You've done the hard part. You read the labels at the supermarket, you cook properly, and you know what's in your water. Hidden Toxins in Your Diet, linked below, has that side of things. Then you walk into the bathroom, and there's the shelf: the shampoo, the deodorant, the cream you bought because it smelled like a holiday.
The FDA says people use 6 to 12 cosmetic products a day on average. You'll also read what these personal care products are doing to you: that your skin is a sponge, that it drinks in five pounds of chemicals a year, that whatever you put on your face goes straight to your blood. It's frightening, and much of it is wrong.
Some of it is right, though, and the parts that are right aren't always the ones in the headlines. So let's go along the shelf one product at a time and see what holds up once somebody has measured it. You won't need to throw everything out. You may want to throw out one or two things.
Your skin is a wall, not a sponge
The outer layer of your skin exists to keep water in and the world out, and it's choosy about size. Molecules much over 500 daltons, a measure of molecular weight, struggle to get through. That's why nicotine patches and the other medicines worn on the skin are all built from small molecules. They're usually offered as proof that skin absorbs everything. They show something closer to the opposite: it takes a carefully chosen small molecule, held in place for hours.
But small is not rare. In one experiment, six people sat for six hours in a room with phthalates in the air, breathing clean air through a hood, so that anything they took up had to come through their skin. For one of these chemicals, the skin absorbed roughly what the lungs would have. The air at home is a whole subject of its own, and The Home Toxin That Set Off a Nuclear Alarm, linked below, sorts out what matters in it.
So think of a wall with small gaps. Enough comes through to make it worth asking what's in the bottle, but skin doesn't absorb everything. If it did, a long bath would leave you several sizes larger.
Sunscreen, measured
This is the cleanest test of what gets in, and the FDA's own researchers ran it. Forty-eight people applied sunscreen, and all six active ingredients passed 0.5 ng/mL in the blood after a single application. That's the level at which the FDA wants further safety studies. After four days of heavy use, the average peak for oxybenzone from a lotion was 258.1 ng/mL. The authors were clear that this doesn't make sunscreen unsafe. It means the question is open.
Shade and a avoid that question altogether. They also leave you some sun, which your skin turns into vitamin D, so there's no reason to hide from all of it. Keep sunscreen for long days out. When the FDA last sorted the active ingredients, it proposed to treat zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as safe and effective, and said it needed more data on twelve others, oxybenzone among them.
Acids and the sun
Glycolic acid is a favourite of night serums and peels. You may read that years of it damage your skin barrier permanently, but no trial of that could be found. There's a smaller cost that has been measured. In a double-blind test, 29 people had patches of their backs treated with 10% glycolic acid or a dummy cream for four weeks, and were then exposed to UV light. The skin treated with acid was more sensitive to it, and a week after stopping, the difference had gone.
So if you enjoy an acid, it isn't a disaster. It's one more reason for the hat.
Retinol gets worse press still. You may read that long-term use thins your skin until it tears, and that claim never seems to come with a source. A small trial points the other way.
Thirty-six very elderly people, 87 on average, had retinol lotion on one arm and a plain base on the other for 24 weeks. Fine wrinkles improved on the retinol arm, and in a small subgroup there was more collagen. It's one small trial on very old skin, so it doesn't make retinol a miracle. It does make the horror story hard to believe.
Nail polish
You'd expect polish to be the safest thing on the shelf, and the FDA does call the nail a barrier. But when researchers tested ten polishes, eight contained TPHP, a flame retardant and plasticiser, and two of those didn't list it. Then 26 people painted their nails, and a marker of it in their urine rose nearly sevenfold within 10 to 14 hours. When polish went on false nails worn over gloves, the rise was far smaller, so the likely route is the skin around the nail. What it does to you isn't settled.
You'll see "3-free" on bottles, which means no toluene, formaldehyde or dibutyl phthalate. The FDA says toluene is being phased out, and an industry safety panel found harm only at levels many times higher than polish delivers. The FDA's 2010 survey found dibutyl phthalate in only a few polishes. So the label may be selling you an absence. It may not even be true: when California tested salon polishes in 2012, 10 of 12 products claiming to have no toluene contained it. The people breathing it in every day are the ones working in the salon.
One small irony from the FDA's page. Nail hardeners made with formaldehyde, used often, can leave nails brittle.
What stays on matters most
The old rule says don't put anything on your skin that you wouldn't eat. It's catchy, and it fails in both directions. The FDA notes that some nail ingredients are harmful swallowed and harmless on the nail. And you'd happily salt a steak with something you wouldn't rub into your eye.
A better question is how much, and for how long. The FDA says an ingredient can be safe in a cleanser you wash straight off, and not in a cream that sits on your skin for hours. When 360 women recorded what they used, it came to 8.70 g of body lotion a day and 24 mg of lipstick. Shampoo is on your head for a minute and then it's down the drain. Body lotion spreads over most of you and stays there. If you're going to read one label closely, read that one.
The mascara that changed the law
In 1933 a woman known in the records as Mrs Brown had her lashes tinted with a product called Lash Lure, which contained para-phenylenediamine. She went blind. So did fifteen other women, and another died of an infection. The case went into a book called American Chamber of Horrors, and in 1938 the FDA gained power over cosmetics.
That law still works differently from what you might assume. A harmful ingredient is illegal whether or not it's named on a list, but apart from most colour additives, cosmetics need no approval before they're sold. And one exception from those days has survived. Coal-tar hair dyes can stay on sale as long as the label warns against using them on lashes or brows, because that "may cause blindness".
You may have read that Europe bans 1,400 chemicals and America bans 11. The FDA's list of prohibited or restricted ingredients does run to 11, and Europe's now runs well past 1,000. But the count flatters Europe a little, since American law already forbids anything harmful.
The real difference is who has to show what, and when. In the EU, a safety report comes before the product reaches the market. In America, a 2022 law, the biggest change since 1938, finally made companies keep records showing their products are safe and let the FDA order a recall. Small firms are excused from parts of it.
The word "fragrance"
This is the shelf's biggest blind spot. US labelling rules let a whole scent formula sit behind one word, as a trade secret, and even "unscented" can mean a masking fragrance was added. When researchers tested 213 products, they found 55 chemicals of concern, with the highest levels in fragranced products and sunscreens, and many of them weren't on the label. Phthalates were among them, along with the newer ones brought in to replace them.
This isn't only about perfume counters, either. Among 406 men, those who'd used cologne or aftershave in the previous 48 hours had about twice the urine marker for one phthalate, and each extra type of product added about 33%. That was one urine sample per man, so it's a snapshot, but it's a clear one.
None of that proves harm from your particular perfume. It means you can't check, and that's reason enough to choose the bottle without the word when you have the choice, especially for what stays on your skin.
Hair straighteners
Among the things on an ordinary shelf, this is the most serious finding. If you use them, make this the one you change.
Researchers followed 33,947 women for nearly 11 years. Those who'd used hair straighteners in the previous year went on to develop uterine cancer at 1.8 times the rate of those who hadn't, and those using them more than four times a year at 2.55 times the rate. Dyes and perms showed no such link. It was the first evidence of its kind, and it needs repeating. It's also about as strong a signal as anything here.
Heat adds a second problem. The FDA warns that some hair smoothing products release formaldehyde as a gas when heated, that it may be listed as formalin or methylene glycol, and that both the stylist and the client breathe it in if the salon is poorly ventilated. It has sent warning letters over this, one of them to Brazilian Blowout. So ask about the air before you sit down.
Labels are little help here either. When 18 hair products used by Black women were tested, they held 45 chemicals of concern, mostly unlisted, and relaxers made for children contained five that California regulates or the EU bans.
Parabens
Parabens have the worst reputation of anything on the shelf, and the evidence is thinner than you'd think. They do behave a little like oestrogen. In the original test, butylparaben, the strongest of the common ones, was 10,000 times weaker than your own oestradiol, and far weaker again when given by mouth or under the skin in rats. The famous 2004 paper found them in 20 breast tumours, which tells you they were there and not what they did. The FDA says it has no information showing that they affect health as used in cosmetics. How to Shield Yourself from Everyday Environmental Toxins has the teenagers who swapped their products and saw two parabens fall by nearly half in three days, so they do leave quickly once you stop.
Take them out, though, and another preservative has to do their work, which isn't always gentler. In 2005 a preservative called methylisothiazolinone, or MI, was allowed into cosmetics by itself, and within a few years so many people were reacting to it that it was named Contact Allergen of the Year for 2013. This is where the gap between Europe and America shows. Europe tightened its rules early. Among people patch-tested for skin allergies there, reactions to the MI family fell after 2014. In North America they kept climbing, and MI alone reached 15% by 2017 and 2018.
Why preservatives exist
A bottle of water, oils and plant extracts is dinner for bacteria, and you put your fingers in it. Bacteria have no objection to organic. In the 1970s, seven ulcers on the cornea were traced to four contaminated brands of mascara, and three of those brands were poorly preserved. So a preservative is doing something for you, and a "natural" product with water in it needs one as much as any other.
Even a good preservative only lasts so long. The FDA says manufacturers usually recommend throwing mascara out two to four months after buying it, because the wand picks up bacteria and fungi at every use. No US rule requires an expiry date on the label, so write the date on the tube yourself.
Homemade versions have no preservative at all, so make small batches with clean hands, keep them in the fridge, and throw them out when they change.
Lipstick
You'll read that a woman eats four pounds of lipstick in her lifetime. Do the sum from the 360 women's diaries: 24 mg a day for 60 years, if every trace were swallowed, comes to about half a kilo. Four pounds would take real dedication.
The contents deserve more of your attention. Of 32 lip products tested, 24 contained lead, averaging 0.36 parts per million. That sounds alarming, but even at high use it came to under 20% of the acceptable daily intake.
The surprise was elsewhere. At high use, 68% of the products went past the limit for chromium and 22% for manganese. So a swipe in the morning is one thing, and reapplying all day is another. Waterproof and long-wear products have their own issue, and PFAS Forever Chemicals: Where They Hide has what turned up in 231 cosmetics.
The ones to stop today
Almost everything so far has been a question of how much. These three aren't.
Mercury creams. The FDA warns about skin lighteners and anti-ageing creams, usually made abroad and sold illegally, often online. Read the label for "mercurous chloride", "calomel", "mercuric", "mercurio" or "mercury", and if you see one, stop today. A cream with no label at all gets the same treatment. The danger reaches your family too, through the vapour and through shared towels.
Kohl and surma. These traditional eye cosmetics, also sold as kajal, al-kahal, tiro, tozali and kwalli, are illegal colour additives in the US. Lead sometimes makes up more than half the weight of kohl products, and one tiro product linked to an infant's lead poisoning was 82.6% lead. Lipstick's 0.36 parts per million looks rather different now.
Black henna. Real henna stains brown, orange-brown or reddish-brown. The black version often gets its colour from a coal-tar hair dye containing para-phenylenediamine, the same chemical that was in Lash Lure. It isn't permitted in cosmetics applied to the skin, and the FDA has received reports of skin injuries from these tattoos. So if somebody at a fair or on a beach offers your child a black one, say no thank you.
That same family of dye is why your hair dye comes with its warning. Dyes showed no link in the uterine cancer study, but the FDA's checklist is worth following anyway: do a patch test every time, wear gloves, and never dye your lashes or brows.
Sulfates, and what's not on the label
Sulfates are detergents. They lift oil and make lather, and if your scalp feels tight afterwards, that's a fair reason to try something milder. A review argues that their reputation as poison rests on misreadings of old work, though most of its authors worked for a cleaning-products company, so weigh that as you like. In shampoo they're on you for a minute.
The more interesting one isn't an ingredient at all. 1,4-dioxane is a by-product that can form with ingredients containing "PEG", "-eth-" or "-oxynol-", which includes the sodium laureth sulfate in your shampoo. Because it's a by-product, it won't be on the label.
It's reasonably anticipated to cause cancer, on animal evidence, and European reviewers put the safe limit at 10 parts per million. The FDA's tests found an average of 50 in 1981, and levels have been falling since. It also evaporates easily. So it's a good reason to prefer those ingredients in what you rinse off, and to look twice at them in what you leave on.
Spot creams have a similar secret, only this one keeps forming after you've bought them. Benzene, a potent carcinogen, is what benzoyl peroxide can break down into. Tests of 111 of these products, kept at room temperature, found it at anything from 0.16 to 35.30 parts per million, and it formed faster in heat and under UV light. In the one product tested cold, at 2°C, no benzene appeared to form. If you use one, keep it out of the car and off the sunny windowsill, and the fridge is better still.
Spray cans have had the same problem from another direction. In 2021 Johnson & Johnson recalled aerosol Neutrogena and Aveeno sunscreens after finding benzene in some samples, and Procter & Gamble recalled dry shampoos and conditioners, including Pantene and Aussie, and traced theirs to the propellant. Benzene wasn't an ingredient in any of them, so no label could have told you. J&J said the levels it found wouldn't be expected to harm health. Still, it's an easy choice to make: a lotion has no propellant.
Aluminium
You'll see it stated flat that aluminium from antiperspirant builds up in your breast tissue. The evidence is smaller than that. In the classic test on two people, 0.012% of what went under the arm was absorbed, about 2.5% of what the gut takes up from food. One study of 209 women with breast cancer and 209 without found more aluminium in the breast tissue of women who reported using underarm products, and a higher risk among those who started before 30 and used them several times a day, but the uncertainty around that figure was enormous. A 2023 review called the studies small and backward-looking, and advised avoiding it only as a precaution. Good Hygiene: The Everyday Habits That Matter Most reached the same place: no solid support for the link.
The one practical point is broken skin. In a lab test on donated skin, stripping off the surface layer took uptake up about sixfold. That's harsher than a razor, but it's an easy reason to leave a freshly shaved underarm alone for a while. And if you'd like to skip it altogether, aluminium-free deodorants weren't implicated in that review.
Babies
The smaller the person, the more this is worth your attention. When researchers tested 163 babies, the ones who'd had lotion, powder or shampoo in the previous 24 hours had higher phthalate markers in their urine. More products meant higher levels, and the effect was stronger in the youngest. Essential Oils: What They Can Do and How to Use Them Safely has the young boys who developed breast tissue while using lavender and tea tree products. The cause is still debated, but it's why "natural" doesn't settle this one.
A baby doesn't need 6 to 12 products. A baby has no meetings. Plain and few is easy here, and it's a kind habit to start while you're pregnant too.
The dressing-up box deserves a look as well. In 2018 the FDA began testing about 50 cosmetics made with talc, and in 2019 Claire's recalled products that tested positive for asbestos, a JoJo Siwa makeup set among them. Beauty Plus recalled products too. Practical Tips for Good Personal Hygiene Using Natural Products has the baby powder side of that story. Talc is on the label, so it's one of the easier words to look for.
The mixture question
Companies never test the cocktail on your skin, because no company knows what's on your shelf. And there's something behind the worry. When researchers mixed eight weak oestrogen-like chemicals, each at a level too low to do anything alone, the mixture had a substantial effect.
That was in yeast, and your bathroom isn't a yeast culture. It can't tell you what your own routine does, but it does suggest that "each one is below the limit" isn't quite the end of the discussion. It's one more reason to own fewer bottles.
Words on the label
"Hypoallergenic", according to the FDA, means whatever a particular company wants it to mean. It's a restful word, mostly for the people selling it. The FDA has no list of approved claims for cosmetics at all, so "clean" and "natural" are yours to interpret. It has no regulatory definition of "essential oil" either, which leaves "therapeutic grade" as nobody's standard. Your neighbour selling those oils may know more about compensation plans than extraction methods. A small brand with a lovely founder isn't a safety test, and a high price tells you about the marketing, a bit like cinema popcorn.
The ingredient list is more useful, once you know how it's built. Ingredients above 1% go in descending order. Below 1%, they can go in any order, and colours come last. So the first few are most of the bottle, but a preservative near the bottom tells you little about how it compares with its neighbours.
The apps need the same care. Yuka scores a product by its worst ingredient, so one red dot sinks it below 25 out of 100, and the score doesn't say how much of that ingredient is in there. The Skin Deep database rates hazard from 1 to 10, and it's run by the Environmental Working Group, an activist organisation that has been criticised for exaggerating risks. Both are good for finding out what an odd word means. Neither is a verdict.
What doesn't hold up
Five pounds a year. Those 360 women put on about 11 g of face cream and body lotion a day, which is nearly 4 kg a year, so the figure is about right for what goes on. The claim is that it all goes in. The aluminium test above shows how far off that can be.
The tissue test. Blotting lipstick and looking for metallic shimmer tells you it has shimmer. Lead at those levels is invisible.
The cloudy shampoo test. Cloudiness tells you how a liquid scatters light.
The 24-hour deodorant test. Still smelling it the next morning tells you the scent lasts. It's no phthalate detector.
Plastic beads in your exfoliator. This one is out of date, at least in America. A US law stopped microbeads being added to certain personal care products, with manufacture banned in July 2017 and sale in July 2018, and its aim was cleaner water.
Purging. Spots after a switch aren't toxins leaving through your skin. If your skin gets worse and stays worse, stop using the product.
Skin that needs to breathe. You breathe with your lungs. No good test turned up showing that mineral oil suffocates skin or makes it stop producing oil.
The evening cream and your melatonin. No test of that turned up either, and the same goes for the morning cream and your cortisol.
Detox. No supplement is needed to clear any of this. What a Liver Detox Cannot Do That Your Liver Already Does has why.
The insider stories. The colourist who can spot your shampoo, the makeup counter selling you the wrong shade, the models ageing ten years early. There's no name or number on any of them, so they've stayed out.
What to do, in order
Throw out the outright poisons. Any cream with mercury on the label or no label at all, and any kohl or surma, can go today.
Then stop the straighteners. If you use them, this is the change with the most behind it. Let your hair do what it does, or at least space them out and keep the room well aired.
Start with what stays on. Body lotion and face cream come before anything you rinse off. Look for a short list and no "fragrance".
Use one ingredient where one will do. A plain bar like and water wash most of you. A single oil such as takes off makeup without a surfactant in sight, and the fewer things in the bottle, the fewer you have to wonder about.
Test on a small patch first. "Natural" doesn't mean gentle. A dab on the inside of your arm can save your face from finding out. Practical Tips for Good Personal Hygiene has a full routine, deodorant included.
Keep it plain for children. Fewer products, no perfume, no talc, and nothing you can't name.
Let the rest run out. There's no need to spend a fortune clearing the shelf in one afternoon. That shelf took years to fill, and it can take a few months to thin out. When something's empty, replace it with something simpler.
Your skin has been holding its own for a long time, and it doesn't need rescuing from every bottle. It could just do with fewer of them, and you get a calmer shelf, a smaller bill and far less to worry about. Start with one product. Tonight, turn over the lotion you use most and look for the word "fragrance".
Done with the shelf and curious about the plate? Hidden Toxins in Your Diet: What's Really in Your Healthy Food — what turns up in the foods you trust, and how to choose cleaner ones.
Want the rest of the house sorted the same way? The Home Toxin That Set Off a Nuclear Alarm — what in your home does real harm, and what you can stop worrying about.
Know someone who has banished every paraben and still books the straightener? Send them this before their next appointment.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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