By KATE LOCK
Last updated at 4:12 PM on 05th August 2008
Beauty products are my passion. Always have been, since my mother introduced me to Quickies Cleansing Pads at 13.
I’ve cleansed, toned and moisturised ever since, though it has come at a massive cost financially. I hate to think how much I’ve spent on beauty products since I began my twice-daily regime, but it would run into thousands. Suffice to say, they know me by name at the Clarins counter.
I’m not alone. A 2006 survey commissioned by New Woman magazine revealed that British women spend £3,000 a year on beauty products and treatments, with 81 per cent of women wearing make-up every day. According to analysts Mintel, British women are the largest users of make-up in Europe, capping even the French. (And Clarins is cheaper there, n’est-ce pas?)
All well and good, but there’s a lie in these ointments, and it is this: the very products that are promoted as making us look younger, sexier, healthier and more attractive may ultimately be doing the opposite.
Getting Lippy, a groundbreaking report by the Women’s Environmental Network published in 2003, claimed that cosmetics and beauty products may contain ingredients that impair fertility, increase the effects of ageing and are linked to cancer, allergies and other health problems.
The love of lipstick: But what does it contain?
‘There is increasing evidence that we are all victims of a great big con,’ the report concluded.
I’ll say. You expect the food you buy to be safe, and there are huge public outcries when it isn’t, yet the same stringent standards are not universally applied to cosmetics companies.
This is especially true in the U.S., which is less regulated. However, since the implementation of the European Union’s cosmetics directive in 2006, consumers in the UK have been better protected from chemicals that are considered mutagenic (meaning they will change the genetic information of organisms), carcinogenic (cancer causing), or reproductive toxins.
All UK cosmetics and their ingredients must be safety-tested, and there is a list of chemicals that are not permitted for use in cosmetics and maximum concentration restrictions on others.
That’s still not enough for campaign groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. They say that chemicals such as parabens and phthalates, which can have an effect on the hormones in our bodies, cannot be ‘adequately controlled’. They are putting pressure on Brussels to introduce laws recognising this and to substitute them with safer alternatives.
Geom Alfieri
angel03
