Consider this: from the time it takes a product to be manufactured, stored until the distributor needs it, packaged, shipped to the retail location, displayed on a store shelf until the consumer buys it, to the time the consumer actually uses the product up, can be up to a year very often much longer (I know this because my friend is in charge of this process for some well-known bath and beauty brands). This product must be preserved during this long period of time so nothing bad will grow in it. So why do bad things grow? Well, most of these creams and lotions contain water, a lot of water, you can tell because usually water is the first ingredient on the label. Water itself is not bad, we need water, it sustains life…but, herein lies the problem, water sustains life, where there is water there can be life in the form of bacteria and other harmful pathogens. So if there is water, any kind of water in a formulation, a preservative must be used. The problem here is that there are no all natural preservatives, some preservatives are just less toxic than others. And the chemical preservatives that are being used in many of the skincare products are profoundly bad for our bodies. It’s scary yes because we are slathering these products onto our bodies and worse yet, onto the bodies of our children.
One of my favorite quotes on this topic is by Maria Tadiello:
"It is important to understand that the efficacy of preservatives relies, by definition, on their ability to kill live cells; in other words, their toxicity is an unavoidable component of their reason of being.” You almost have to read that sentence again to grasp the full meaning. What it says in very, very simple terms is that preservatives work because they are able to KILL live cells…Wait a minute…isn’t that what WE are made of, live cells?
…And there you have it.
