If you suspect that slathering yourself with a dozen of chemical-laden skincare products isn’t making you any healthier, here’s the book that will confirm your worst fears.

Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of The Beauty Industry (New Society Publishers, 2007) will make you reconsider most of your beauty habits. Written by a former makeup addict turned environmentalist and co-founder of Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the powerful and incredibly well researched book reveals the hidden health dangers in many of the seemingly innocent beauty products we use every day–a sunscreen, a shower gel, a shampoo, a coveted designer perfume, and most glamorous of all, the red lipstick.

Not Just a Pretty Face paints a disturbing picture of conventional beauty industry that exposes millions of women to toxic hazards that accumulate in the body triggering autoimmune diseases and making us age prematurely. What’s more troubling, even when such hazards are recognized, calls for their control are routinely ignored.

 

In 2007, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested a bunch of bestselling lipsticks for the presence of toxic contaminants. The tests carried out by independent labs found excessive amounts of lead in the majority of products. Recently, lead was found in majority of popular lipsticks sold in Canada. However, lead-containing lipsticks are sold to thousands unsuspecting women worldwide.

“We tested lipsticks from different stores, different cities, and different price ranges,” said Stacy Malkan, the co-founder of The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, “We found lead in all of them. All of the lipsticks were reds, first of all, because red is an iconic lipstick color, and also because we wanted to be compare all reds from all the companies. Some reds contained less lead, some contained more.”

Lead in lipsticks acts as a contaminant but could be a part of pigment as lead salts. Lead ions can leach into food from many sources such as pottery and colorings. Among the brands that contained lead were Christian Dior, Lancome, Clinique, Shiseido, Chanel, and Red Earth.

Why do companies market themselves as pink ribbon leaders in the fight against breast cancer, yet use chemicals that may contribute to that very disease? Why do products used daily by men and women contain chemicals linked to reproductive harm? The answers are hard to swallow.

Lead, 1,4-Dioxane, phthalates, parabens - these substances contribute to many devastating diseases that target mostly women, especially breast cancer and infertility. Isn’t that a hard price we pay for being pretty? 

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