Is it possible that your moisturizer is dangerous? Dangerous? Isn’t that a silly question, why could moisturizers possibly be dangerous? Aren’t they just intended to moisturize our skin?

There are many chemical and petrochemical ingredients found in moisturizers, as well as a wide range of other personal products such as cosmetics, bath and beauty products. Examples include mineral oil, an extremely common petrochemical derivative and sodium lauryl sulphate.

Many of these ingredients are manufactured in laboratories and they are used in personal products and skin care products such as moisturizers because they are particularly cheap. Mineral oil, for example, is cheaper to buy than to dispose of.

If you visit the website of the Environmental Working Group you will see that they maintain a database of information about all of the chemical and petrochemical ingredients used in our personal products such as moisturizers. This database is called the Cosmetic Safety Database and it’s perfectly possible for you to search it to discover many of the health risks of so many of the chemical ingredients used in moisturizers and other skin care products and others.

If you go to the Cosmetic Safety Database and search sodium lauryl sulphate you’ll find that it is listed as being linked to neurotoxicity, organ system toxicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, cancer, irritation to the skin and plenty more. The same will apply if you search for mineral oil.

Studies have shown that many of these ingredients commonly found in skin care and anti aging products such as moisturizers can have negative health risks. For example a study recently published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology called “Tumorigenic Effect of Some Commonly Used Moisturizing Creams when Applied Topically to UVB-Pretreated High-Risk Mice” demonstrated that a number of moisturizers which contained mineral oil and sodium lauryl sulphate, when applied 5 days a week for 17 weeks, “increased significantly the rate of formation of tumors and the rate of increase in tumor size per mouse”.

The researchers were extremely surprised from this result because this was not what they were studying. They were actually studying to see if caffeine could cause skin cancer in mice. When confronted with this result the researchers requested that the manufacturer of the moisturizer in question manufacture another moisturizer without any mineral oil or sodium lauryl sulphate in it and when tested they discovered that using this moisturizer produced no effect at all on the growth of tumors in the mice.

When searching at the Cosmetic Safety Database you can search any of the chemical or petrochemical ingredients that are so commonly found in modern skin care and anti aging moisturizers, and you will see studies such as this one listed in the search results for you to read.

Although it may never have occurred to you there is a wide range of health risks that you may be exposed to because of the use of chemicals and petrochemical ingredients in modern moisturizers and other anti aging skin care products, it is clear that the health risks exist.

So should you decide never again to moisturize? Should you decide to avoid all anti aging skin care products because they contain dangerous chemical ingredients? No. There are alternatives.

There are small but high quality niche skin care companies, one in particular, which see this as an opportunity to get a toehold in the market by manufacturing high quality natural skin care products such as natural moisturizers using ingredients which are known to be safe and which are also more effective than the chemical alternatives. Ingredients used in these products include such natural ingredients as the oils from nuts and fruits.

Of course it is extremely difficult for a small niche skin care company to compete with massive multinational companies in the skin care market, where billions of dollars are at stake. However these companies, one in particular, manufacture high quality skin care lines that are extremely effective and are comprised only of known safe and natural ingredients such as the oils from fruits and nuts. The big name companies don’t use these ingredients because they are more expensive than the chemical alternatives.

It may take longer to find but if you manage to track down some of these natural skin care products, one range in particular, and try them you will be very pleasantly surprised at the results you get. Firstly you won’t be risking your health because they use only known safe ingredients and secondly you will find that the products are extremely effective. But it can sometimes be difficult to find these products because the small niche companies that manufacture them cannot compete with the big brands on television advertising and so do not advertise on television at all.

So the bad news is that if you use modern big name moisturizers the chances are that they are laden with chemical additives which, whilst very cheap for the manufacturer to use, may be putting your health at risk. The good news is that there are natural skin care products available which are highly effective at producing better skin health and which don’t use the chemical ingredients.

On my website about natural skin care I try to alert my readers to these problems and point them in the direction of safe are more natural alternatives such as natural moisturizers and other natural anti aging products. Visit my website to find out more.

Want to learn more about the best Natural Skin Care Products? Or more about the Best Moisturizer? Visit Peter’s Website Natural Health-Natural Skin Care.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Skin Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.