What Everyone Ought To Know About Lip Balm
Find out what could be lurking in your lip balm and what to do.
As winter approaches, out comes the lip balm! Not just for me, but the whole family. We have it everywhere – bathrooms, backpacks, purses, cars.
Lip balms are just one of several personal care products each of us uses daily. These include shampoo, conditioner, soap, makeup, deodorant, moisturizers and the like. They get us clean, make us smell and feel good. Now for the bad news:
- There are no real regulations for personal care products. Companies are NOT required to test for safety before they hit the shelves.
- All ingredients do NOT need to be disclosed. This is especially the case with fragrance and flavorings. You just don’t know what is in there.
- Three common ingredients used in many personal care products have been linked to cancer, reproductive issues, and hormone disruption to name just a few. These are parabens, phthalates, and sodium lauryl sulfate.
- Our skin is the largest organ on our bodies and is really good at absorbing stuff.
Especially disturbing with lip balms as they are applied to our lips! How much do you think you eat in a day? The more I learn about conventional products, the more I don’t like. Bottom line for me – they have not been proven safe so I would rather be safe than sorry. There are so many great alternatives that are easily obtained and very affordable.
So, how do I find these alternatives? I go to Skin Deep and GoodGuide. The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep database rates more than 69,000 personal care products for safety. GoodGuide rates over 145,000 items including toys, food, electronics and personal care products.
Good Choices: These are listed in either Skin Deep or GoodGuide (or both) as being on the low hazard scale.
- Walgreen’s 100% Natural Beeswax Lip Balm
- Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm
- Yes To Carrots C Me Smile Lip Butter in Berry, Carrot, Citrus, Melon and Mint
- Neutrogena Naturals Lip Balm
- EOS Lip Balm Sphere in Honeydew and Summer Fruit
- Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula Lip butter in Dark Chocolate and Peppermint
- The Body Shop Aloe Vera Lip Treatment
- Blistex Natural Cooling Comfort
- Walgreen’s Vitamin C nourishing Lip Balm
- Softlips Organic Lip Balm in Pomegranate, Papaya, Peppermint and Honey Dew
- Dr. Bronner’s Magic Organic Lip Balm in Lemon Lime, Naked, and Peppermint
The first 6 lip balms listed were found last week at Walgreen’s in Westford.
Many lip balms contain petroleum or some derivative. The jury still seems to be out on its safety. Because of the controversy, I have not listed lip balms containing petroleum.
Two things to keep in mind when looking for any personal care product: 1) opt for no flavoring/scent and 2) Look for a short ingredient list you can read.
There are also loads of homemade recipes online. I have been experimenting with a few. I love them and so do my kids! Watch for them in an upcoming article.
Lisa Sweet
12:15 pm on Wednesday, December 14, 2011
You should add Buddha Balm to that list. There stuff is insanely good and goes on smooth like no other. Buddha Balm is the bomb!
Kristina Greene
2:11 pm on Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Thanks Lisa. I just checked them out on Skin Deep - a 1 which is great. Do you know if they are sold locally?
michele fashjian
12:53 pm on Thursday, December 15, 2011
What a wonderful tip. We consume so many chemicals through our skin. I wish we could make our own safer lipstick.
Kristina Greene
7:18 pm on Saturday, December 17, 2011
There are recipes out there. I haven't ever tried so I'm not sure how you would color the lipstick. There are several safe lipsticks out there - check out Skin Deep or Good Guide.
Jennifer Walter
10:30 am on Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Thanks so much for the info. I would never have considered lip balm to be harmful. It seems like such a simple product that there wouldn't be much to it. Thanks for the heads up and especially the information on where we can look up to see if our products are safe.
Kristina Greene
3:55 pm on Tuesday, January 3, 2012
There shouldn't be much to it Jennifer. However, that is not always the case. In the grand scheme of personal care products lip balm is pretty safe - I found MANY viable options which is nice. But there are still some questionable ones out there.
Dan D.
12:23 pm on Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Another thing to be scared about. Is there one shred of evidence anywhere that says someone contracted a disease from lip balm? Or had their lips fall off? Or anything??? Data please, not just speculation!
Kristina Greene
4:16 pm on Tuesday, January 3, 2012
You are correct Dan D. I can’t point to a direct link between personal care products and cancer or anything else harmful. I can't find definitive proof that all lip balm is 100% safe either. The fact remains that many of the over 80,000 chemicals used in personal care products, have not been fully tested if at all. In the cases where they have been tested, they are tested in isolation. No one really knows what happens when chemicals are mixed as they are in our bodies or when a child at a particular stage of development is exposed to one or more of these. Maybe nothing will happen to child A, child B may not be so lucky. This is my opinion, as I have clearly stated, based on the reading that I have over the past several years. I would rather be safe than sorry especially since it is so easy to be safe. It’s a matter of picking up one brand over the other at the drugstore. I’m not spending any more money to do it. Everyone is entitled to make their own conclusions. I am attempting to point out some things that people may not know.
From the President’s Cancer Panel:
“The Panel was particularly concerned to find that the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated. With nearly 80,000 chemicals on the market in the United States, many of which are used by millions of Americans in their daily lives and are un- or understudied and largely unregulated, exposure to potential environmental carcinogens is widespread."