Last Friday was a bad day for the natural-products industry. At the sector’s ExpoWest trade show, it was announced that a new study found a number of supposedly “natural” and “organic” body-care and cleaning products contain a nasty chemical called 1,4-dioxane (which the EPA classifies as a “probable human carcinogen”) that you won’t see on the ingredients list. (You can read the L.A. Times’ coverage of it here.)
Giovanni Organic Cosmetics, Jason (whose slogan is “Pure, Natural & Organic”), Kiss My Face, Nature’s Gate, and Seventh Generation were among the leading brands called out in the study, which was commissioned by the Organic Consumers Association.
To Seventh Generation’s credit, it has said that it intends to “completely eliminate 1,4-dioxane from all of our products.”
A couple months ago I blogged about learning that a lotion I’ve used for years contains toxins. But that was a conventional product. Wouldn’t you think that skin softeners with the words “natural” and “organic” would tend to be clean? Look at the study’s product list (pdf) and see for yourself.
Some people will probably say, Sure, this chemical isn’t ideal, but we’re talking parts per million here—how bad can that be? But as Adam Eidinger of the Organic Consumer Association pointed out to me, the EPA’s standard for safe drinking water is 3 parts per billion. “Granted, you’re not drinking these things, but you are putting them down the drain and introducing it into the environment,” he said. Not to mention absorbing their ingredients through your skin (pdf).
Here are some tips from the OCA on how to avoid 1,4-dioxane.
