Guys: We don’t need to smell you coming

The biggest ad in the Walgreens cosmetics aisle these days isn’t the airbrushed model hawking L’Oreal, but the huge cardboard archway with the Axe logo leading like a beacon to an aisle stuffed with flashy cans of body spray. This is where the boys come to be cool, to man up, to make the ladies swoon at their feet – or so the ads make them believe.

As the New York Times reported, male body products are all the rage among teenagers and even the pre-teen crowd. One mom counted 18 different products in the bathroom of her 13- and 14-year old boys – the body washes, exfoliators, body hydrators, body sprays, deodorant, shaving cream and hair products they think they can’t live without.

This is the beauty industry’s wet dream: to finally have the other 50% of adolescents churning with anxiety, desperate to own products that promise to make them attractive and acceptable (but always fall short). The marketing machine is selling such anxieties in a myriad of subtle ways – book tie-ins, gaming sites, endorsements from hip-hop stars and extreme athletes. A Kardashian sister was reportedly paid six figures to tweet about loving the smell of Axe. (In reality, most girls are holding their noses behind the guy’s back.)

The irony of this story, which the Times missed entirely, is that the ads promise virility and masculinity, yet the products may have the exact opposite effect on the bodies of developing boys. Most fragranced products contain diethyl phthalate, a chemical that has been linked to sperm damage and feminized genitals. Many of the products, from body spray to shampoo, also contain parabens, a chemical that acts like estrogen in the body.

In all, the 18 body-care products used by the above-mentioned teenagers contain roughly 200 synthetic chemicals that the boys are putting on their bodies each day before breakfast. This daily dose includes dozens of chemicals linked to cancer, skin problems, allergies and hormone disruption, according to an analysis of a typical suite of these products on the Skin Deep database.

How’s that for an ick factor?

By this point in the story, you may be shaking your head in disbelief. But the ugly truth is that companies are allowed to put nearly any chemical into beauty products in unlimited amounts, without conducting safety assessments and without listing all the chemicals on labels. Toxic products are often marketed as “pure,” “gentle,” “hypo-allergenic” and even “organic,” since there are no legal standards for these terms on personal care products.

The beauty industry is in desperate need of a safety makeover. The broken regulatory system keeps consumers in the dark about what they’re really buying and holds the industry back from innovating the next generation of non-toxic products. Why make safer products if they don’t have to? To help change the laws, join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at www.safecosmetics.org.

In the meantime, what’s the parent or girlfriend of an over-anxious body-spraying teenage boy to do? Showing him a Skin Deep analysis of his products, along with information about how phthalates may be impacting masculinity, may make a lasting impression. (Keep in mind that phthalates aren’t listed on product labels; avoid them by avoiding products with fragrance.)

Some honest feedback about what it’s like to smell them coming also wouldn’t hurt. As Stephenie Mullen, the mom quoted in the NYT story, wrote on her blog: “being in a car with my Axe covered boys (is) like going for a jog behind a mosquito truck.”

As it turns out, that image of the noxious spray cloud isn’t far off the mark from what’s happening in the bathroom each morning.

Cellphones: The New Cigarette?

The other day, my eight-year old daughter asked me when she could have a cell phone. Irritated at the mere thought of my precious one joining the masses of teenage texting/twittering junkies, I gave her my stock answer: “When you’re sixteen”. She was horrified, “but all my friends have them, at which my husband butted in with his usual, “and if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?” She stomped out of the room. Battle to be continued. This pleasant breakfast conversation, however, got me thinking: Is a cell phone really the new cigarette? Kids are dying to have one and the moment they get it in their sticky mitts, they become completely addicted.

I car pool with one of my daughter’s friends and before this delightful nine-year old got her cell phone, we’d have fascinating conversations on the way to school, or they girls would sing along to Taylor Swift. Now a silence ensues as her neck is crooked down- 3 inches from the screen and her thumbs are like two little Sumo wrestlers going crazy. “You know that that cell phones are dangerous girls,” I stated, as I watched my daughter in the rearview mirror, drooling with envy, “they can give people cancer.” It seemed although they both ignored me and the Sumo wrestlers carried on doing their thing – later, however, I overheard my daughter telling one of her friends that “cell phones can make you sick,” and sadly, I think she’s speaking the truth.

As a Green Expert and a mom who tries to navigate her way through a world, where toxic pollution is inescapable, I feel a responsibility to delve a little deeper into a topic that the media has given little credence too. We’ve heard the odd reports here and there that cell phones could emit dangerous radiation and that some models are worse than others, but we tend to want to believe the Industry backed reporters, who tell us that they’re perfectly safe. Why? Because we’re addicted too, and don’t want to have to turn off our lifeline to feeling connected. Ironically, we’ve become totally disconnected from the pulse of life, and our awareness of what is really going on around us, is completely impaired when we’re on the phone. Numerous tests have shown that after a hands-free phone conversation in a car, the driver’s brain waves are similar to that of a seriously drunk driver! So should we take the warnings of the few scientists who manage to dodge the industry lobbyists and offer us their foreboding warnings about the biggest elephant in the room?

A pollutant is something that is harmful to nature and to oneself. As a Green Expert, I have spent many years investigating the many products that we handle and use throughout our day that could add to our “Body Burden” of toxic chemicals. Many of these chemicals are possible carcinogens and so is a cell phone. These little rectangles of technology that we talk into emit Electromagnetic Radiation, which could cause a plethora of adverse health effects, including brain tumors. Children are particularly susceptible because of the thinness of their skulls and because they have more brain fluid. There has been a 40% increase in brain tumors in children over the past 20 years, which correlates with the time that cell phones have been heavily in use. Interestingly there has also been a 46% increase in cell phone use in children between the ages of 8 – 12 in the past five years. Cell phones still emit EMR when not being talked into and can affect any area of the body where the phone kept, which is why it’s important not to allow a baby or a toddler to play games on your phone, and to always turn the it off when not in use.

Dr George Carlo, former lead epidemiologist of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, led a $25 billion study on cell phones and public health in the 1990’s. Dr Carlo says, “There are over 300 statistically significant findings showing an increased risk of tumors [from cell phone use]. There are about three or four statistically significant findings showing no increased risk. So it’s like 300 to four. Now how do you reconcile that with what you see in the news media? We have never had an exposure like this before. We’ve never had an exposure that’s dangerous that’s being sustained by four billion people (cell phone users worldwide). We’ve never had it in history.”

So as a girl who relies rather too heavily on her Blackberry (one of the worst EMR emitters,) and mother to a wannabe tweeter, what should I do? I usually try to live by The Precautionary Principle, whereby I won’t use something until it’s proven to be safe (the opposite is generally true in the U.S. in that something isn’t taken off the shelf until is proven to be harmful,) however cell phones have proven to be a huge exception in this case. The truth is, I can’t get by without one.

So unless I become a radical, or risk alienating my daughter forever, I need to exercise caution and this is what I do:

1: Turn off my phone when I’m not using it (a total pain, but actually quite a relief not to be bothered all the time.)
2. Always use the speaker- phone (unless in the car, where I have Bluetooth)
3. When at home, use a landline that’s connected to the wall or put my cordless phone on speaker (cordless phones are just as bad.)

This is what I would advise for a child:

1. Use only in emergencies!
2. Only use the speaker- phone and never put the phone to your ear.
3. Turn off the phone when not in use.
4. Install a landline connected to the wall in their room.

Watching Don Draper and his wife Betty on Madmen, puffing away morning, noon and night, reminds me that it was only fifty or so years ago when my parent’s generation thought that it was perfectly normal and not in the least bit unhealthy to smoke cigarettes all the time. When the warnings started to trickle in, I was a teenager and literally couldn’t live without my Marlboro Lights. All parental warnings seemed prudish and silly – it was something that anyone who was remotely cool did – and therein lies the problem: will it ever – can it ever become cool to not use a cell phone? I highly doubt it. I just pray that my daughter has the sense and awareness to understand the world she’s now living in, a world where cancer rates across the board have tripled over the past 30 years, and many of these diseases have been attributed to environmental causes. Living a Green life is less about eco-chic cell phone covers and more about wising up to the fact that almost everything we use can have a negative impact on the environment and especially our closest environment, which is our body. It’s a tough call to have to dodge the many bullets that we now face, and no one wants to become a Green zealot or a bore, it’s all about awareness and questioning. The greatest gift that my father gave me was to question everything that I was told – in particular what I saw on TV and read. With the cell phone industry being as powerful as it is, I’ll just have to encourage my daughter to do the same.

If you are as concerned as I am about the probable dangers of cell phones, try for one week to limit your use to the bare minimum. You may be pleasantly surprised how easy it is. A friend of mine dropped cell iPhone down the toilet last week and didn’t have time to get another. “It’s the most peaceful week I’ve had in years!” she told me. If the habit proves too hard to break, at least consider getting yourself an Air Tube Hands Free Set, which is apparently the only headset that can protect you from the dangerous rays.

Environmental Pollutants are just about everywhere, so unless you go live off- the- grid in an eco-community (and even then you’ll still get a few,) the most savvy thing you can do is to make a mental list of the worst offenders and then do something about it. If you lived in a community where the local water supply had been polluted with possible carcinogens, you would likely do something about it yesterday! Don’t ignore the elephant in the room and protect yourself and your family today from one of the most ubiquitous environmental pollutants around.