I'm channeling Bon Jovi. Please help...

I can't believe how long it's taken me to get round to telling you this, but I think the mother-in-law has cracked the shampoo issue.

She came to see us several weeks ago laden down with gifts, among them a bottle of Green People moisturising shampoo. It's great. Leaves my hair all smooth and silky, like it hasn't been since the Kerastase amnesty. It is of course paraben-, petroleum- and sodium lauryl sulfate-free. Hurrah. I could even use it on Dot (though she has her own California Baby, don't you know).

She (the MIL) subsequently got me the conditioner too for collection it when we were in the UK. It seemed full of promise. Then the hubby packed it in his hand luggage on the way from Dublin to Bristol and it had to be relinquished at check-in - bugger.

Am now trying to decide if I can justify ordering some online and incurring the airmiles. I've done a bit of research and they're such a nice company I think I might have to. Or if anyone reading is planning a trip over soon, will you be my Green People mule to cut down on postage and packaging? Humid August in New York is not a good place for anyone's hair.

Pretty Ugly

You'll be pleased to know that in the course of the day's greening I've found yet more stuff to worry about.

Today's topic is beauty products.

I have nightmare skin. My face is sensitive but quite greasy and prone to zits (at 33. I ask you...); meanwhile my body is very dry, flaky and rashy, especially at this time of year. I've spent much of my life using prescription skincare of one sort or another - spot creams that make your face red, itchy and very sensitive to sunlight, and thick, goopy body lotions that ex-boyfriends have told me make me smell like wee (do you fancy me yet? I thought so).

Anyway, I never really gave all of this much thought until I got pregnant and my dermatologist told me to stop using the salicylic acid and Tri-luma, and my hippie yoga guru books (Gurmukh and Gowri Motha) told me to ditch the products containing petroleum derivatives (I'd never really notice they were in there) and parabens. I did all of the above, switching to health food store products, not really knowing why, other than I didn't really like the idea of putting petroleum products on my skin, someone recently told me lotions were only made out of petroleum derivatives for the convenience of the oil industry (which we all know is a Bad Thing) and because I always do everything it says to do in those hippy guru books because I'm a sheep.

Anyway, so this morning as I was applying my completely delicious new Avalon Organics Lavender Ultimate Moisture Cream to my face and my Nature's Gate Skin Therapy Colloidal Oatmeal Lotion to the rest of me I was thinking to myself I must tell you that after several rounds of experimenting with really crap natural products, I'd finally found some that, as well as using organic ingredients, being packaged in recyclable materials and not helping Mr. Bush and his oil buddies out, were lovely to use and really effective. No more scaly wee-scented skin for me - just refreshing, light, whippy face cream and rich, soothing body lotion. Yum.

And I thought that while I was at it, I might as well Google 'reasons to use organic skincare products' for your edification and mine.

Well, talk about a Pandora's Box. This goes a bit beyond just being eco-friendly because it turns out there's thought to be a massive link between skincare products and breast cancer. Apparently breast cancer rates have gone up 80% in the last 30 years or so, about 60% of skincare products are absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin (the body's largest organ) and are found in large concentrations in the bloodstream (parabens found in high concentrations in cancerous breast tissue, for example) and the vast majority of ingredients in skincare products aren't approved by the FDA or indeed anyone else. And apparently there are ingredients which, while entirely legal in the US, are banned in Europe because they're thought to be so dangerous. Not only this but because Parabens have a link to oestrogen (I think I wrote about this in the deo entry) they are also thought to be responsible for the early onset of puberty in some, possiby most, young girls these days (see this site, and this one).

Oh.

Then I found this website where you can enter your beauty product and brand, and it'll spit out a safety rating based on the known danger of ingredients in a product, where one is safest, five is most concerning.

So you can guess what I've been doing for the last three hours.

I just discovered their 'highest concern brands' list. This was designed expressly for hysterical women like me. Up there near right the top with scores of 4.7: Marvis toothpaste, which I used throughout my pregnancy and Jo Malone products, which I use and have bought for most of my female relatives and friends at one time or another (though to be fair it's the red roses fragrance they flag, which is not really my thing), plus the Kerastase shampoo I'm still working through gets a 3.something ('moderate concern'). Oh dear.

Luckily the Nature's gate lotion is only a 2 and the face cream is just 1.3. Oh, and all Tom's of Maine stuff is 1 or less.

I'm warning you, once you start trying this out, it's pretty addictive. But I guess I'd rather know. Or would I?

Ahem, anyway, that's a bit off the green topic. I'm sure tomorrow I'll have another comment from Anonymous telling me I need to 'BREATH' (sic). For now I'm off to get my now much less polluted beauty sleep. If I can sleep, that is, for worrying.

Facewash/Carwash

Last night as I was getting ready for bed the hubby came into the bathroom.

"It smells like a fish and chip shop in here. What are you doing?" he said. Then, looking at the grotty old bottle of Shure Fine apple cider vinegar on the counter, "And what's this doing in here?"

"Well, I read on a website of alternative home remedies that it's good for acne, so I'm using it to wash my face," I replied.

"You are joking, right?" he said.

I shook my head.

"There are limits, surely you have to draw the line somewhere," he said.

I guess from my expression he gathered I didn't agree.

"Fine, suit yourself," he said, "but I'm not coming anywhere near you."

But in fact, the smell was indeed so strong and so reminiscent of a fish supper that I had to rinse my face before I went to bed.

I gave it another go this morning. It stung as I applied it with an organic cotton wool ball (purchased in wal Mart, would you believe?) and by lunchtime my face was red and blotchy.

Maybe the middle of a cold snap in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains in a house heated by a fire and forced air is neither the time nor the place to be experimenting with extremely drying facial treatments, even if they are sort of eco friendly (especially since my hands are still like sandpaper from Saturday's cider vinegar oven door debacle). I'll give it one more try tonight and see how it goes. But otherwise I'll be sticking to my Neutrogena Healthy Skin facewash, of which I have almost a full bottle to use up.

By the way, I had been planning to blog about the following today: we do our laundry at the Narrowsburg Laundromat and Carwash (there seems to be some fascination with combining the two round here. I have to admit it's a good idea - wash your car while you wait for the laundry to spin). I was tempted to have a go myself yesterday but given that the 'real feel' temperature was 8 F (that's apparently -13C) and I was on a very windy patch of riverbank, I decided to leave it for the hubby to take care of. I also remembered that using a hose to wash the car was singularly wasteful and that I could achieve the same result at home using a bucket and sponge. So then I decided I'd do that at home today and blog about it, and went to bed feeling very pleased with myself.

Well, you can tell I grew up in England, not the aforementioned foothills of the Catskill mountains. Today we awoke to a sprinkling of snow and the thermometer hasn't crept above 22F all day. Leave aside the very real prospect of frostbite I'd incur if I'd gone ahead with the plan; I'd also have turned the driveway and road outside into a skating rink.

So the car will have to live with it's coating of salt for another few days. And we may have to settle for eco-unfriendly car washing till things warm up a bit.

So maybe I do draw the line somewhere, after all.

This dilemma has teeth...

Another thing I've been wondering about is beauty products. Until very recently - until I got pregnant with Dot, actually - I was merrily using any old shower gel, shampoo, moisturizer or body lotion as long as it was unperfumed (I'm a bit of a delicate flower, don't you know). Then I read something telling me almost all lotions are petroleum-based so shouldn't be used during pregnancy, which made me think it might be best not to be using them at all, then. I did a bit of research on greenpeople.co.uk who make lots of lovely organic products and apparently loads of the ingredients in the beauty products we use might be carcinogenic, contain oestrogen or irritate the skin.

Rather than try checking all my products for complicated-sounding ingredients like 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol (contains formaldehyde, apparently) I've started switching to organic stuff. I now use organic shampoo (can't remember the brand), body lotion (Alba - the hubby says it makes me smell like an old lady but as I keep telling him I thought it was unscented when I bought it, and now I have to use it up before I switch to avoid waste. This is an occupational hazard of experimenting after years with your old staples, I will warn you) and eye cream (Dr. Hauschka) and once I run out of my Neutrogena will switch to organic moisturizer too. They aren't all fiercely expensive, Dr Hauschka notwithstanding.

So, while I was at the Organic Farm Shop the other day, i decided it was time to try organic toothpaste again. (I'd given Tom's of Maine a whirl before, but it wasn't a big hit; the hubby refused to use it, saying it tasted of sick and I found it didn't foam up and left a nasty taste in my mouth). This is a big step for me because I come from a family of dentists and am obsessed with oral hygiene, constantly brushing and chewing gum, and am also neurotic about fresh breath. I bought some from Green People and left it in the bathroom.

Driving along yesterday, the MIL said 'I wasn't sure about that toothpaste. It didn't really feel like it was doing anything, although my mouth did feel clean afterwards'. I had to agree with her - it feels a bit like when you haven't put enough toothpaste on the brush, and I just don't feel confident about my minty fresh breath. In fact I've already brushed four times today (it's not 1 o'clock yet) and still my mouth feels a bit frowsy. I know my brother will be down on me like a ton of bricks for overbrushing - which can erode enamel or something like that - so another dilemma arises. Do I continue with this or go back to the Colgate?

To help me decide, I did some research and found out the following on www.goandco.com/toothpaste.html:

"Sodium Lauryl Sulphate is used for the same purpose in toothpaste as it is in bubble-bath - as a foamer and detergent. BUT SLS is a particularly strong, harsh detergent as well as having good foaming qualities. Indeed SLS is used to clean oil spillage from petrol forecourts, it is so effective...Plus it is especially preferred by personal care products 'manufacturers' because it is very cheap.

Technically SLS is a 'surfactant', an 'emulsifier', and a 'denaturant'. It is well KNOWN to be a harmful skin irritant that is particularly nasty in contact with the delicate eye, and mucous membranes (this is the main reason for instructions to 'flush your eyes with plenty of water' if you get shampoo in them – because SLS is known potentially to cause damage to the eyes).

SLS is just an unpleasant chemical that should just NOT be used on (or in!) the human body! – Due to growing negative media coverage in the last few years SLS has been removed or 'replaced' in SOME products (but you have to check 'what with' - see below!!). However, it is still very widely found in many well known, off-the-shelf, big-brand products...even though it is known to be:

Toxic to the liver and kidneys,

Toxic to aquatic animals/fish (remember many tons of this stuff washes-off down our drains!!)

On the NIH hazards list

Known to trigger eczema and skin problems

Known to cause mouth ulcers [mouth ulcers? what?]"

Er, ok, well, I guess it has to be worth persevering then. Anyone have any toothpaste success stories for me?

By the way, just so you know, apparently to be labeled 'natural', a product need only contain 1% natural ingredients. So don't be fooled...