I decided to write this blog because I always feel my skin being dry after a shower. I’m not sure how much it’s got to do with toxic ingredients in soap, but what the heck. I mean… certainly if something was toxic then I'd doubt you’d want it on your body anyhow. So let me begin, on this blog, I will write about when was the first occurrence in which we humans figured out there were toxic ingredients in the soap we were using.
So let’s get started. The first thing on the list is, “When did we figure out we were using toxic ingredients in our soap bars?”. So here’s the deal. I’m going to include four different research articles here. The first one is from Medium, Labeled “Toxic Beauty - a data story” and written by Maryam Khezrzadeh. Gee, this one is quite the scare. The first paragraph opens up talking about how “there are toxic chemicals in our everyday personal care products: in shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, perfume, nail polish, baby powder”. That’s quite disturbing.
Before Maryam mentions this however, she first mentions something just as disturbing. It’s about how in the year 2000s, women were just finding out that there were traces of lead in their lipsticks. Maryam briefly tells the story about how you were able to find out that there was lead in your lipstick by rubbing a gold ring against a streak of lipstick on a desk.
What’s even MORE disturbing even yet, and quite not really the secret to anyone at this point in time, is the link to these chemicals and all sorts of cancer. I will skip that part however, as it opens a door to whole new conversation. This article was written in 2016, and Maryam tells the story about the lipstick with lead traces that happened in the year 2000. So that’s the first evidence we have as to “When did we figure out we were using toxic ingredients in our soap bars.”
The second article I have opened here is titled “The History of Soap”, and it’s written by Dan Koeppel. It was written in 2020, and the most interesting line in the first paragraph reads “A lot of modern soap isn’t soap at all.” Woah. What am I showering with?
Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about that since I’m using of BWMCosmetics Mountain Man Natural Soap Bars! If you haven’t tried these out, I totally suggest you do. I’m the guy who writes the blogs here, so naturally I had to try them out. They are a delight to shower with and they smell strong and last quite a while. Best part is that they don't contain any harmful ingredients and are cold pressed natural soap bars so they’ll last longer!
Anyhow, back to when did we find out about toxic ingredients in our soap bars. As Koeppel mentioned, most of the modern soap isn’t soap at all. It’s detergent, explains Koeppel, and detergent has one difference, and that is that they are not soap at all. They are “synthetic detergent products”.
The products included in detergents include “brighteners, water softeners, and antibacterials/antivirals like alcohol, benzalkonium chloride, and chloroxylenol”, explains Koeppel. Great, the article ends here…. And the earliest evidence of a substance being banned in this article is the instance of triclosan, which was banned in 2016 “in light of medical and environmental concerns”.
Uhhhhh… this is not too comforting. We are two articles deep and we’ve only found out that the only banned substances from the market are lead and triclosan. The first article is also quite alarming. Checkout this excerpt from Mayram’s article:
An average American teenager uses 17 different products a day, exposing herself to more than 150 chemicals. This everyday exposure continues throughout her lifetime. An average American woman uses 12 products a day. American man? 6.
I’m not going to go into the details about these chemicals in this article because I’m writing this for the sole purpose of raising awareness. I highly suggest you read them, you will find out quite a lot about the tactics that current beauty and cosmetics companies use regardless of who they are harming.
Let’s see what we find in the 3rd article. This one is titled “Dangerous beauty: hazardous chemicals and poisons in historic cosmetics”, and it’s a lot more helpful in regards to a timeline. It’ was written by Kerry Grist in 2022. Uhhh… everytime I read about how soap is made I’m reminded of the movie “Fight Club”. Good movie.
Anyhow, this one lists a number of items dating back from 1575 BCE! For example, you know how the Egyptians used that really heavy eye liner? Well, the Egyptians used a powder that came from lead in order to achieve this! Here’s another one that Grist lists in his article, “Dr. Mackenzie’s Arsenical Soap”. That sounds deadly. Well, arsenic is highly poisonous. As you’ll read in Grist's article, you will find out that there are NUMEROUS amounts of highly toxic products throughout history that were used in cosmetics.
Now I get it…. We were asking the wrong question here. The real question is not “When did we find out we were using toxic ingredients in our soap?” The real question is instead… “When did we find out that <insert ingredient name here> in our soap was toxic?” You see, this was not a matter of trial before error. Instead, the world of cosmetics and beauty is full of errors. It seems that it still is.
The fact of the matter is that no one took the time to scientifically test most of these horrendous ingredients before putting them on our soapbars, lipstick, etc. People just want “beauty”, blindly, and I guess that’s the price to pay for something that isn’t real. You see, you’ll find that you are beautiful just the way you are.
You don’t need cosmetics nor fancy smelling things that you don’t know what the heck is in them. A natural bar of soap and a fine smelling natural made perfume (if you could find any) will do just fine.
So remember that, next time you are putting something on to look “beautiful”, chances are that you don’t need it, and if it does make you feel better or smell nicer, be sure that you remember to check what the heck is on it, and if you do find out what is on it, remember that there are still plentiful of products out there which we don’t know enough about to label harmful.
So with that being said, you should also remember that people know exactly what they put on Natural bars of soap, and that none of the chemicals in these natural soap bars are harmful (after saponification that is).
In the next article we write, I will list out the numerous soap ingredients that are harmful to our skin. The other day I wrote an article about “How do Soap Ingredients Affect Our Skin”, and this next one will be a little different. Instead of talking about how these harmful ingredients affect our skin, I will list out these toxic ingredients and talk about the last time they were used or seen on soap bars including the name of the brand.
Leave a comment