Drugstores initially were places where we went to get medicine. While we may still get our prescriptions filled there, today’s drugstores also sell food, cosmetics, toys, office supplies, and home goods—and a surprising number of these items are the opposite of medicine. Many contain chemical compounds that can actually make us pretty sick if we’re exposed to them over time.

Here’s a rundown of some of the most toxic drugstore items that you should probably avoid—or at least cut back on—as well as healthier alternatives.

1 ) Tampons and Feminine Care Products

A disturbing array of toxic chemicals have been found in conventional tampons, menstrual pads, wipes, douches, and other feminine hygiene products. These chemicals, which include pesticide residues, dioxin, unknown fragrance chemicals and adhesives, have been linked to cancer, endocrine disruption, allergic rash, and reproductive harm. They raise alarms because vaginal tissue is particularly porous, which means that chemicals put into the vagina are easily and effectively distributed throughout the body, says Women’s Voices for the Earth in its comprehensive report “Chem Fatale.”

Safer Alternative: Skip products marketed as “vaginal cleansers.” The vagina is designed to self-clean; douching and excess washing, in fact, can lead to infections, says WomensHealth.gov. Choose unscented tampons, as well as chlorine-free bleached or unbleached cotton tampons and pads. Reusable, washable menstrual pads are also available, as are washable menstrual cups to collect rather than absorb menstrual flow.

2) Mascara

Mercury—a potent neurotoxicant that can cause kidney damage and potentially disrupt fetal brain development if the woman using it is pregnant—is sometimes used in mascara as a preservative and germ killer.

Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the advocacy group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, says there is no reason “a known neurotoxin should be allowed” because safer alternatives exist. Unfortunately, there’s no way you would know whether your mascara contains mercury or not, because companies are not required to list it on their product labels.

Safer Alternative: To be safe, search online for “mercury-free mascara” or shop at natural foods stores. Or, try this recipe for making your own mascara.

3) Air Fresheners

Phthalates help disperse the fragrances in air fresheners into the air, where you may inhale them or absorb them through your skin.

Once these chemicals enter the blood stream, they can alter hormone levels or cause symptoms like headache, runny nose and itchy eyes.

The State of California notes that five types of phthalates are “known to cause birth defects or reproductive harm,” reports the Natural Resources Defense Council. Exposure to phthalates in air fresheners has also been associated with increasing the risk of asthma.

Safer Alternative: First and foremost, root out what is making your home smell bad. Then open the windows and let fresh air circulate.

Keep bathroom floors and the base of the toilet clean, use fans to move moist air out of bathrooms so mildew doesn’t develop, and don’t leave old food on kitchen counters or in an uncovered trash can, where it will smell as it decomposes.

To add a pleasant fragrance to your home naturally, simmer cloves, orange peel, and apple cider or pieces of apple on your stove, and enjoy fragrant cut flowers like roses and lilies.

Don’t Miss: Indoor Air Pollution Solutions: 15 Affordable Actions to Help You Breathe Clean Air

4) Lipstick

The post The 10 Most Toxic Items on Drugstore Shelves appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Do you feel great about the mascara you use? Or have you read those stories about mercury and other toxic chemicals in mascara and wondered whether you should have shifted to an all natural mascara a long time ago?

Worry no more! Kris Carr, the fabulous blogger who calls herself the “Chief Unicorn” at Crazy Sexy Wellness, pulled together this incredibly useful infographic to help make it easier to buy the best, safest, non-toxic-est mascara available on the market today. This was no mild undertaking! Over a year, Kris polled her social media community, reviewed many different brands, then evaluated products through four different lenses: the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep ratings for toxicity in personal care products; the Leaping Bunny and PETA analyses of cruelty-free products; whether ingredients included animal products; and how they performed. The result? The “Ultimate Crazy Sexy Mascara Smackdown,” captured in the chart below.

The good news is, there are plenty of all natural mascara options to choose from. So if you haven’t made the shift yet, now’s as good a time as any to get going. If you can’t wait to go shopping at the mall, drop by our Amazon store, where we sell several of the brands Kris recommends.

To see what else Kris has to offer, visit her website here.

To make the shift to all natural mascara, start here.

The post All Natural Mascara – Non-Toxic, Safe, Lead-Free appeared first on Big Green Purse.

 But your eyes? That’s another story, at least according to the United Nations Minamata Convention, so named because thousands of people in Minamata, Japan suffered mercury poisoning from contaminated industrial wastewater.

The UN convention last week decided that companies can use mercury in mascara and other make-up until safer alternatives can be found. B why use mercury in the first place? Evidently it’s an effective preservative and germ-killer. However, it’s also a powerful neurotoxicant that can cause kidney damage and serious neurological effects. If you’re pregnant and exposed to mercury, your baby’s brain could be affected.

To date, no scientific studies have researched the impact that the levels of mercury found in eye make-up could have on human health. Still, Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the consumer watch-dog group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, says (quoted here in Scientific American) there’s no reason “a known neurotoxin should be allowed in any of these products” because alternatives exist. Most manufacturers just aren’t using them.

Fortunately, several cosmetics companies committed to public health and safety as well as beauty do exist, and they’re producing mercury-free mascara as well as other non-toxic make-up options. Here are the ones I know about. If you have other recommendations, please leave them in the comments below.

Suncoat Sugar Based Natural Mascara

Afterglow Pure Soul Mascara

100% Pure  Fruit Pigmented Mascara

Tarte

By the way, for added safety:

* Store mascara in a cool, dry place.

* Toss it after about three months, whether the tube is used up or not. Bacteria can multiply in older tubes and cause eye infections.

* Don’t apply when you’re driving (duh!). Many optometrists report treating women who scratched their corneas while trying to apply mascara in a moving car!

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The post Is There Mercury in Your Mascara? Probably. appeared first on Big Green Purse.

While there’s no specific link between any one product and breast cancer, scientific evidence is growing that women face some risk of contracting the disease due to their cumulative exposure to the chemicals in cosmetics and personal-care products.

“Is there a direct connection we can make between the use of these products and breast cancer?” asks Dr. Julia Smith, the director of breast cancer screening and prevention at the Lynne Cohen Breast Cancer Preventive Care Program at the NYU Cancer Institute and Bellevue Medical Center, in New York City.  “No. But there are strong scientific suspicions that some of the chemicals found in the environment, including those used in cosmetics and other personal-care items, might increase the risk, especially if there is heavy exposure before the age of twenty-five.”

That’s because these are the years when breast tissue is developing and most susceptible to outside influences. It is possible that multiple exposures to common cosmetics could create a cumulative or “domino effect” that could ultimately result in the disease.

Why aren’t we safe?

Despite these concerns, lipstick, eye liner, nail polish, shampoo, perfume, deodorant and the other concoctions we liberally apply to our faces, lips, eyes, noses, nails, heads, necks, legs, armpits and vaginas are among the least-regulated substances in the marketplace.

It’s true. The makers of cosmetics and personal-care products are not required to meet specific federal standards that guarantee our personal health and safety. The fedral Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires manufacturers to put a warning statement on the front of products that have not been tested that reads, “WARNING — The safety of this product has not been determined.” But not many of them follow the rules.

Cosmetics companies are not held responsible for the environmental consequences their products have once they escape down the drain, either. Only one state, California, requires cosmetics manufacturers to disclose any product ingredient that is on state or federal lists of chemicals that cause cancer or birth defects.

According to the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors, which oversees the industry, “a cosmetic manufacturer may use almost any raw material as a cosmetic ingredient and market the product without an approval from the FDA.”

That really makes you want to put your lipstick on, doesn’t it?

The cosmetics industry claims to regulate itself through a board called the Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel. But a report titled “Skin Deep” by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit research institute based in Washington, D.C. showed that 89 percent of 10,500 ingredients used in lipstick, nail polish, hair coloring, soap, and other personal-care products have not been evaluated for safety…89 percent. The new video, “The Story of Cosmetics: The Ugly Truth of Toxins In, Toxins Out,” really drives the point home.

What Can You Do? Three things…

1) Shift your spending to safer, healthier products. Fortunately, you’re not completely at the mercy of the cosmetics companies. Every year, consumers (mostly women) spend $50 billion on cosmetics and personal-care products. Individually, that amounts to between five hundred dollars and fifteen hundred dollars that each of us could shift to beauty products and toiletries that are healthier for us and better for the planet.

How do you know what’s healthier? You can compare what you currently use to safer products listed on  the Skin Deep data base.

And as a general rule of thumb, you can avoid products that contain parabens, phthalates, synthetic fragrances, and triclosan, while choosing plant-based compounds whose names you can actually pronounce!

Remember that the way you spend your money is your first line of defense. If you don’t buy it, you will be far less exposed to it.

2) Cut back the number of products you use by at least three. Most people use an average of 10 personal care products every day, and some of us apply many more. We do it without thinking: soap and shower gel, shaving cream and aftershave, eye cream, face cream, hand cream, body lotion, foundation, blush, bronzer, lip liner, lip gloss, eye liner, mascara, eye brow pencil, deodorant, nail polish… Do you really need soap AND shower gel? Would an “au naturel” look be just as attractive as one that is more glamourous – and more make-up intensive? Try reducing your beauty regimen by at least three products daily and see if anyone notices. I bet you could take a complete beauty breather once or twice a month with it never registering on the “OMG meter.” If you still need convincing, read this article Nena Baker, author of The Body Toxic, wrote on the Huffington Post.

3) Support passage of a strong Safe Chemicals Act. Versions of legislation to protect consumers from dangerous chemicals have been introduced in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The bill would require testing for synthetic chemicals to stay on the market. It would shift the burden for proof of safety to the chemical companies, not consumers. The bill would limit companies’ ability to hide information about toxic chemicals. And it would reduce the public’s exposure to the most dangerous chemicals.

Environmental Defense Fund has launched the “I Am Not a Guinea Pig” campaign to mobilize people like you to urge their member of Congress to support a strong Safe Chemicals Act. You can send your representative and senator a quick e-mail with the click of this button.

There’s no excuse for the threats we face in products we use every day. We’re trading minimal beauty for a beastly outcome. Change can happen, but not unless you act. Do so today.

For more ideas on what you can do, read this month’s Green Mom’s Carnival posts, hosted at OrganicMania by Lynn Miller.

The post Beauty…or the Beast? Depends on the Safe Chemicals Act. appeared first on Big Green Purse.