The hidden harms

Refs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20250327-is-it-healthier-to-use-household-cleaning-products-or-not https://biod.co.uk/blog/hints-tips/the-shocking-truth-about-household-cleaners-whats-lurking-in-yours/?srsltid=AfmBOooQCNok_d4ZicOybka6IpGcjZnT9zAzBv2QVrwxcaEEcnOf8kBf https://www.oceanicsociety.org/resources/blue-habits-tips/how-pfas-impact-our-oceans-what-you-can-do/ https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/watch-what-you-wash-away https://www.cleure.com/blogs/blog/how-cosmetics-and-skin-care-are-harming-the-environment?srsltid=AfmBOorXSM14IkMSQ1v1Ty7VUMUR8ocOFjElJu8XovrKSG-SifEiEZxG paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11381309/ https://disruptor.london/uk/blog/hidden-truth-beauty-industry?srsltid=AfmBOoo1kW0lpyDE7Xs3egrsoPUs9C2HdM46qsRPOztaTNtRcx4snHfc

Only a handful of years ago I was just as blind as most others are. Blind to a problem that is intentionally hidden from us, but that has serious consequences. It’s a problem that we buy into unknowingly, contributing to vast destruction at scales that are incomprehensible. It’s a problem that every supermarket in the country contributes to, be it knowingly or not. It’s another hand being played by big corporations to make us think that we need their things to live our lives. In fact, it’s a problem caused largely by a handful of key players in the industry.

What I’m referring to here are cosmetic and household cleaning products. Or, perhaps more generally, the vast proportion of anything that’s sold to us in a bottle with the promise of leaving something - either our bodies or our environment - cleaner. Sitting on the sofa this evening, I caught a glimpse of the back of one of the magazines on the pouffe. Lined along the back were a collection of cleaning products that promised to keep your caravan clean. For who wouldn’t want a clean caravan, after all? Different shaped bottles, in different colours, like a rainbow, catching the eye of the reader. Great marketing, some would say. I’d agree. Great marketing for yet another set of products whose the externalised costs are ignorantly glossed over in the pursuit of profit. For products that supposedly make our lives better.

The use of cosmetic products and household cleaning items with every chemical under the sun in them has been something that has concerned me for a good number of years now. Having reached a tipping point regarding my patience and tolerance for the toxic isles of bright coloured bottles in every modern day supermarket, I decided that I’d write about a topic that I believe many of us choose to ignore, or know little about the dark, hidden truth.

To start, I’d like to wind back the clock to the period where I realised that something wasn’t quite right. That these products were certainly too good to be true. It must have been during my first couple of years of university. I’d started university caring a lot, in the traditional sense, about my appearance. So, like many, I spent time finding the best products to address various components of what many would refer to as a self care routine. Dry skin. No problem, here’s a moisturiser. Acne. No problem, here’s some benzol peroxide. Dry skin from the acne cream. No problem, here’s some niacinamide. Dry, unhealthy hair. No problem, here’s some ammonium lauryl sulfate with some sodium lauryl sulfate, polyethylene glycol and twenty other ingredients that would make a good tongue twister. Also known as shampoo. Oh, and don’t forget the conditioner too. To rehydrate dry hair after shampooing. Oh, plus some hair gel and spray to keep the hair looking good. And maybe some cologne with some diethyl phthalate to keep me smelling good. This was the norm for me when I started university. In fact, I don’t think this even scratches the surface when it comes to the number of products that I was using; putting onto my body. This is before even considering any of the things that I used to keep my environment ‘clean’.

But at some point, I remember coming across a great source of information called ‘The Story of Stuff’. It was a channel on YouTube that contained a load of videos discussing the real story behind our stuff - from the clothes that hang in our wardrobe, to the food that we put on the table, and, importantly here, the products that we use to ‘take care’ of ourselves. This coincided with a point in my life when I began to think about the true costs of the things that I was doing. I was no longer illusioned in thinking that the things that I consumed and used had no externalised costs attached to them. Climate change was - and still is - becoming of increasing concern, bringing to light the importance of not ignoring the supply chains that underly everything we produce and, subsequently, consume.

Swayed potentially to baring the burden of the true cost of everything that I did in my day to day life, I started opening my eyes to the truth. I could no longer continue to use a fancy shampoo promising to offer shiny hair for three days, for I realised that once that soapy lather makes it way down the drain, that’s not the end of the chain. There’d be some aquatic life, at least, baring the burden of my ignorance, or perhaps some crops that were once organic ceasing to be so as they become laden with the chemicals that comprise the concoctions that are sold on the shelves as ‘shampoo’. Even if I turned my attention back to myself, I no longer saw any positives in using such products, for I realised the damage these chemicals must be causing to my body’s natural biome; my hair, my skin, and, more concerningly, my insides. I could see the flaws in the system, where, for example, on the one hand, I was being sold a product to give me glowing skin, but on the other, I was being sold some Frankenstein-like junk food only adjacent in the same isle - aka, something that will likely achieve the opposite of glowing, healthy skin.

I realised then that we were being sold a lie - that we’re led to believe that it’s what we lather on our outside that determines how healthy our skin or hair is. But, the truth is, there would be little market for the cacophony of ‘self care’ products if we simply took care of what we put inside us. The products are used to mask how broken and destructive a large fraction of the cosmetics and cleaning product industry have become. Yes, it’s true that sun cream is still important and that there exist some products that can aid healthy skin, but they’re certainly not the ones that stack the supermarket shelves. Now I choose the opposite approach, taking care of what I put inside me, my mind and body before turning to any products. And whenever I do, I take care not to tread into the world of toxics and harmful chemicals, for I appreciate the true cost of things.

But, I appreciate that some of you might be confused. If these things are so harmful and useless, then how and why am I still seeing them on shelves in every modern supermarket. And what’s so harmful about them after all?

Harmful hygiene

To begin this discussion, I’d like to dive straight into the harms of the chemicals that are contained in many of the products that most of us regularly use. Then I’ll dive into how big corporations get away with such behaviour.

Off the bat, many chemicals that are included in cosmetic and personal ‘hygiene’ products have been linked to cancer [1]. Just flicking through one paper discussing the dark side of beauty [1] made it apparent to me the stark number of chemicals that the manufacturers of these beauty products get away with including that are linked to some form of cancer. From parabens and phthalates being linked to skin and breast cancer, to heavy metals having general carcinogenic potential, just like when I first read about this, I am just as struck now. In the list of common harmful ingredients in beauty products, there are over a handful that have an associated carcinogenicity, but this might sound all up in the air and unrelatable.

So lets look at preservatives as a general category that are often included in these products. Of the list of preservatives commonly seen in these products, only a couple are not linked to causing skin irritation. So when we’re lathering on our skin creams that promise smooth, radiating, itch-free skin, it’s quite likely that they actually include ingredients that themselves irritate our skin. If this isn’t bad enough, which I can understand as skin irritation may be a minor issue if we can walk the streets looking all fresh and clean, then the plasticisers so often found in fragrances, these being phthalates, have been linked to hormone disruption. So when I used to spray some expensive cologne to smell nice before heading on a night out, I was also inadvertently messing around with mine, and others’ hormones.

OK, I get your point, these things contain lots of harmful chemicals, so how are these companies allowed to sell these items? This all comes back to the legislation - or more precisely, a lack of - surrounding these beauty and cosmetic products. We’ve arrived where we are now due to us being caught up in the mid-twentieth century mentality of ‘better living through chemistry’ [STORY OF STUFF], and despite getting better at identifying and thereby prohibiting the use of some of harmful chemicals, there’s still a lot lacking regarding the management and oversight of products containing such chemicals.

My guess as to why these companies can still get away with selling us these products is that they themselves have a large say in what does and doesn’t constitute harmful and, just like the tobacco industry did when they successfully lobbied for cigarettes being harmless, or even good, for humans, the cosmetic industry are able to cleverly pry their way into important discussions regarding the harm of their products, swaying any legislators and people of power to allow them to continue to destroy both the planet and the people who inhabit it. Just take the long-term lobbying blitz of chemical companies to undermine EU safety, which has included “using eye-catchingly high potential industry costs; ignoring the health and environmental benefits of regulation; undermining science; and making misleading claims about how progressive proposals would work.” [2] Or the deceptive, destructive chemical giant that is DuPont’s continued efforts to lobby MPs not to ban PFAs [3]. You see, the common theme that reoccurs whenever I dig into how these big companies can get away with such destructive acts is money and power. They have so much money and power - far more than we might at first think - that they can undermine fundamental truths about their wrongdoings and the harms of their actions, prohibiting legislative action against the use of harmful, toxic chemicals in their products.

One thing that is certainly true is the following: toxic chemicals in = toxic chemicals out. This simple fact means that whatever these big companies put into their products at their chemical factories is what comes out the other end when we squeeze something out of a bottle in our homes. What’s even more concerning, is that chemistry itself does not discriminate depending on which bottle a certain product came from. What this means is that, if, like so many of us do, we use a combination of beauty products that are initially sold separately, we may just be recreating our year 10 chemistry class experiments. In our homes. On our bodies. Given the amount of PPE and risk assessments we had to do during these classes at school, I’m concerned, to say the least, about what may have been going on when I used to combine a whole load of these different products.

To add to the above, what’s also true is that toxicity in means toxicity out. And, more importantly, once something toxic enters our domestic water waste, it’s highly likely that it also ends up in other water sources, too. This is an example of how our actions can begin catalysing ecological destruction, and is what I’ll touch on next, as, after all, the least we can do is try to protect the habitability of this Earth that we live on.

• Lots of chemicals linked to cancer and other problems - look into - we’re trying to be clean but we’re just creating a room full of toxins
• Toxins in = toxins out - put bad stuff into products it will seep into our lives
• Not all are dangerous, but lots are carcinogenic, neurotoxic, etc. - we’re playing with fire here - look at microplastics for example
• • We’re still caught up in the mid 20th century mentality of ‘better living through chemistry’ - didn’t account for human health impacts… sounds familiar? fertiliser etc.
    • These chemicals are combined by us like in a lab - they can react together etc. and cause all kinds of problems

Coral corroding cosmetics

• Polluting the environment as well as our bodies

The root of our problems

Dirty dealers

• The big players, P&G, Unilever etc.
• They just brainwash us with a load of buzzwords like natural and herbal - these terms can just be thrown around - just look at the natural shampoo ones with like strawberry in them etc.
• Advertise for charities fighting cancer etc. but they themselves have harmful things in them

• Does FDA assess safety of personal care product now? Or is it self-policed?

• But I’m still using some of these - I need to stop. It’s time that we push towards a better system that respects us and the planet
• Can’t expect the individual to be held accountable though - why the hell can we even buy them at a shop? It’s up for companies and govts. to decide what’s on the shelf
• We need to work to change the system though - come together to change the system [1] [2] https://euobserver.com/202912/behind-the-chemical-industry-lobby-blitz-to-undermine-eu-safety/ [3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/28/chemical-companies-lobbying-mps-not-to-ban-pfas-forever-chemicals