As we get to know some of these chemicals better, we discover that they should not be trusted. Health Canada is proposing concentration limits for two common shampoo ingredients, siloxanes D4 and D5, aka, Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane and Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, respectively. D4 and D5 did make hair easier to dry, silky soft, and easier to work with. Also handy when making plastics and paint. Sometimes you need a little D4 or D5. Sometimes you need a lot. But Health Canada suspects that D4 and D5 are affecting fish and aquatic organisms. But, oh, how hair shines. [Salon]
Salon breaks down the toxic soup that costs the world’s consumers $40 billion every year – shampoo. Your shampoo, to be blunt, is full of crap. Crap that you pay for, crap that may well be poisoning you, and crap that certainly enters the water table and does who knows what. Hippy alarmism? Or common sense? I’m on the common sense side today – my pocket book is a shambles, and the more I look at what I spend on, the less of it I think I actually need.
“There are two types of ingredients in shampoo. One type cleans your hair. The other type strokes your emotions. I’m holding a bottle of Pantene Pro V, one of the world’s most popular shampoos. Of the 22 ingredients in this bottle of shampoo, three clean hair. The rest are in the bottle not for the hair, but for the psychology of the person using the shampoo. At least two-thirds of this bottle, by volume, was put there just to make me feel good.” [Salon]
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Agreed and they get to charge a lot more for it too. I don’t think that premature baldness nor cancer is a good trade-off for a more sexy youth, do you?
ooooh, chemicals, so scary. I think you’ve finally found the reason for our ever decreasing lifespans and general health – it’s hygiene!
@RayK – enjoying your asbestos tiles and lead paint there, Ray?
asbestos and lead: things with proven ill effects, rather than just having a lot of letters in their name.
Perhaps I was too subtle. Letter count does not communicate anything about healthiness, neither does use in a product. At one time, everyone thought asbestos and lead were great things to have around; I wonder which of the 22 chemicals in your shampoo we’ll look back on and shake our heads about in 30 years. I do believe there’s some wisdom in minimizing one’s exposure to chemicals where they (a) are easily avoidable, and (b) have no more than imaginary value. Perhaps that’s just my innate conservatism poking through.