2/11/2009

Toxic Teens! Chemicals in Cosmetics Are Dangerous
















Toxic Teens: Common Cosmetics Chemicals Alter Hormones, Disrupt Puberty
Written by Derek Markham
Published on September 25th, 2008

Teenage Girls are Exposed to Hormone Altering Chemicals During Critical Development of Reproductive System

A new study on teenagers and toxic chemicals was released by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), and it has some very disturbing implications. Laboratory tests revealed that adolescent girls across America are contaminated with chemicals commonly used in cosmetics and body care products. The study of 20 teens found an average of 13 different hormone-altering chemicals in their bodies.

The laboratory tests found 16 chemicals from 4 different chemical families - phthalates, triclosan, parabens, and musks - in the blood and urine samples of the girls. Studies have linked these chemicals to potential health effects, including cancer and hormone disruption. This work represents the first focused look at exposure data for parabens in teens, and indicates that young women are widely exposed to this common class of cosmetic preservatives, with methylparaben and propylparaben detected in every single girl tested.

Every single girl tested had detectable levels of toxic cosmetics chemicals in their blood or urine!

How is this possible?
» Read more on Beauty & Beauty Products
» See peer reviews of Vitamins, Supplements and Herbal Remedies at Green Home

Federal statutes do not require companies to test products or ingredients for safety before they are sold. Nearly all personal care products contain ingredients that have not been assessed for safety by an accountable agency, and are not required to meet safety standards. Manufacturers can use almost any chemical they want in their products!

Adolescent girls typically experiment with increasing numbers and varieties of body care products. The girls studied used an average of 17 personal care products each day, while the average adult woman uses an average of only 12 products daily, increasing their exposure to these chemicals.

The Toxic Substances Control Act

The Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulates all industrial chemicals in the United States, was created over 30 years ago, and it assumes chemicals in everyday products are innocent until proven guilty. The products we use every day can contain thousands of ingredients that have never been tested for safety.

The personal care products industry polices itself through an industry panel called the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR).

This is an industry-funded panel of scientists that has reviewed only 11% of all ingredients in cosmetics. An investigation found that the panel ignores serious health concerns such as cancer, birth defects, and hormone disruption, and finds more than 99% of ingredients reviewed safe as used. Companies are not bound by the panel’s restrictions or recommendations, so compliance is entirely voluntary.

“Hormone-altering chemicals shouldn’t be in cosmetics, especially in products used by millions of teenage girls. Their bodies are still developing and may be especially vulnerable to risks from these exposures. Most parents don’t know that the eyeliner, lipstick or shampoo they allow their daughters to use probably contains at least one chemical linked to a number of serious health concerns. Teenage girls are at a particularly vulnerable age and these exposures could trigger a subtle sequence of damaging effects that leads to health problems later in life.” - Rebecca Sutton, Ph.D, author of the report and Staff Scientist at EWG

The Environmental Working Group has put together a shoppers guide to safer cosmetics to print out and take shopping with you, and a searchable cosmetics safety database to help guide purchasing of clean personal care and cosmetics products.

EWG’s safer shopping tips:

  • Use fewer, simpler products
  • Don’t trust claims like “dermatologist-tested,” “natural,” or “organic.” Read the ingredient label instead
  • Take label warnings seriously. They indicate hazardous chemicals.

2/04/2009

Discover The Treasure. Lluvia Skin Renewal System


Introducing – Lluvia™ Rainforest Essence Skin Renewal System from the Amazon Rainforest, nature’s purest source.

Lluvia is nature's Ultimate Recipe for Youthful, Glowing Skin.

With Lluvia™ Skin Renewal System you will:
  • Cleanse naturally with no harmful foaming agents
  • Gently polish and refine your skin
  • Refresh and hydrate your skin, and uplift your spirit
  • Diminish the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles
  • Deeply nourish tissue layers for a youthful, radiant glow
  • Balance hydration and lock in moisture

Beware: Most Body Care Products Are Toxic

Recognize Toxic Chemicals in Body Care Products
by Jo Hartley, citizen journalist
(NaturalNews)

A common belief among consumers is that products labeled "natural" must be safe and beneficial to consume or use. Often the ingredient lists on these "natural" products contain chemicals that are unrecognizable and unfamiliar to most people. The bad news is that the products that are labeled as "natural" by manufacturers are usually far from natural and safe. The good news is that it is possible to be an informed consumer with the information necessary to avoid these products.

Learning about these toxic chemicals is the first step toward avoiding them and this is quite simple to do, using the Internet as a tool.

Almost every synthetic chemical that exists has a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) that contains the facts about the chemical as well as any potential dangers associated with human health. The MSDS lists a summary of the facts for each chemical and summarizes other facts such as hazard identification, first aid instructions, exposure limits, and other names that are associated with the specific chemical.

It can be very surprising to read MSDS information for "natural" chemicals and find information warning of dangers associated with these chemicals. One can't help but wonder how and why these chemicals can be labeled as natural under these conditions.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) has stipulated that a MSDS must be created for any chemicals that are considered hazardous according to criteria described in the Hazard Communication Standard. All hazardous chemicals must be indexed and an MSDS must be published for each of them.

An enlightening exercise for any consumer who is concerned about toxic chemicals is to perform a Google search for specific ingredients contained in his/her personal care products. Entering the specific chemical name along with "MSDS" in the search field will return MSDS results for the specific chemicals searched for.

Another resource for researching specific ingredients is www.hazard.com/msds. Within this website are three search options:

1.Search by manufacturer
2.Search by name of chemical
3.Search the Chemical Toxicity Database


Chemicals to Avoid in Personal Care Products:
  • Cocoamide DEA, diethanolamine, TEA, triethanolamine, MEA -- Used as a shampoo thickener and foam stabilizer. According to the MSDS for Cocoamide DEA, this chemical is harmful if swallowed or inhaled and contact with skin, eyes, and clothing should be avoided.
  • Propylene glycol, propylene oxide, polyethylene glycol -- Listed on the FDA government website as a known carcinogen. This is a common ingredient in many moisturizers and lotions. It has also been connected with kidney and liver damage in scientific testing. Propylene glycol has also now been connected with common skin rashes and skin damage.
  • Sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate -- A common ingredient in shampoos and liquid soaps. SLS may be the most dangerous ingredient used in personal care products. SLS is the active ingredient in garage floor cleaners, engine degreasers and industrial strength soaps. This is a very corrosive chemical used to clean industrial and greasy surfaces.
  • Sodium Fluoride -- The fluoride that is added to drinking water is hydrofluoric acid. This is a compound of fluorine, which is actually a chemical byproduct of aluminum, steel, cement, phosphate, and other assorted ingredients. Fluoride in this form has no nutritional value and is one of the most caustic industrial chemicals. Fluoride is also an active ingredient in rat and cockroach poisons.
  • Mineral Oil, Petrolatum and Coal Tar -- Used in many moisturizing products. Mineral oil is a petroleum by-product that interferes with skin's ability to eliminate toxins. Because of this it promotes acne and other skin disorders. Mineral oil has also been associated with premature aging. Any product that contains mineral oil may be contaminated with cancer causing Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons.

Consumers who are armed with accurate information about toxic ingredients contained in common personal care products will be able to make informed decisions that will protect their health.

1/30/2009

Non-Stick Cookware Chemicals Linked To Infertility

Non-Stick Cookware Chemicals Cause 150 Percent Increase in Infertility
By Mike Adams, January 29, 2009

Is eating off non-stick cookware a new form of chemical birth control?

New research published in the journal Human Reproduction reveals that women with the highest levels of Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) in their blood are 150% more likely to have difficulty conceiving a child. PFCs are commonly used in non-stick cookware, and eating off non-stick cookware inevitably results in the consumption of these chemicals. Even so-called "diamond" non-stick surfaces are easily scratched.

A previous report by NaturalNews exposed the truth about so-called "diamond" non-stick cookware surfaces. See: http://www.naturalnews.com/021059.html

PFCs are also known to impair fetal growth, harm the liver and suppress immune system function.

They're also highly toxic to the environment, both during the manufacture and disposal of non-stick cookware products.

So why do the chemicals remain legal in the U.S. and other countries?

Because they're made by powerful corporations like DuPont (the owner of the Teflon trademark). Those corporations hold great sway over U.S. regulators, and they routinely distort the truth to hide the dangers of their chemicals. DuPont, for example, illegally withheld information about the health risks of its chemicals from the EPA, says a Bloomberg article from 2004 (http://www.ewg.org/node/16471).

It's almost routine these days for corporations to lie about the dangers of the chemicals they produce.

To this day, DuPont insists PFOA and Teflon are perfectly safe to cook on.

1/26/2009

India's Waterways: A Toxic Stew of Chemicals

India's Waterways: A Toxic Stew of Pharmaceutical Chemicals Dumped from Big Pharma Factories
by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews.com)

Many of the pharmaceuticals consumed in the United States are made in India, where labor is cheap and environmental laws are lenient on powerful corporations. U.S. drug companies are exploiting this situation to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of high-profit pharmaceuticals in India, where ingredients purchased for a few cents can be re-sold to U.S. health patients for hundreds of dollars (the markup on some drugs is literally over 500,000%).

There's something else Big Pharma doesn't want you to know about its drug operations in India: Big Pharma's manufacturing facilities dump millions of doses of toxic pharmaceutical chemicals directly into India's waterways. Researchers were recently stunned to discover that 100 pounds of a powerful antibiotic called ciprofloxacin was being dumped into a local stream every day! That's a quantity of antibiotics that could treat an entire city of 90,000 people every day.

But that's not all: The same waterway contained an astonishing 21 pharmaceutical chemicals reports the Associated Press, some at levels that were 150 times the highest levels of contamination found in U.S. waterways. (And even the levels found in the U.S. were quite alarming.)

Big Pharma as a Major Chemical Polluter

These findings are now added to the revelations of pharmaceutical contamination unveiled by the Associated Press last year, which found that the public water supplies in virtually all U.S. cities tested were contaminated with pharmaceutical chemicals. What's emerging from these disturbing discoveries is a picture of Big Pharma as a global corporate polluter that's dumping chemicals into the world's sensitive waterways, polluting villages, cities and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outright refused to regulate pharmaceuticals as environmental hazards. With Obama in the White House, it remains to be seen whether the new administration will clamp down on pharmaceutical pollution.

Big Pharma now has something in common with Exxon, Cargill, Alcoa and Chevron: The outrageous pollution of the environment with toxic chemicals. But in many ways, Big Pharma's chemicals are far more dangerous. HRT drugs, for example, are toxic at parts per billion, and they're now being found in public water supplies around the world. Municipal water treatment facilities, by the way, don't remove pharmaceutical chemicals from the water! Whatever HRT drugs, psychiatric drugs or other chemicals that exist in the water are passed right through the water treatment centers which unwisely add yet more chemicals (fluoride and chlorine, typically) to the toxic brew. Citizens drinking public water supplies in India, the U.K., Canada and the United States are now verifiably participating in a grand experiment involving the mass medication of the population with low levels of utterly untested pharmaceutical combinations.

How long will this be allowed to continue before the environmental protection authorities clamp down on pharmaceutical dumping?

So far, environmental regulators have done nothing to stop the dumping of drugs into public water supplies. This is true even in America, where hospitals routinely dispose of drugs by simply flushing them down the toilet (injecting them directly into the water supply consumed downstream). Consumers also need to realize that the drugs you swallow are also environmental pollutants. Many drugs pass right through the human body unaltered, where they are flushed back into the water supply that's consumed downstream. (Yes, the toilet water from one city becomes the drinking water of the next city down the river. If you didn't know this, you have a LOT to learn about the water supply, and you probably won't like what you learn... especially if you live downstream...)

Big Pharma is Contaminating Our Planet

It's becoming quite clear that the pharmaceutical industry is now directly contributing to the mass chemical contamination of our planet. By allowing factories to dump drugs into local waterways, by tolerating a "flush it" mentality at hospitals and pharmacies, and by drugging consumers with an endless brew of vaccines, medications and toxic substances such as chemotherapy agents, the pharmaceutical industry has "achieved" the distinction as a major world polluter.

Those who take pharmaceuticals are, in fact, directly contributing to the chemical contamination of the planet. That's why getting off medications is not only good for your health; it's also good for the planet. You can't be "green" if you're taking medications. Consuming pharmaceuticals is simply incompatible with sustainable life on Earth. And the more drugs are manufactured and consumed, the worse this problem will become. Let me put it this way: The survival of our planet depends on the demise of Big Pharma. You can save the planet, or you can save Big Pharma. But not both. Which would you rather have around for future generations? Living oceans, blue skies, clean water and healthy species? Or sterile oceans, dwindling aquatic life, mutant human babies and widespread cancer, infertility and shortened lifespans? It's your choice: Mother Nature, or Big Pharma.

Centuries of the Chemical Destruction of our Planet

The devastating long-term effects of this chemical contamination of our world's waterways have yet to be truly understood at all. The chemicals being dumped into our environment by Big Pharma today may pollute our planet for hundreds of years, destroying aquatic ecosystems, killing fish populations and causing widespread physical deformities across many species.

Combine this with all the pesticide runoff already being used across the planet and it becomes quite clear that the human race has set itself on a path of self destruction. How's that? Because humans don't exist in isolation from the natural world. When we destroy or disrupt the planet's delicate ecosystems through chemical contamination, we unleash a backlash of effects that put the entire human race in jeopardy: Outbreaks of infectious disease, plummeting fish stocks in ocean waters, rising risks of superbugs across the population and even long-term disruptions in the food supply due to pharmaceutical contamination of food crops and soil microorganisms. (Irrigation water being sprayed on crops is now also contaminated with pharmaceuticals...)

Stated bluntly, what's happening is that the pharmaceutical industry is poisoning our world -- and it's doing it for profit. While their factories in India are dumping millions of doses of antibiotics (and a brew of twenty other drugs) into the water supply each year, they're importing those drugs into the U.S. and selling them at monopoly prices to gullible consumers, all while pretending they're on some sort of humanitarian mission to help people.

The truth is that Big Pharma is committing crimes against Nature, and we'll all end up paying the price for allowing these crimes to continue under our watch. Every living thing in our world is interconnected: You can't poison the waterways with a toxic brew of dangerous chemicals and expect to be insulated from the effects of that forever. Sometimes I stand back in sheer astonishment at how short-sighted human civilization truly is. Today our population demonstrates a striking lack of understanding about the web of life on our planet combined with an outright abandonment of ethics and morals. Companies (and many people) simply do whatever benefits them at the moment, regardless of the long-term consequences.

The pharmaceutical industry exemplifies this destructive philosophy best, as it actually works to trap people in a cycle of disease treatment, all while raking in obscene profits for poisoning the people and the planet.

What a Shameful Business Model.

It's beyond shame, really. It's a crime. And it's time we put an end to these crimes against the People and against the planet.

Once again, I call for the arrest and prosecution of Big Pharma CEOs and executives for their role in planning and executing these crimes against humanity and Nature. In the U.S., this must be pursued by the Dept. of Justice, since the FDA, EPA and FTC remain in a tight conspiracy with the drug industry and will do nothing to bring their protected corporations to justice.

You can help support the effort to bring these criminals to justice (and end the chemical contamination of our planet by Big Pharma) by contacting your elected representatives (in any country) and letting them know how outraged you are about the widespread chemical pollution caused by the pharmaceutical industry.

Save the planet. End the era of Big Pharma.