Thanks to a burst of “new year, new you” vigour, yours truly has been on a witch hunt to root out noxious chemicals in my warpaint. What I’ve uncovered has been “eye-opening”, to say the least – it turns out that the one beauty essential we won’t leave home without may also be laced with loathsome compounds and hidden heavy metals.
Yes, I’m talking about what I’ve taken to calling the Mascara Menace. A little sleuthing on my part has unearthed research which suggests that scary stuff like arsenic may be squirrelled away in our eye makeup. A 2011 study by Canadian consumer watchdog Environmental Defence, for instance, detected arsenic, cadmium, lead, beryllium, nickel, selenium and thallium – the latter four of which are explicitly banned in Canada – in all 49 of their samples. Gulp.
It’s worth noting that the toxins in the tested products were not listed in the packaging labels, the takeaway being that makeup manufacturers are not maliciously poisoning you and I. Rather, these minute quantities of heavy metals are regarded as byproducts of the assembly process. But should we take their word for it that we’re not being slowly but surely sickened by what we’re slathering on our skin? Click through the slides to find out more.
Image illustration: Sharmaine Khor.
Want more? Get off your high horse and try your hand (or is that hoof) at the so-called unicorn eyeliner, and load your larder with this list of face-friendly food items to give you that gorgeous glow you’re hankering after. Get your daily dose of beauty at www.herworldplus.com/beauty.
To protect ourselves from being “collateral damage”, it’s worth examining what exactly goes into the inky paste we call mascara. A typical formulation includes carbon or iron oxides as lash-darkening agents; film-forming polymers for sheen and holding power; preservatives and thickening waxes or oils. A mascara’s makeup will prove to be crucial later on in this story, so keep this in mind!
Tip: When scanning the beauty aisles, experts recommend actively avoiding brands containing thimerosal, a relatively common preservative which can irritate the delicate orbital area and cause conjunctivitis.
While we’re on the subject, you might be interested to know that water-resistant mascaras are formulated with little to no water, which makes them viscous and less vulnerable to flaking … but also harsher on your lashes. The relatively vigorous rubbing involved in removal may also cause the fragile fringe of hairs around your already delicate eyes to break or worse, fall out.
All of this suggests we should keep our eyes peeled for gentler, perhaps organic, mascaras … or does it? Click through to find out!
Want more? Get off your high horse and try your hand (or is that hoof) at the so-called unicorn eyeliner, and load your larder with this list of face-friendly food items to give you that gorgeous glow you’re hankering after. Get your daily dose of beauty at www.herworldplus.com/beauty.
What is “organic” mascara, anyway? One shouldn’t take packaging gussied up with the marketing buzzword at well, face value.
First, the word itself means little unless it’s certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Perhaps somewhat tellingly, the traditional governing body for cosmetics, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, pointedly states that it has no standard definition for “organic” cosmetics. Make of that what you will.
To be certified organic by the USDA, a mascara needs to be formulated with at least 95 percent “organically produced ingredients”. But what on earth does that mean? For the purposes of this story, we’ll stick to the USDA’s National Organic Program’s definition of “organically produced ingredients” as being “natural” ingredients grown and harvested without the use of synthetic chemicals. This working definition is incredibly important, so keep this fun fact in mind!
Want more? Get off your high horse and try your hand (or is that hoof) at the so-called unicorn eyeliner, and load your larder with this list of face-friendly food items to give you that gorgeous glow you’re hankering after. Get your daily dose of beauty at www.herworldplus.com/beauty.
Quick recap: You may recall how we mentioned that most mascaras make use of carbon oxides as the primary source of pigment.
And yet, to qualify as “organic”, a cosmetic product will have to contain 95 percent organic ingredients. All “organic” ingredients, by default, have to be derived from plants (organic livestock is a whole other can of worms we’ll avoid opening for now).
Bam! And there you have it – the “smoking gun” pointing at the fallacy of so-called organic mascaras.
This means that 100 percent “organic” mascara is next to impossible to formulate – with today’s tech, all mascaras require the addition of pigmented minerals (which cannot be “organic” in the strictest sense of the word) for that sexy, kohl-rimmed look which is the raison d’etre for applying mascara in the first place.
Of course, there have been attempts to strip mascaras of minerals and preservatives, but by most accounts, these formulations don’t pass muster: They’re flaky, smudge with every blink and, perhaps most damningly, turn bad fast, putting your eyes at risk of irritation and infection.
Want more? Get off your high horse and try your hand (or is that hoof) at the so-called unicorn eyeliner, and load your larder with this list of face-friendly food items to give you that gorgeous glow you’re hankering after. Get your daily dose of beauty at www.herworldplus.com/beauty.
So, what to do? We need to recognise that not all synthetic stuff is sinister – chemical compounds like topical retinol, to give just one example, are the gold standard for gentle skin rejuvenation. By the same token, some organically grown extracts, like eucalyptus and sandalwood, can be seriously irritating when applied directly on your face – after all, an organic skin irritant is still an irritant.
In other words, organic certification does not guarantee an effective product. This is especially true when it comes to mascaras, where mineralised pigments and antimicrobial preservatives are essential to the product’s performance.
Short of going out with naked lashes, you have to do your research. Weed out mascaras that are known to contain the big baddies like lead and mercury, then take time out to test-drive the rest – after all, one of the great joys of beauty lies in the tantalising search for the ever-elusive HGs (that’ll be “holy grail” in beauty vernacular). Good luck with your search!
For a list of “safer” mascaras, visit the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database at www.ewg.org/skindeep/browse/mascara and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at safecosmetics.org.
Want more? Get off your high horse and try your hand (or is that hoof) at the so-called unicorn eyeliner, and load your larder with this list of face-friendly food items to give you that gorgeous glow you’re hankering after. Get your daily dose of beauty at www.herworldplus.com/beauty.