Pure Truth About ‘All Natural’ Products & Other Beauty MythsWritten by Deanna Ferber
Myth: "All Natural" Beauty Products Are BestPure Truth: First of all, there are not really any ‘all natural’ products available for commercial sale. Unless you make them yourself, and are prepared to refrigerate them & use them within a few days, you really can’t find any. This is because, just as in food products, ingredients are perishable. Just think what would happen to a jar of ’natural’ ingredients sitting on your vanity... The smell alone would keep me from opening lid, let alone touching it! So beauty products, like foods, use preservatives to give them added shelf time. When you buy products, they have to last through storage with company, shipping and still have some time left for you to use them. As for term ‘natural’ it is not even regulated. This means any company can call their product natural, no matter what it contains. Myth: Chemicals Are Bad For Your Skin Pure Truth: Not all chemicals are bad for your skin. Just as medicines are chemical or synthetic versions of medicinal plants, so science of chemistry brings us beauty products. Many natural ingredients have been re-created in synthetic form for ease of use & distribution, which can also make them cheaper to supply. Myth: Product Packaging Does Nothing But Add To The Price Pure Truth: Many people believe there is no importance to packaging of beauty products, that bottles and jars are just made ’neat looking’ in order to make us buy products. This can be true, but with some of ’new’ beauty ingredients, packaging has a much larger, more important role. Some ingredients are considered unstable, meaning they are affected by sunlight and air exposure. For those ingredients, like retinol and some antioxidants, packaging is a big deal. If you want to get some use of what you paid for, look for packaging that limits products exposure. This may mean a dark colored container, or those similar to pharmaceutical products.
| | THE FEMINIST DEBATE: MENSTRUAL PRODUCTSWritten by Julia Schopick
When ecologically-minded feminists debate their menstrual product options, they most often advocate using organic cotton tampons and pads, rather than those made from synthetic materials like rayon. The reason most of these women choose organic cotton versions centers around fact that synthetics have been linked to potential health hazards, such as Toxic Shock Syndrome and dioxin exposure. One option that is often left out of such discussions (as well as media programs and articles) is reusable menstrual products. The truth is, before tampons and throwaway menstrual pads came on market in 1930s, women used rags, which were kind to environment because they were washable and hence, reusable. It wasn't until '30s, and in years since then, that more and more ecologically-minded women began to discover that they had cause for concern. After all, it is extremely wasteful to use a product for just a few hours and then toss it. And according to most estimates, average woman will use nearly 12,000 of these products during her lifetime. That's quite a lot of garbage! Whether you flush a tampon or pad down toilet, or throw it in garbage, it is going to be problematic for environment. If flushed down toilet, these products can clog sewer line; or they can go on to play havoc with water treatment plant. (I understand that in 9 out of 10 plumbing problems in apartment buildings, homes and offices, culprits are reusable menstrual products!) When you throw them in garbage, these reusables end up in landfills, where they probably won't biodegrade for many years, because they lack light, water and circulating air. (Did you know that people have dug into landfills and found newspapers from 50 years earlier that are still readable?) And experts estimate that plastic tampon applicators may actually take 300 to 500 years to break down. But since tampons have only been around for seventy years, we can't yet be positive exactly how long applicators will take to biodegrade.
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