I Like Natural Handmade Soap Just Because

For the past year, I’ve been slowly exchanging my chemical-filled body creams and shampoos for more natural products. Many people who know me would probably think my obsession started with Lush, a handmade cosmetics company, coming to San Francisco. To straighten things out, it actually started when I was taking my Physical Chemistry course.

Awhile before I took the course, I somehow began to be concerned with parabens in my body creams. One of our assignments in class was to write a term paper on a topic related to physical chemistry and I chose to write about absorption of parabens into our skin and paraben run-offs from our showering products.

Parabens are a group of chemicals widely used as preservatives in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Common parabens include methylparaben, ethylparaben and butylparaben. If you look at the list of ingredients of your shampoo/conditioner, lotion, shaving cream, toothpaste, etc, you’ll see at least one of the paraben’s family members embedded in the list. Parabens, in the most part, are considered safe. A small percentage of the general population may be allergic to paraben, which causes irritation or contact dermatitis. What really concern me are the new studies that say parabens are endocrine disruptors and have estrogenic activities. One scientific study reports that parabens were found in samples of breast tumors. Speculation linking paraben to tumor growth is based on the fact that the molecular structure resembles that of estrogen.

The estrogenic activity of parabens increase with the length of the alkyl group, denoted from their prefixes. Animal experiments have shown that the estrogenic activity of parabens is much weaker than estradiol. In an in vivo study, the effect of butylparaben was determined to be approximately 100,000 times weaker than estradiol, although this effect was only observed when employing a dose level which was 25,000 times higher than is actually used to preserve products. There is still not enough research to show that parabens to pose a health risk.

Parabens aren’t the only synthetics I’m trying to avoid. There is also dimethicone (usually in hair products), said to leave build-up in your hair, and new to the list, sodium lauryl sulfates.

Getting back to the point, I’ve been sucked too deep into the ‘natural’ realm that I’ve lost sight of why I’m really changing my lifestyle. In the beginning, I was doing it for my well-being and for the environment. Now I don’t buy any product without looking at the ingredients beforehand. I’ve become so mind-boggled by all the debates about the naturalness and effectiveness and the cost benefit analysis of the products that I feel like I’m not doing anything for the environment or for myself.