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Many cosmetics companies are going clean these days, and new niche brands seem to pop up daily.
Letizia Le Fur/Getty Images
Why are these products so popular, anywayis the take-home that traditional makeup is dangerous?
(That said,some states, like California, have passed their own more stringent safety regulations.)
Essentially, its up to the cosmetics companies to ensure that their products are safe.
Can we really trust them to prioritize safety over their bottom line?
Heres the thing, though.
The companies that have created natural product lines are asking us to trust them, too.
Natural is not federally defined or regulated, and products labeled this way arent subject to any safety testing.
So are companies using the term in good faithor scamming us?
Cosmetics companies often dontdefine the word naturalanywhere in their marketing literature.
Do they mean that their ingredients are derived from plants?
Or from renewable resources?
Or are not man-made?
And some companies claims I investigated were too weird to even make sense of.
I think they mean synthetic.)
Now thats a clear definition that actually means something.
(Hi, arsenic and cyanideand lead!)
And dose, by the way, really matters.
In their stead, companies use natural preservatives, which are oftenless effective.
These same bugscontaminated15,000 tubes of Naturally Active brand Liz Earles Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser in November 2016.
Natural preservatives can introduce other problems, too.
And by the way, fears over some of thesesynthetic preservativesmay be overblown.
People began avoiding parabens aftera small 2004 studyidentified traces of parabens in 20 human breast cancer samples.
It could, but it doesnt have to.
So before you spend more on that fancy foundation or lip gloss, do some homework.
And trust your gutif the product sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Marketing, even with the best of intentions, is still just marketing.
And if you find a naturallipstickyou love, that’s great, too.
For my part, I’ll be keeping my Clinique foundation.
Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science and health writer based in New York.
She regularly contributes toSlateandScientific American.you could find her onTwitterandFacebook.
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