts of cosmetics and deodorants even before they reach puberty and start to produce the sort of smelly sweat that requires such products.

Charlotte had chemicals called parabens in her urine, which have been used for many years as preservatives in foods, drugs and cosmetics. She and Emma also had the anti-bacterial agent, triclosan, in their urine, which is used in some toothpastes and handwashes. Both girls would also have been exposed to phthalates – chemicals which make plastics soft and flexible, and are widely used in the hairsprays which Emma and millions of other women use to style their hair.

Since June 2007, companies which import or manufacture chemicals, including those used in cosmetics and household products, have been required to provide safety data on all their products, together with an assessment of risk, in order to register them under REACH – Regulation, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals, an EU-wide system for testing the effects of chemicals on human health and the environment.

Beauty and the chemicals | What's wrong with parabens? | Aluminium – too close for comfort? | Triclosan – killing too many germs? | Phthalates – how plastic are you?