The health impacts of contaminants in everyday home and beauty products

We regularly hear that contaminants in our household and body care products pose no risk to our health. According to many government agencies and industry organizations, consumers shouldn’t worry. They say we are being exposed to extremely low quantities of cancer-causing contaminants. At ATTITUDE, we believe it’s important to take precautions and to rely on a rigorous product development process. Science doesn’t currently have enough data to assess the impact of a lifetime of exposure to contaminants. Our skin is not impenetrable; it can absorb a vast array of chemicals, which can pass into the bloodstream. Once in the bloodstream, harmful chemicals may accumulate in the body over time. Researchers are only beginning to understand¹ the cumulative effects of prolonged exposure to low doses of chemicals found in everyday products. It remains difficult to determine the impact of these contaminants, due to their ubiquity, quantity and the way various chemicals interact.

The accumulative effects of cancer-causing contaminants

According to research by the EWG², the long-term impact of cancer-causing contaminants in our personal care products starts before we’re born. Contaminants accumulate in small quantities in our systems every day, all our lives. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics³ has flagged 11 of 113 carcinogens identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that are still in many personal care products available today.

At ATTITUDE, we do things differently

Our rigorous research and development process ensures that ATTITUDE body care and household products are good for you, your family and the planet. We begin every product development process by evaluating the source of raw materials used to manufacture our ingredients. All our ingredients must be:

• Free of contaminants and by-products listed on the California Proposition 65 list including cancer-causing chemicals compounds, mutagens and endocrine disruptors.
• Hypoallergenic: None of our ingredients are on the list of known allergens (Cosmetic Regulation No. 1223/2009⁴).
• Vegan: All our products are certified vegan; they never contain any ingredients of animal origin. We are also members of the PETA Beauty Without Bunnies Program, which certifies that none of our ingredients or products is ever tested on animals.
• Sustainable: Based on a life cycle analysis, our products and ingredients meet environmental criteria of biodegradability, aquatic toxicity, renewable supply, and end-of-life. And all our products are certified by UL-ECOLOGO.

Rigorous criteria to protect environmental and human health

After we confirm that an ingredient is vegan, hypoallergenic and sustainable, we ask its supplier to provide a signed document stating that it is free from known harmful substances. Then as a final measure of quality control, we randomly send ATTITUDE body care and household products to an independent laboratory to verify that they contain no carcinogens such as 1,4-Dioxane⁵. What’s more, our research and development team considers the EWG Environmental Health Risk Analysis for every ingredient we use. Each product developed must obtain a score between 0 and 2 on the EWG scale, which corresponds to a low risk to health. Only when an ingredient passes all these tests can we include it in our new product research and development process. In other words, we work hard to ensure your peace of mind.

Ready to learn more? Read the other posts in this series:

• Part One: Are product labels misleading?
• Part Two: What’s in your cleaning and beauty product?

Resources:

¹Kristof, Nicholas. “Contaminating Our Bodies With Everyday Products”. New York Times. May 9, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/contaminating-our-bodies-with-everyday-products.html
² “Exposing the Cosmetics Cover-Up”. Environmental Working Group. May 9, 2017. http://www.ewg.org/research/exposing-cosmetics-cover-up
³ “Carcinogens in Cosmetics”. Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. May 9, 2017. http://www.safecosmetics.org/get-the-facts/chemicals-of-concern/known-carcinogens/
⁴ “Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on cosmetic products”. Official Journal of the European Union. May 9, 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/health//sites/health/files/endocrine_disruptors/docs/cosmetic_1223_2009_regulation_en.pdf?18101461319748203790
⁵ “Natural Consumer Products Found Contaminated with Cancer-Causing 1,4 Dioxane in Groundbreaking Analysis Realeased by OCA”. Organic Consumers Association. March 15, 2008. https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/natural-consumer-products-found-contaminated-cancer-causing-14-dioxane-groundbreaking-analysis