The study found that almost all natural skincare products sold at three top retailers in the US contain allergens.
Most personal skin care products contain at least one of the top 100 most common allergens.
There is more to contact dermatitis than a brief irritation. Exposure to substances that cause irritation or inflame the skin can cause a red rash. Once the skin becomes sensitized to a harmless substance, an allergic reaction can occur.
According to some estimates, there has been a three-fold increase in the rate of contact dermatitis over the last three decades.
The study was motivated by a lack of regulation on the marketing of beauty and skin care products.
The FDA has not defined clean or natural, allowing sellers to advertise with these terms that imply safety and health benefits.
Researchers checked the ingredient lists on the websites of three US retailers against an online database that contains ingredients people with contact dermatitis should avoid. The database is maintained by the american contact dermitis society
If you can navigate and interpret the long list of ingredients found in skincare products, contact dermatitis can be prevented. It's more difficult than done.
Depending on the product, it can contain anywhere from 15 to 50 ingredients. According to research, people apply over 500 different chemicals to their skin each day.
The more products you use, the more exposed you are to potential allergens.
Many of the allergies identified in the study were caused by fragrances and botanical extracts, which have become a leading cause of contact dermatitis.
skincare products contain between four and five known allergens Seven different allergens were listed 7,487 times in the study.
The scale of the problem is still given by the product information available online.
A need to educate patients and health care professionals to ensure the public is informed about the products they apply to their skin is suggested by the results.
This isn't the first study looking at personal care products withalleges. A study in the US found that few moisturizers were free from allergens, and even some that were fragrance-free, could irritate the skin.
The issue has been on the radar for a while, but their message rarely seems to cut through the marketing buzz around natural products, hoping savvy consumers don't scrutinize ingredient lists too closely.
Consumers don't know anything about an ingredient's safety if the product is labeled 'natural'. It perpetuates a false dichotomy between nature and synthetic compounds that could be the same.
Natural is a marketing catchword that plays on a long history of humans using traditional medicines and cosmetics from nature to make us think they are somehow safer.
Marketing can have consequences. An epidemic of contact allergies erupted when a more allergic preservative called methylisothiazolinone started replacing another safer perseverative, parabens, after they fell out of favor with the beauty industry.
It is not to say that all marketing is bad. sunscreen is now a must-have for good skin due to some beauty influences.
There are no legal criteria that manufacturers need to meet to make claims like 'dermatologist tested' and 'Hypoallergenic'. We'll get to how marketing promotes health benefits.
Both consumers and physicians should demand that the clean beauty movement back up their claims with evidence.
It's the same today.
There was a study published.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
