There are contaminants in your everyday products. Skincare, makeup, lotions and scrubs. 

Although regulations and approvals from the Food and Drug Administration are necessary for launch, behind the flashy labels and enticing smells, a long ingredient list full of unintelligible words often means that the product is full of harmful chemicals, some of which can even damage vital systems in your body, like the endocrine or reproductive systems. Often behind the label, there are many more toxins brewing that corporations don’t want the public to know. 

PhD student Jennifer Smith studies toxicology at the University of Michigan. She has seen that there are chemicals in all beauty products. Most chemicals that can be found in products are intentionally placed. For example, a chemical called titanium dioxide is placed in many products to make them appear much brighter. This certain chemical makes bright pigments pop in products. But there are lots of chemicals and metals, such as lead, that are unintentionally mixed into beauty products during formulation. However, there are often few regulations for these unintended ingredients. 

“There’s a really common misconception that because we’re in a first world nation we have a lot of apparent regulatory bodies that are regulating products and that the things we buy on our store shelves have been vetted, and that’s just absolutely not true,” Smith said. “No one knows what’s in your products. No one is really checking. So you should never trust that something you’re purchasing is not unregulated.” 

Lots of chemicals commonly found in everyday products are extremely harmful to humans. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of chemicals that are classified as the “forever chemicals,” are extremely toxic and carcinogenic. Regardless, companies purposefully put them into many lipsticks to keep them from wearing or rubbing off. PFAS has been found to cause kidney disease, preeclampsia and prostate cancer and they additionally suppress the effectiveness of vaccines. 

According to Smith, the most harmful chemicals in beauty products are endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs. EDCs can have multiple effects on the body: from blocking hormones to  changing the levels of hormones in blood, and tricking the body into thinking that it itself is a hormone. These effects can cause alterations in fertility, cancers, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders, among many other life-threatening problems. The best and simplest way to avoid these chemicals is to reduce your use of products as often as you can. 

“What I generally do is try to minimize all my use of products in general,” Smith said. “It’s like eating ice cream, you know it’s never good for you, but on occasion, you can get ice cream that isn’t jazzed up with a bunch of artificial flavors and a ton of sugar. That’s probably what I would say with beauty products. You should probably be avoiding them as much as you can.”

Unfortunately, less contaminated beauty products tend to be more expensive than more contaminated ones; producing beauty products in smaller batches ensures that quality-controlled testing can be performed, but this extra testing costs money. The ingredient list is a good place to start to estimate the amount of added chemicals: products with a longer list tend to have more added chemicals, which increases the chance that those chemicals are contaminated with PFAS, EDCs, or other dangerous additives. 

There are many apps that help detect how harmful a product is. One that Smith recommends is the Skin Deep app from the Environmental Working Group, which scores how toxic a particular product and the chemicals in it are. 

Beautycounter, Drunk Elephant, Tata Harper, Ilia Beauty and Herbivore Botanicals are safer beauty brands that Smith recommends . Even though these brands are much better to use than ones that have added chemicals, they still aren’t entirely toxin-free. The best way to avoid contaminating yourself is to distance yourself from beauty products as much as you can. 

“Anyone who tells you that there is a clean beauty brand that’s completely safe is lying,” Smith said. “That’s not possible. People will mark up beauty brands as being extremely clean and there are probably some unique benefits, but it’s not probably making enough of an impact to be worth the 200% upcharge. You just need to moderate your use.”

However, there are other ways to choose safe products. Before deciding to buy any products, CHS health teacher Becky Brent takes a step back and asks herself if they are actually necessary.

“It’s asking yourself, why do you think you need these things?” Brent said. “What about your esteem or your concept of yourself is lacking to the point where you think a product is going to fulfill that? Is it something you actually need? Or is this just a want? Is this just something that’s being pushed on you by society’s norms?”

New trends and norms on social media, along with a continuous stream of exposure to content, have pushed kids, sometimes even as young as 10 years old, to want to use skincare and makeup products meant for adults. Serums containing hyaluronic and glycolic acid, anti-aging moisturizers and brightening creams are being marketed toward children. Using psychological factors like emotional resonance, the idea that they may need a certain product to feel good about themselves or that having an extensive skincare routine is an important constant comfort in their life. By being projected into social media, roughly 40% of 8-12-year-olds — around nine million children — are affected. New data taken from purchases worldwide, and composed by Statista is also indicating that the children’s skincare industry is on the rise, and is expected to increase by a rough 7% each year. 

“The fact that we’re even forcing this ideology of beauty onto little kids is offensive in my mind,” Brent said. “We see beauty standards and expectations shift throughout culture. They’re always changing, and this is the industry’s way of making sure we’re continuing to buy goods that we don’t necessarily need. If anything, I’m advocating against the beauty industry because I don’t think beauty is our most important characteristic as human beings. I think beauty comes in so many different characteristics, other than just what you look like.” 

For Brent, there are so many ways to feel confident and find peace within oneself that don’t require potentially harmful beauty and skincare products. One can feel beautiful in so many more ways than applying brands to their body.

“Feeling confident is more about finding beauty in everyday things, finding beauty in basics, finding other elements of beauty outside of just looks and fighting back against industries that are really just trying to take advantage of us and our insecurities by not supporting them,” Brent said.