Fantastic news coming out of Denmark.  The country’s environment ministry announced today that it was banning two parabens in products for kids under 3, making it the first in Europe to ban those pesky hormone disruptors. Hey, it only applies to kids’ products, but it’s a HUGE start. I’m curious to see what will happen. Will companies start reformulating for Denmark only? Will they just replace parabens with another cheap synthetic preservative like phenoxyethanol, which is also on our black list in the book? Will the EU follow suit? Will the United States? (That last one was a joke. Kind of.)

You can read all about it in Danish or stay tuned for more news from us. And if you speak Danish, would you be a doll and email us at nomoredirtylooks at gmail dot com? Grazie!

The team over at Mother Nature Network are asking if 2010 will be remembered as the year of living safely. It’s a good question. It certainly seems that way to us. Here’ssome big reasons why.

—Our book came out (cough!)

—The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 was introduced

—The Story of Stuff video came out

—BPA panic (and news coverage) exploded

—Canada deemed the stuff toxic

—Parabens were back in the hot seat

—The California Attorney General is suing over the Brazilian blowout

—And there’s an insane increase in the amount of greenwashing about toxics in personal care products—which is a great measuring stick for increased consumer awareness and concern.

So we ask you, smartypants readers. When did you first start thinking about the toxins you put on yourself every day? What was your a ha moment? Where did you learn about it?

Image via

Happy Friday! I was just cruising along the always enjoyable thatsfit.com when I came across a banner ad for Johnson’s new “natural” line for babies. Have any of you seen this?

It appears that Johnson’s has added three maybe-clean products to its baby line. Ingredients not found in these products include: parabens, dyes, silicones, lanolin, paraffin, petrolatum, phthalates or essential oils. Um, this is a big deal!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not running out to buy all my friends with babies this stuff—at this point cynicism is my knee-jerk reaction to any big company going green. But to see the baby brand of baby brands make this move—and offer full ingredient disclosure on its site—is huge. Maybe they’re just sick of getting sued, but I still see it as a victory for team natural, and proof that consumer awareness will change the market. Don’t ya think?

Image via

That’s right, this week over at GOOD we’re talking about your face—and what you don’t want near it. For those of you who have read the book, this top-10 list of bad chemicals will likely be familiar. Hey, nothing wrong with a little refresher, right? Here’s the repost:

A quick skim of this list reads like a prescription from Dr. Obvious. Clearly nobody wants lead or petroleum on their faces, right? But if you’ve been reading this series, our blog, or our book, you know that the cosmetics industry uses all kinds of ingredients in its products—some dangerous, some just plain confusing. What many of them have in common is that that don’t belong anywhere near our largest organ.

Here’s why: Many of them have pretty damning scientific data on record. They’re also not doing anything for your appearance—and in some cases they may be making matters worse. And thus, here is our mantra: If you can’t be sure a product is safe, and it isn’t doing your looks any favors, why bother using it? With that in mind, here’s a top-10 list of common ingredients, contaminants, and byproducts that are bad for your health and duds for your face.

	1. Petroleum and related petrochemicals The danger risk for this group of ingredients ranges from a mellow yellow to code red. Petroleum distillates are toxic solvents used in mascara, hairspray, and callus treatments. But your run-of-the-mill moisturizer probably contains something like mineral oil or paraffin in it, which are not considered dangerous per se, they’re just really, really bad for the environment and they suffocate the skin and may interfere with perspiration.
	2. Lead-tainted lipstick In 2009 the FDA discovered that of 20 lipsticks it tested, 20 were contaminated with lead. In many cases, the lead levels exceeded those set by that same FDA for candy—and since they don’t set restrictions for cosmetics, this feels like a fair model of comparison, right? Not so according to the FDA, which claims that we don’t eat our lipstick. Lead is a neurotoxin and lipstick goes on our mouths, which combine to make this debate officially ridiculous. Go for organic small-batch lipstick lines, or kiss a beet instead.
	3. Formaldehyde-leaching preservatives Our crusade for clean cosmetics started after the discovery of formaldehyde in a hair treatment (and later in our nail polish), but this known carcinogen is also “donated,” as the pros like to say, by preservatives such as quaternium-15, DMDM-hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, and diazolidinyl urea. That means it’s both pervasive and often unlisted, not appearing as an ingredient on labels. It’s considered a human carcinogen by many health agencies worldwide, and when it’s not giving rats nose cancer, it might still be giving you a rash.
	4. Fragrance It’s broken-record time, but here goes: Fragrance is in everything from your fancy perfume to your face wash. It represents a concoction of mystery ingredients, whose secrecy is protected by industry-ass-kissing trade laws. Lab studies by the EWG have shown them to contain a whole cocktail of hormone disruptors(among other things). Which is nice, since our hormones regulate, oh, everything: genital size, fertility, weight, acne, and beyond.
See the next five Images by Brianna Harden	5. Parabens This popular preservative group used in more than 10,000 products became very controversial when their presence was discovered in the tissue of breast tumors. What that data actually means is hotly debated but studies have shown that certain parabens mimic estrogen, the female sex hormone. This could be bad news for both men and women. Look for ingredients on the label with “paraben” as a suffix to avoid these bad boys.

As recently as last year, paraben paranoia was getting a little wild, leading lots of fake-natural companies to swap it out of their formulas. It seems to have died down a little—replaced by worry over BPA and phthalates—but I think we can expect that to heat up again, thanks to a new CDC study that says they found methylparaben and propylparaben in 99.1% and 92.7%, respectively, of the 2,500 urine samples they studied.

Ew! But hold on. Why is is bad if we all have parabens in our pee? A big problem with parabens is that most of us don’t have a clue what they are, or how worried we should be about them. Soooo let’s discuss.

Briefly: They are a category of chemical preservative used in literally every beauty product category, from your shampoo all the way down to your foot scrub. There are a few different kinds, and some are thought to be worse than others.

One particularly troubling study found parabens can mimic estrogen in the body. Then there’s another, from 2004—a hotly debated on, we might add—that found parabens in 18 of 20 breast cancer tumors examined. Now before we get all freaked out, it’s worth noting that there is zero proof that the presence of the parabens caused the tumors.

But if you extrapolate on parabens’ estrogenic quality, and the fact that excess estrogen may be linked to breast cancer, it adds up to something that sure sounds like it has the potential to be bad. But the fact is, we just don’t know yet. So as with many other chemicals used in cosmetics (and food, and drugs, and, and, and)—we advise caution. Finding products without parabens is worth it, and it’s easy!

Image via