Beautiful You by Suzanne Edmonds

Each week, beauty enthusiast Suzanne Edmonds explores the best ways to take care of ourselves so that we love the skin we're in.

Every day, in the name of beauty, many of us unwittingly put a cocktail of chemicals onto our face and body.

With a growing number of cheap, copy-cat products arriving on our shores, it is more important than ever to do your homework when purchasing beauty and personal care products.

It is estimated that women expose themselves to around 168 chemicals each day, from soap and shampoo to lipstick and hand cream.

With some of these chemicals linked to skin irritation, hormone-related problems and even birth defects, it is worth taking the time to become a conscious connoisseur of health and beauty products.

This applies as equally to a visit to a beauty salon as it does to a trip to the supermarket. Beauty salons have a responsibility to their clients to use products that are safe and free from potentially harmful ingredients.

Before you make a booking with a salon, ask them what products they use and what ingredients they have – and more importantly don’t have – in them.

All cosmetic and toiletry products coming into New Zealand need to comply with Environmental Protection Authority standards. Legal cosmetics will be properly labelled, in English, with a list of hazardous ingredients on the label, as well as information about how to contact the manufacturer or supplier and the manufacturer’s batch code information.

However, legal doesn’t necessarily mean safe. What constitutes a ‘hazardous ingredient’ is the subject of increasing international debate.

The Environmental Working Group’s Skindeep Cosmetics Database (www.ewg.org/skindeep) is a great, easy to use resource for determining how ‘toxic’ different products are. Enter your favourite beauty products in the search box and see how they rate. You may find yourself making a few changes to the contents of your bathroom cupboard and your makeup bag.

This is also a great tool for delving further into the products being used by beauty therapists.

As a consumer of beauty products, you hold the power. If you don’t like what’s in a product, don’t buy it. Retailers won’t stock products that don’t sell. It’s a simple case of supply and demand. Demand the safest choice for you and your body.

Suzanne Edmonds is owner of De Lux salon in Cherrywood, Tauranga. Next week, in Part 3 of a three-part series on regulation of the beauty industry, Suzanne will look at nail care products and treatments.

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