Ingredient of the Month
Today’s Ingredient of the Month focuses on light and specifically the blue/white light that is wavelength 483 nanometers; just before the UV (ultra violet) range. Several disturbing reports have come out in the past year about old 483 including one from the University of Toledo illustrating the mechanism of retinal eye damage from bright blue/white LEDs. Here scientists clearly proved that blue/white light in the presence of retinal (a natural chemical produced by and present in the eye) caused physical and permanent changes to the structure of specific sensors in the back of the eye. (1) Even more disturbing is…
And this month’s special ingredient is… TOLUENE. If you have asthma you may already have heard of toluene; 72% of all asthmatics or over 20 million Americans are highly reactive to it. Toluene, like the other “enes” (i.e. xylene and benzene) cause cancer so it is probably a good thing to be reactive to these dangerous solvents anyway. In fact toluene is just benzene with an extra carbon stuck to it, and benzene is often made from toluene. Not surprisingly, the town with the highest liver cancer rate on the planet also hosts the world’s largest toluene processing facility. Toluene…
Now, before sighing and flipping the page, wait! How much time, energy, and money do YOU spend each year in a losing battle against gum disease? If this sounds like you or someone you know, read on. When you get a sore throat, what’s the first thing to try? A saltwater gargle! Bring a couple of cups of water to a boil. Dissolve about 20% table salt into it. Cool to room temperature. This salt solution makes a safe and effective sore throat gargle, infected tooth rinse, and is a great mouth rinse for sore and bleeding gums. Swish and…
You may consider yourself an expert on alcohol and experiment with it daily. But did you know that TOPICAL alcohol must always be poisoned before it is bottled and used? Recreational drinking alcohol or ethanol is a huge source of tax income for Federal and State Governments and is taxed accordingly. But when alcohol is for EXTERNAL use only, it is taxed at a substantially lower rate. External use ethanol is usually sold as Rubbing Alcohol. In order to make sure that the alcohol cannot be used internally it must be poisoned first. This is called denaturing the alcohol, and…
Vermont Soap’s organic palm oil supplier – Agropalma Brazil – scored at the very top on Greenpeace’s Palm Oil Producers’ scorecard. Click here for more information.
Just below the Great Sahara Desert lies a broad swath of the African Savannah lands. Outside of the rainy season, this is one of the harshest, driest, dustiest places on earth. Brutal sun, wind, and the Hamatan dust take a terrible toll to exposed skin. Women of this region long ago learned how to extract an oil from the kernel of the nut of the Shea tree. Because it is solid at room temperature this became know as shea butter. While most people use shea butter as a valuable food oil, a few women and men began rubbing it into…
Previous “Ingredient of the Month” columns have focused on topical ingredients to avoid, generally petrochemical based materials and specific preservatives like Triclosan ™ and Butyl Parabens. Let’s talk some GOOD ingredients to look for, like plant-based vegetable oils. Remember; “Good ingredients” are non-irritating, healing; renewable/plant based and remain stable in product formulations. Some oils are solid at room temperature; we call them stearins or butters. Shea butter, coco butter, pig fat (if that is all you have); you get the idea. These oils melt when applied to skin and help to keep one smooth skinned and young looking. In Africa,…
And today’s secret ingredient is….Everything made from petroleum! Oils are mostly carbon and chemists know that carbon is carbon is carbon- wherever it comes from. So why is that if I rub vegetable oil on my skin for 20 years I will have soft, healthy, young looking skin; but if I rub diesel fuel oil on skin for 20 years I will be at a high risk for cancer? To answer this and other of Life’s poignant scientific questions I went crabbing with Mark Doughty. Mark is a scientist trained in chemistry and biology. Luckily he lives right up the…
Take a look at the ingredients in your shampoo right now, even those touted as “natural”. Chances are the of those ingredients is DEA or Diethanolamine. This foaming chemical is found in combination with fatty acids (bits of oil molecules) as cocoamide DEA, lauramide DEA, and also as TEA (triethanolalamine) etc. DEA is yet another common shampoo ingredient that can dramatically increase your risk of cancer. It is part of the SLS, DEA cocobetaine detergent combination that forms the base for almost 90% of the cosmetic foaming products, and is uses both in shampoos and non-organic bodywashes. There is some…
And this month’s ingredient of the month is…pthalates! Pthalates, (pronounced thalates) is a large family of molecules used in a variety of industries. Pthalates are used to flavor cheap whiskey, and they are what makes plastics flexible. The rule of thumb is; the more clear and flexible the plastic, the more pthalates it contains. So stretch wrap and clear water bottles contain a lot of the stuff. PET #1 plastic, which is considered safe for food, drugs and cosmetics, (and the ubiquitous water bottles) is also full of the stuff. Pthalates were not a part of our collective chemical exposure…
