Top Toxic Beauty Ingredients To Avoid
Are the skincare and cosmetic products in your beauty cabinet toxic for your health? Not to alarm you, but unfortunately the beauty industry isn’t currently as regulated as it should be. Products are being sold that could have potentially harmful effects to your skin, health, and the environment. Let’s discuss some of the toxic beauty ingredients to avoid.
What is Toxic Beauty?
Conventional skincare and beauty products are commonly misbranded to claim that they are ‘natural’, ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘green’ when the ingredients they are made of could be harmful to your health. This greenwashing makes it difficult to decipher which products are safe unless you do some digging on your own. Our best advice is to become familiar with toxic beauty ingredients so that you can read the ingredients list of your current products or any that you are considering purchasing to make an informed decision on whether you want it to come into contact with your body and that of your family.
Top Toxic Beauty Ingredients To Avoid
While this list is by no means exhaustive, we have included some of the common toxic beauty ingredients that are found in some conventional beauty products that you can be on the lookout for to avoid.
Parabens
Parabens are sometimes used as a preservative in cosmetic products. The issue with parabens is that they can interfere with the body’s endocrine system and produce adverse developmental, reproductive, neurological, and immune effects in both humans and wildlife, according to the National Institute of Health. Parabens can be listed in ingredients lists as: propylparaben, butylparaben, isobutylparaben, methylparaben, and polyparaben.
Petroleum Jelly
Petroleum Jelly is typically used as a moisturising agent in balms, lotions, lip products and makeup remover. Unless Petroleum Jelly is refined properly, it can act as human carcinogens and are known skin irritants. Petroleum Jelly can be listed in ingredients lists as: white petroleum soft paraffin, mineral oil, paraffin oil, white mineral oil, and liquid paraffin.
Fragrance
Fragrance is usually an umbrella term for all the ingredients that makeup a scent in a product. The issue is that the individual ingredients aren’t usually listed and could potentially contain endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, developmental toxins, neurotoxins, and more. Check your ingredients lists for things like fragrance, eau de toilette, perfume, essential oil blend, and aroma.
Phthalates
Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break, according to the CDC. It is commonly used in nail polishes, hair sprays, and fragrances. Phthalates have been linked to endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and cancer. Look out for ingredients like phthalate, DEP, DBP, DEHP. and fragrance.
Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)
BHT and BHA are used as preservatives in beauty products like lip products, hair products, makeup, sunscreen, antiperspirant, deodorant, fragrance, and creams. They are both known endocrine disruptors, possible carcinogens, and skin irritants. Look for BHT and BHA in ingredients lists.
We recommend researching the many other potentially harmful toxic ingredients to avoid in your beauty products, so you are completely informed.
Our Willow Rose Ingredients
At Willow Rose, we have done diligent research into all the ingredients that we use in our lipsticks and can assure you that our products are completely safe. All the ingredients in our lipsticks and our manufacturing processes are organic, natural, paraben free, vegan and cruelty free to provide you with the ultimate clean beauty experience. We use ingredients like aloe vera, organic olive oil, cupuacu seed butter, organic castor seed oil, and organic sweet almond oil. For specific ingredients for each of our products, please visit the ingredients section on each product page.
We hope you are now more informed on what toxic beauty ingredients to avoid putting your mind at ease that the products you are using are indeed safe. If you have any questions about clean beauty or our lipsticks, please comment below and we will happily help. And as always, follow us on Instagram at @willowrosecosmetics for all things Willow Rose and information about our product launches.
