With all the talk about BPA in bottles and formula, I start to wonder about how much of what I put on my skin ends up in my breastmilk. I do not intend to be alarmist, I just thought I would share what I found.
Unfortunately, at least some of what we ingest, breathe and put on our skin ends up in our breastmilk. According to Think Before You Pink, 1/3 of cosmetics (including Avon, Estée Lauder, Revlon, Mary Kay) use "known, probable or possible human carcinogens."
"Toxic Bad Guys"
The Environmental Working Group created a great product database called Skin Deep which has ingredient lists and rates the safety of the products listed and gives reasons for the ratings. This has been a great resource for me. Not every product on the market is listed, but there is a feature on the site where you can enter in the ingredients from your product's label and Skin Deep will create a rating sheet based on the info you entered.
Trukid has a line of products (which we have not tried yet) that are free of a list (that they complied) of "Toxic Bad Guys." They list the big offenders on a handy printable shopping guide because there is no way the average person could remember all of those crazy names.
My Plan:
When it comes to products that touch the largest amount of skin on a regular basis (like foundation and body lotions), I am going to try to find brands that use no (or less) toxic chemicals. Lipsticks/gloss have a high chance of being ingested, so I will watch out for those too. Products like mascara have a lower chance of being absorbed because they are not touching skin so I won't worry too much about those. Also an area of concern is my son's eczema cream that we slather on twice daily. We will probably start using pure shea butter instead of the Aquaphor we have been using.
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