Drop Dead, not Gorgeous 'Beauty Products' - 2: Sustainable Living at Home

Getting all dolled up may attract a mate, but it may also mess with your  hormones. Sustainable Living at Home to the rescue. In the last issue, we reviewed how compounds in shampoos, body products, cosmetics, and the like can contain harmful carcinogens. This time around let's take a brief look at one of the lesser known but ecologically catastrophic offenders, endocrine disruptors. These are even more unregulated than carcinogens, and through biomagnification, their ability to immediately impact habitats and other species is exponential.

Offender #2: Endocrine Disruptors. Those innocuous looking beauty products are producing anything but beauty when it comes to hormones and sustainable living. Endocrine disruptors essentially interrupt the amounts of estrogen and testosterone within an animal. This has been scientifically proven to lead to some devastating health conditions including: infertility, miscarriages, birth defects, reproductive and breast cancer, and thyroid, heart, lung, liver, and kidney damage. Phew! That is a whole lotta impact for a whole little product.

Outside of human health factors, these products are often washed down the drain, such as hair care products, detergents, and soaps. Once it leaves your home it hops onto the path toward your local watershed. On the way it may be stopped by some mitigation ponds, but for endocrine disruptors, these safeguards do little to protect the animal species on the other side. Once the endocrine disruptors are released into a watershed, their impact explodes. They can sit in underwater aquifers, travel downstream and infect more watersheds, or gather in lakes. For animals with more rapid reproduction rates, such as frogs, the effects have been devastating. Frogs exposed to endocrine disruptors were unable to fully develop into a specific gender. Therefore, they were unable to reproduce. Extinction by endocrine disruptors.

A study found that the water downstream from a women's prison was so infested with endocrine disruptors that the ecological system actually shut down. Animals were unable to mature their internal organs, including their gender organs, and died.

So what can we do? As a consumer look for the following well-known endocrine disruptors: Parabens, surfactants, and phthalates. The trick is, most manufacturers have stopped listing them as such after extensive scientific criticism. Phthalates, for example, are rarely listed as such. So for now keep those three compounds in mind as well as the compounds in carcinogens. This series will then elaborate on the three well-known endocrine disruptors to help you understand their impact on human health and ecological health, their 'other names', and how to avoid them in the shopping aisles.

More information and tips keep your eyes on this Series on Beauty's Real Do's and Don'ts for Sustainable Living.

Photo Credit: Samuel S. Epstein's Book Toxic Beauty.