Ridding My Home Of Toxic Chemicals

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (examples: DDT, polychlorinated biphynls, BPA, polybrominated diphenly ethers, alkylphenols, perflurooctanoic acid) are absolutely everywhere and going looking for them to rid your life of them only makes it disturbingly apparently how surrounded we are.

I'm the semi-proud owner of a somewhat large train case full of makeup. I filled the train case about six years ago when I was trying to make a greater effort to look nice at all times. My husband doesn't care for the "powdered", "fake", or "made up" look that a full face of makeup leaves it's unwitting victims.

Victims? Don't get me wrong. I love makeup, but because I don't leave the house very often, don't receive visitors, and my husband doesn't care for it - I very rarely wear it any more. Despite the way far too many of us treat it, cosmetic items have shelf lives and we tend to keep them longer than it is best for us to be still using them. In addition to this fact, there are a lot of toxic chemicals that can be found within the things we slather onto and into our faces and our bodies.

Phthalates are one of the EDC's people are becoming increasingly more aware of but it seems parabens are a bit less well-known culprits. Meant to extend shelf-life and increase absorption of the products you're using they're doing more harm than good.

Feeling that enough moons had passed since I last used much of my makeup that I could easily go into my bathroom, go under the sink, get out my train case, and start chucking out makeup containing health damaging chemicals - I headed into the bathroom to do just that. Filled with resolve I sat down on the edge of the toilet and unzipped the train case, but as I looked over all of the goodies I'd spent so much money on I was met with a lot more internal opposition than I'd ever expected. It just seemed so wrong to throw away barely used Clinique, MAC, NARS, Smashbox, Erno Laszlo, or any of my other goodies. I began looking at the backs of my products searching for ingredients that I knew were harmful and more often than not was unable to find the list.

Determined to not leave my seat without accomplishing something non-toilet related I decided to remove opened makeup that was over a year old. Even that proved difficult. Only four items found their way out of the box among these was a MAC spray foundation - this seemed like an easy choice to remove since it came in an aerosol can and all the instructions on it made it sound like you should never spray it on your face.


The next day I made another pass at my makeup and was able to force myself to get rid of a little more.

A few days later I decided our lotions and body washes for synthetic fragrances, parabens, sulfates, and PEG compounds - what I found doing just a quick pass was disturbing.

Better yet I can't tell you just how many of these toxic laden items boast no animal testing and recyclable containers. Some of these even say "organic" or "herbal" while others touted the fact that they contained "shea" or "olive oil."

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