Healthy Beauty - Regulating ingredients in beauty products

If your New Year's resolution includes living a healthier lifestyle, there are choices in beauty products that will help you do just that. During the past few months our BEAUTY SCIENCE articles have provided you with the pros and cons of various ingredients used in the making of hair, skin, and cosmetic products.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act defines cosmetics by their intended use, as "articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body...for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance". Among the products included in this definition are skin moisturizers, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail polishes, eye and facial makeup preparations, cleansing shampoos, permanent waves, hair colors, and deodorants, as well as any substance intended for use as a component of a cosmetic product. The FDA does NOT require approval before a cosmetic goes on the market or approval of cosmetic ingredients (except for color additives).

Let's be clear. Most of the ingredients are completely safe, some have minimal risk levels, but there are products you most certainly want to avoid if they contain high risk ingredients. Being an informed consumer will give you the power!

Clean Salon (on Facebook) is a new group resource at Beauty Care Choices. If you have health concerns that make you sensitive to chemicals in beauty products, we want to hear from you. Please join our group discussion and share your personal story. Help us to help you find products that perform without the chemicals that cause you concern. Everyone is developing more and more sensitivities and not just to what we put in our bodies but what we put on them. Gluten Free, Paraben Free, Free of Artificial Colors/Additives, Vegan, Alcohol free, Sulfates (SLS) and so many other individual concerns are troubling our customers and salon clients. Our goal is to help our customers navigate their Beauty Care Choices according to their health care needs.