What it formaldehyde?
Formaldehyde are used as preservaties in a wide range of beauty and cosmetics. In cosmetics like hair products, moisturizers and nail products etc.
This is a positive ingredient for the developers and brand, it means the product can be longer on the shelf, and saves therefor the business money.
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It’s forbidden in some conutries, and only 0,2% of formaldehyde is allowed in most products. However, there are no restrictions on the low-levels released by formaldehyde like: DMDM hydantoin, diazolidinyl urea, imidazolidinyl urea, methenamine, quarternium-15, and sodium hydroxymethylglycinate.
Why should I look out for formaldehyde?
Even though it’s not much, too many products contains this ingredient, 20% of our cosmetics have been proven to have formaldehyde as an ingredient. Both the The Federal Food and Drug Administration in the US and the EU admits it to be harmful to our health. These ingredients can cause cancer.
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What can I do?
I would recommend not buying products that contains formaldehyde. On the label this ingredients can be documented under many different names.
So here is the names to look for on the label: Formaldehyde, quaternium-15, DMDM hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, diazolidinyl urea, polyoxymethylene urea, sodium hydroxymethylglycinate, 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol (bromopol) and glyoxal.
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There are unfortunately other ingredients we need to watch out for, and it’s amazing how still some are legal. Small doses or not, ingredients like formaldehyde shouldn’t be in our cosmetics -at all.
The best thing we can do is to make our own cosmetics, but not everything is that easy to make, and let’s face it. We ain’t got the time.
So we need to find brands and products we can trust and rely on not using ingredients like this. And always read the label!
Photos by: Pixabay
