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Safety Before Beauty

Personal Care Products and Pregnancy

By Teri Brown

Other potentially dangerous chemicals that are often used in personal care products are known as glycols. Glycols are chemicals that are used for temperature stability. Dr. Natan says manufacturers want their products to be temperature stable for two reasons: first because they will be shipped all over the country in all kinds of weather, and second because they want to maintain product quality throughout a range of temperature uses. For instance, you don't want makeup that is put on your warm face in your warm house to become solid when you step outside in the cold. Glycols are added to products to prevent incidents such as that from happening.

"Automobile anti-freeze, for example, is made with ethylene glycol," says Dr. Natan. "Most of the products we tested for our report contain other glycols, but it is possible that ethylene glycol can show up as an impurity. In fact, one lipstick we tested actually had ethylene glycol in it, although propylene glycol was listed on the label. Every veterinarian will tell you to make sure your pet doesn't accidentally drink ethylene glycol anti-freeze because it is toxic, and here it showed up in a product that will be sure to be ingested by the woman wearing it."

According to Dr. Natan, ethylene glycol has been shown to damage developing fetuses in animal studies. Glycols can be absorbed through the skin, and, as a class of chemicals, are suspected neurotoxicants – that is, they can damage the nervous system.

Some of the hair care products, makeup and lipsticks tested by The National Environmental Trus contained phthalates, which are chemicals used to soften plastics. In personal care products, phthalates keep the product from becoming brittle.

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