Would You Bathe Your Kid In Formaldehyde?
Posted on March 30, 2009 by
You wouldn’t scrub your child down with formaldehyde, right? Unfortunately, you might be without even knowing it.
Environmental Working Group (EWG) released the results of a study on personal care products for kids, and the results were upsetting:
“Children’s bath products are often marketed as safe and gentle. However, laboratory tests commissioned by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found these products are commonly contaminated with formaldehyde or 1,4-dioxane – and, in many cases, both. These two chemicals, linked to cancer and skin allergies, are anything but safe and gentle and are completely unregulated in children’s bath products.”
EWG goes on to explain the holes in labeling and testing requirements that make this possible:
“The Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) oversees the safety of personal care products in the U.S., but lacks basic authority needed to ensure that products are actually safe. The FDA cannot require companies to test products for safety before they are sold, does not systematically review the safety of ingredients and does not set limits for common, harmful contaminants in products. The FDA also does not require contaminants to be listed on product ingredient labels.1 As a result, consumers have no way of knowing if their products contain toxic contaminants.”
Read the full article and get a sample listing of some of the brands you may want to avoid. To find safe products for you and your children, check out EWG’s Skin Deep database. While you’re there, fill out the form on the lower half of the front page telling Congress that you support more stringent product safety requirements.
I can’t think of a good reason not to hold personal care companies to product safety and honest labeling standards. Can you?
You know what I find most personally frightening about this? My ophthalmologist has been having me wash my eyelashes with Johnson * Johnson baby shampoo for the last few weeks (don’t ask. If there has ever been a doubt about whether or not I’m high maintenance, I think that issue has now been clearly resolved). Great. I am putting formaldehyde in my eyes. Awesome!
It’s amazing what is lurking in the products we deem safe for our children. What’s even more unbelievable is a friend of mine had one of her kids exposed to the MRSA virus and the doctor told her that rather than giving antibiotics, he’d rather she bathe all three kids in bleach (somewhat diluted) to prevent the antibiotic resistance. While I agree with preventing antibiotic resistance, this doctor seems to have gone astray somewhere. Needless to say, she changed doctor and did not bathe her kids in (nearly) straight bleach.
Great post! I was just ranting about this today myself — I would love to see more transparency in labeling and to see the industry start to take steps itself if the FDA can’t get its act together asap.
I get more useful tips and info from your blog than from any other! I linked the sites you mention on my facebook profile so my mom friends could all see it. The bubble bath I use for my little one had a moderately hazardous rating!!! Going to buy some Aveeno tonight! THANK YOU!
From what I understand of the article, they’re not actually putting in formaldehyde into the products. Formaldehyde is a component of the breakdown of plastics, which gets into the product. So your alternatives would be to only buy products packaged in some types of plastics. It’d be the ultimate irony if the plastics that didn’t release formaldehydes as part of their decomposition were the unrecyclable ones, wouldn’t it (I don’t know enough about plastics to be sure, but I know that plastics are spiked with agents such as phthalates and their ilk to make them flexible)?
And FWIW, the EU may have banned dioxanes, but they still allow phthalates. Phthalates have been shown to cause hormone disruption in rats, but the case has never been proven in humans–which is, apparently, good enough for them.
That baby is so cute!
It makes me so sick what the FDA allows in food and also what’s allowed in our personal care products. It p*sses me off!
Being a mom of two toddlers, a natural skin care manufacturer and a signer of EWG’s Compact for Safe Cosmetics, this news made me sick to my stomach when I found out. Like many of us now, I have always been suspicious of these products and pretty much chose to avoid them early in the piece (just the ingredients were enough to ring alarm bells for me). This recent development is all the more reason to educate ourselves not just on the ingredients lists, but on the true moral, intention and purpose of the company who is making it.