BUND Hormonal chemicals in cosmetics

App aims to educate consumers about hormonal chemicals in cosmetics

09/30/2014

The German Federal Government for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND) warns consumers against hormonally active chemicals in cosmetics. The environmentalists studied 21,000 cosmetics, of which about every fifth product (18 percent) contained those substances that are mostly used for UV filters or as preservatives. A BUND app aims to help consumers identify polluted cosmetics more easily.

Hormonally active chemicals can disrupt development processes in the body
Hormonal chemicals are very similar to the body's own hormones. They can disrupt important development processes in the body, so that, for example, in men, the sperm quality and number is reduced, as the BUND informs. According to a study by the World Health Organization (WHO), as many as 40 percent of young men in Europe are affected.

Especially parabens are part of many cosmetics and personal care products such as shampoos, creams, lipsticks and shaving cream. When used, they enter the body and can cause health problems there. Particularly vulnerable are fetuses in the womb, toddlers and adolescents, explains Ulrike Kallee, chemical expert of the BUND. „A shower gel does not make you sick. But most people use many different cosmetics every day, whose ingredients can act as a chemical cocktail in the body.“ The expert demands: „Manufacturers should therefore refrain from parabens in their products.“

Slight decline in the number of products containing hormonally active chemicals
After all, the number of products with hormonally active chemicals seems to be slowly decreasing. This was the result of a comparison of the BUND between the years 2013 and 2014. While last year, 30 percent of the tested cosmetics contained the hazardous substances, it is currently 27 percent.

The app „ToxFox“ BUND helps to identify those products that contain harmful substances. It currently provides information on more than 80,000 personal care products and is regularly updated and supplemented. „Only a fifth of the newly registered cosmetic products are contaminated with hormonally active substances. That's still too much, but the trend is down, "says Kallee. „Many products are now without hormonally effective chemicals. This is clearly a consequence of consumer protest.“

However, some manufacturers seem to ignore their customers' wishes. The number of products tested with hormonally active chemicals at Procter & Gamble increased from 2013 to the present day by two percent to 46 percent and at Henkel by three percent to a total of 33 percent, informs the BUND. (Ag)