Should your makeup be fragrance-free? Is it time to purge your kitchen of plastic? Are all food dyes dangerous? These are the everyday ingredients that could be harming your health
‘F
ar from being a rock or island … it turns out that the best metaphor to describe the human body is ‘sponge’. We’re permeable,” write Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie in their book Slow Death By Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. While the permeability of our cells is key to being alive, it also means we absorb more potentially harmful substances than we realise.
Studies have found a number of chemical residues in human breast milk, urine and water systems. Many of them are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s natural hormones. “They can mimic, block or otherwise disrupt normal hormone function, leading to adverse health effects,” says Dr Shanna Swan, professor of environmental medicine and reproductive health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. We (often unknowingly) ingest, inhale or otherwise absorb them, and while toxicity depends on dosage, the reality is that a lot of us are exposed to them daily.
So what to do about it? There are apps that will give you information about the ingredients in products, such as Yuka, Think Dirty and EWG’s Healthy Living, but there are some key “nasties” worth knowing about. Because science is always evolving, navigating these issues can be tricky – even for the experts. That’s why many specialists recommend looking at your overall lifestyle and habits, rather than fixating on individual substances in isolation. The list that follows is far from exhaustive, but it highlights 15 ingredients that science suggests may pose risks to our health.
