A chemical called Pyridoxine HCL has been shown to cause reproductive problems and endocrine disruption, and there’s evidence it could cause cancer. The scary part? It could be in your conditioner, shampoo, hair gel, or facial moisturizer.
Pyridoxide HCL and countless other chemicals found in ordinary personal care products like makeup, hair products and body and face wash have been shown to cause serious health problems including cancer, harm to the brain and nervous system, birth defects, and allergic reactions. Motivated by these disturbing facts, science teacher Michelle Spangler’s physical science classes did a public awareness project about chemicals in cosmetics.
Spangler has always wondered about the chemicals in personal care products. “I’ve always looked at the ingredients on the labels, and as a chemistry major, I felt like I should know what they were… I just assumed that the FDA would make sure that they were safe.” After reading the book, “Not Just a Pretty Face,” by Stacy Malkan, she learned that personal care products are not regulated by the FDA. Although alarmed by what she read, she also wanted to do research of her own. “Sometimes you can read a book, and just kind of get caught up in the hype, and I wanted to make sure that this stuff really was substantiated… so the idea just kind of came to me to share this with my physical science class.”
Spangler had the idea of having her students find unknown chemicals in their own personal care products and look them up on the Material Science Data Sheet (MSDS) database. She and her students were surprised by what they found. “There’s a lot of stuff we were scared to find in our shampoo” senior Jessie Garcia admitted. As a final project, the students had to share their knowledge about the chemicals they discovered.
The cosmetics project was designed to be “very student lead,” Spangler said. Students chose a variety of mediums, including making public awareness posters, writing to cosmetic companies, and asking congress for stricter regulation of personal care products. Garcia said he enjoyed the freedom he had in the project. “We got to make our own choices.” Junior Ed Guertin appreciated “that it was more hands-on with the research; you had to actually learn something.”
Junior Sydney Foster chose to do a poster for her final project because it “seemed the most fun”, and because it would help educate other students about the dangers of some cosmetics. In doing research, she was surprised to find out that “pretty much every care product I used is unsafe…there are cancer causing ingredients in pretty much everything, especially shampoo.”
Guertin went a different direction and wrote a letter to Senator Al Franken about how chemicals in cosmetics should be tested for their health effects. From his project he learned that “a lot of big name products have some harmful chemicals in them that may have long term affects.”
Senior Jacob Fehr decided to write to the cosmetic giant Proctor and Gamble about a chemical called Cocoamidopropyl Betaine, which, according to www.cosmeticsdatabase.com, is an immune system toxicant and might contain cancer-causing impurities. “It’s really dangerous,” Fehr said. “But they continue to put it in their products.”
Doing the project had a stronger impact on some students than others. Foster said she stopped using some of her cosmetics after learning about their harmful effects. Junior Matt Hajcukiewicz didn’t stop using any personal care products, “although I feel like I should.”
Spangler said she has gotten a positive response about the cosmetics project from “pretty much every student…I think this is something they felt they can really apply and definitely see how it relates to them.”
Whether the project affected their cosmetics use or not, most students ended up more educated about the effects their products had on them. Junior Matt Parkhurst said of the project, “I think it’s a good thing to learn.”