Ingredients hidden by not commonly known names are in all kinds of beauty products, including the expensive brands. Even brands labeled “natural”, “nontoxic”, or “earth friendly” can be unsafe and include ingredients like lead, mercury, formaldehyde, and many other harmful ingredients that are legally considered “natural” and can be hidden from you by using one of dozens of alternate names.
Several major retailers have labeled some of the products they sell as “Green”, or “Safe”, but upon investigation we found that means those products exclude only less than 100 of the over 1,400 ingredients banned in other parts of the world. Not much of a solution for this important health safety problem.
We asked, a spokesperson for Achieve Beauty, to give us an example of how some brands hide dangerous ingredients.
“We have a comprehensive ingredient analysis service available online that translates every ingredient on a label into its commonly known name and provides you with the name of countries where that ingredient is banned or restricted, along with potential skin, hair or health problems it can cause.
This is so important, since even smart consumers don’t know all the different names for each ingredient, and most people are surprised to find out what’s in their products. Arsenic, for example, is labeled under several different names including Atomic Number 33, Fowler’s Solution, Numero Atomique 33, Solution de Fowler, and many others.”
She continued:
“We consulted with a person allergic to nickel. Her dermatologist gave her the name of 13 not commonly known names for nickel and told her to read the labels and avoid any of them. We analyzed products she was using and found that one of the products contained one of the 23 alternate names for nickel (10 more names than her dermatologist gave her), and that ingredient was likely contributing to the breakouts she was experiencing.”