Are We Being Duped?

This post is shared with permission from Personal Care Truth

“Manufacturers are using lead in lipstick”. “Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) can cause

cancer”. “Dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is toxic and must be banned”. “If you can’t pronounce it, it can’t be safe”.

Those are just some of the things you will read on the Internet about personal care products that instill fear in consumers. Are we being duped? We sure are. Can you pronounce ‘Butyrospermum Parkii’? What about ‘Dihydrogen Monoxide’? How about ‘Vaccinium Macrocarpon’? Even on a good day I have a hard time pronouncing them and I’ve been in the personal care industry for 10 years.

While the chemical or botanical name of an ingredient can be quite alarming, the ingredient itself isn’t necessarily harmful. Alarmists are working 24/7 to scare consumers into believing many ingredients are harmful to your health. Butyrospermum Parkii is not one of them. It’s shea butter. Vaccinium Macrocarpon isn’t a harmful ingredient either. It’s cranberry seed oil.

Last night on Twitter, I was reading the tweet “If I can’t pronounce it, I don’t use or eat it”. It wasn’t tweeted by one but many. Just to give you an idea of how alarmists can use lack of scientific knowledge and exaggerated claims to cause fear, let’s look at dihydrogen monoxide.

In 1997, 14 year old Nathan Zohner completed a science project titled “How Gullible Are We?”, which he won first place. Nathan gathered a petition to ban DHMO or dihydrogen monoxide. Nathan proved that an alarmist can spread the word of junk science to instill fear in people. Where’s the proof? Here is what his petition contained:

BAN DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE!

Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

Dihydrogen monoxide:

• is also known as hydroxl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
• contributes to the “greenhouse effect.”
• may cause severe burns.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
• has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Contamination is reaching epidemic proportions!

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the Midwest, and recently California.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

• as an industrial solvent and coolant.
• in nuclear power plants.
• in the production of Styrofoam.
• as a fire retardant.
• in many forms of cruel animal research.
• in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
• as an additive in certain “junk-foods” and other food products.

Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!

The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its “importance to the economic health of this nation.” In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

Do you know what dihydrogen monoxide or DHMO is? It’s the chemical name for water. Yep, water. “Water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Literally, the term “dihydrogen monoxide” means “two hydrogen, one oxygen”, consistent with its molecular formula: the prefix di- in dihydrogenmeans “two”, the prefix mono- in monoxide means “one”, and an oxide is a compound that contains one or more oxygen atoms”.

As reported on Snopes.com -

In March 2004 the California municipality of Aliso Viejo (a suburb in Orange County) came within a cat’s whisker of falling for this hoax after a paralegal there convinced city officials of the danger posed by this chemical. The leg-pull got so far as a vote’s having been scheduled for the City Council on a proposed law that would have banned the use of foam containers at city-sponsored events because (among other things) they were made with DHMO, a substance that could “threaten human health and safety.

Does that scare you? It scares me that organizations peddling junk science can spread that kind of fear. That legislation, regulations and the minds of free thinking people can be changed based on misinformation. Demand more from the people shoving half truths and false information down your throat. If the lobbyist organizations are asking for donations to fight the good fight, don’t give them a dime of your hard earned money unless you are 100% sure that what they are selling you is true, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Ask the hard questions. You deserve more than educated guesses, false information or scare tactics and fear mongering.

Time for me to fix a glass of dihydrogen monoxide.

Question: (added by dM): What do you think of the logic that concludes that if you can't pronounce an ingredient name, it must be bad for you? Do you buy that? If so, why?

From Sweetsation: Brilliant article. Spells out very clearly things that have been lingering in our minds for quite a while. Yes it concerns EWG and their mysterious system that noone seems to understand. A lot of product ratings don't make any sense and very often natural products rate the same as the ones containing a lot of toxic chemicals. Better yet, two identical products may rate differently... We have tried to contact them numerous times to get clarifications, or answers from the "expert" who in fact allocates those ratings. There's got to be someone... Nope. There is no answers, no responses to our emails, no logic, no accessible science or evidence, just notorious spreading of panic and demand for donations.

Skin Deep. How deep are they really? How self proclamed experts become the experts in the eyes of a consumer.

These days more and more consumers turn to EWG (Environmental Working Group) aka Skin Deep for help and guidance about what skin care we put on our self, what type of plastic we use and so on... In general we do support their effort to educate consumer and highlight what is good for our health and what is....not so good.

However lately we've started noticing that all their work is starting to concentrate towards the bad, spreading panic and shock. Looking closer it turns out that there are a lot more bad then good on the market. Or pretty much everything. We can not use lipsticks because there is lead in them, we can not eat candy for the same reason, and there is some lead in the water too, so I am guessing we should stop drinking water too.

Sweetsation Therapy can not complain, our products rate very well on Skin Deep, but that's due to extensive research and use of the safest possible ingredients in our line, but some of the ratings still make us wonder why. I am going to place some examples here and let you be the judge. Even though most of our products rate 1-2 and only two of them rate 3, we believe that they still deserve a better rating. We contacted them numerous times asking to review our products or explain why they are rated higher then they should be, and even emailed comparable listings and still have not received any satisfactory explanation or correction.

So here are a couple of examples of our listings, and others, that have the same rating of 2:

Our Other
Our Other

How do they arrive to the total score nobody knows. We asked them if they have a formula they go by - still waiting for a response. So it seems like it depends whether you catch good or bad day.

Now, there is another very interesting research of theirs I've came across lately, is the ratings of Vitamins. We take vitamins every single day, whether it to be in a form of a pill or in our foods we eat. Let's look at that closer. Vitamins are good for us, we think. But according to EWG it is not quite so. For example, look at any ingredient label of anything from your refrigerator. Just pick the first thing you see. Look at the list of ingredients on the label. The first thing you will see, quite likely, is Vitamin A, (supports vision) which is Retinyl Palmitate, rated 5 by Skin Deep. Raiting 5 By Skin Deep is considered to be Moderate Hazard, so that means that to support our vision we ingest moderate hazard every day, a few times a day. It is present in almost every type of jarred food. Moving on.. Vitamin C is rated 1. OK, fair enough. We don't see why it should be a hazard at all, but 1 is not too bad. Vitamin B or Panthenol is rated 2 to 4. This vitamin helps to produce hemoglobin, which is the component of your red blood cells that carry oxygen to your cells. So the vitamin that actually prevents the fatigue is a mild to moderate hazard. Another food ingredient that is very common to all the food we eat is: Citric Acid - rated 4.
If you already had a good time entertaining yourself by reading ingredient decks of your food items in your fridge, you probably are guessing the outcome. Stop eating. According to Skin Deep almost everything you are coming in contact with, is hazardous.

We are a proud signers of Compact of Safe Cosmetics but even we think that their so called "research" went too far. So how deep really is their research? Apparently, they base their rating decisions on results of testing done with undiluted substances applied to human skin for 48 hours straight. Undiluted! Not the real tangible skin care products. We don't know of anyone who would apply anything undiluted to their skin for such a long time. But it's much easier, for sure, to sound an alarm, then actually go ahead and do a real research and testing. Shock treatment makes them an experts in the eyes of a consumer! An unfortunately there are a mass of people who just believe everything what they read. No questions asked. But you do try to ask them questions. And good luck getting an answer!

Environmental Working Group should educate themselves on the cosmetic industry before declaring themselves an authority on the industry. They should stop misleading consumers with their poor science and alarmist methods.

Why are we spending all this time sharing our insider knowledge? Because everyone deserves to know the truth and make educated and informed decisions. Good companies are being harmed all over the nation by EWG's twisted reports. During bad economic times the last thing these companies need to do is to lose sales over the misrepresentation of their products by Skin Deep and the Environmental Working Group. You need to educate yourselves with the truth about this organization and their regular misinformation propaganda.

So what's now? Are you going to quit wearing lipstick? Quit drinking water? Quit eating food? Use any type of skin care? Or quit listening to Skin Deep?

Your comments are welcome.