The average American woman applies 168 different chemicals to her body every day, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which surveyed thousands of people in 2004 about the personal care products they use.
A woman uses 12 products, on average, before she even has her coffee in the morning, the survey showed. These include shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, hair spray, soap, lotion, deodorant, nail polish, make-up, and perfume – each one containing toxins the skin absorbs into the bloodstream. And it’s not just women. EWG found the average man uses 11 products containing 105 unique chemicals every day. The numbers run lower, but the exposure is as real and the biological consequences as serious.
Our skin is the body’s largest organ, and many of the toxins, pesticides, and organic solvents in personal care products can penetrate the skin barrier and enter the bloodstream. During a hot shower, small capillaries under the skin dilate and absorb more toxins from soap, shampoo and conditioner.
Scientists have found fragrance compounds, phthalates, and parabens in human blood, urine, breast milk, placenta, and fat tissue. More than 90% of people tested in the United States carry parabens in their bodies right now. They accumulate in tissue and fat, and can disrupt hormones for years.
What these chemicals do to women
Many of the most common ingredients in personal care products are endocrine disruptors, compounds that interfere with the body’s own hormones and mimic estrogen so the body cannot tell the difference.
These imposters are called “xenoestrogens”
Parabens, the preservatives in lotions, shampoos, deodorants, and makeup, amplify the body’s own estrogen signaling, and interfere with testosterone.
Phthalates, the compounds that make fragrance linger and nail polish flexible, disrupt estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone all at once.
Estrogen is one of the body’s master growth signalers. It builds breast tissue at puberty, thickens the uterine lining each month, grows a baby in pregnancy, and tells the body to store fat.
Xenoestrogens can switch on that same growth signal wherever the body has estrogen receptors, which are docking sites for estrogen.
Breast tissue is especially vulnerable, along with ovaries and the uterine lining.
A study of women in Denmark found that exposure to dibutyl phthalate, a chemical used in nail polish, perfume, and hairspray, had double the risk of developing estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, the most common form.
Researchers asked a group of women to avoid personal care products containing phthalates and parabens for 28 days. At the end of the month, the women showed significantly lower levels of those chemicals in their urine and a measurable reversal in the activity of cancer-related genes in breast tissue.