What's on your skin?

What’s ON Your Skin?

by Nicky Webber


Do yourself a favour and check out the chemicals in the items you wash with and slather on your skin. Apart from avoiding chemicals and toxins in foods and health supplements – in recent years I have become more concerned about parabens and other destructive chemicals in cosmetics, shampoos, shaving gels, toothpastes and soaps. It’s an insidious thing and hard to combat!

There’s some alarming stuff going on and what I thought were eco friendly and gentle – toxin and chemical free – are in fact NOT so. The whole thing is overwhelming so I decided just to focus on one step at a time. So soap is first off the ranks. Applying the “less is more” approach – I figured that a bar of soap or body wash with 20 ingredients in it has to be suspect. But I also found some chemical nasties in so called “natural” and “pure” soap. In fact the only thing natural about it was the cardboard box it came in!

So you may be wondering why you should avoid parabens, for instance? And of course there are pros and cons – but if you are serious about health it would be wise to err on the side of caution. Parabens mimic the hormone estrogen, which is now known to play a role in the development of breast cancers. Back in the July 2002 issue of the Archives of Toxicology, (and there’s been many more disturbing studies since), Dr. S. Oishi of the Department of Toxicology, Tokyo Metropolitan Research Laboratory of Public Health reported that exposure of newborn male mammals to butylparaben “adversely affects the secretion of testosterone and the function of the male reproductive system.”

In various articles I have read, the increasing infertility rates in males seems to be connected to this and other chemical pollutants in our food chain. Add to this the whole issue around plastics and their contribution to alarming negative estrogen levels in our water and foods and you can see this is cause for some concern.

Anyway I got so frustrated trying to find paraben and chemical free soap that I started to investigate making my own! I intend spending the Xmas break experimenting with several different combos. I have already managed to make two sample batches – and they now need a few weeks to cure. But I know that only distilled water, organic coconut, olive, almond and grape seed oils along with sweet orange and lime essential oils are in them. They smell good enough to eat!

I have a rough plan to try and make some more – and give them to Health Script customers as part of washing away the worries of last year and enjoying 2011 to the fullest with a clean “slate” approach. I will have to think of something amusing along those lines – it’s only a kernel of a thought at present but have a look at www.soapcraft.co.nz and give it a go. It’s fun and creative – AND you are avoiding all those nasty chemicals in your soap. Now how to tackle the other long list of other things I need to replace with good ingredients………..