Parabens | “Actually, they’re safe after all”, says FDA.

[The Ed.]

I don’t know about you but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep up to speed with what’s ok to put on your skin, what you definitely shouldn’t put on your hair and what products are ‘good’. It’s a minefield out there and with the information changing all the time, it’s hard not to get a bit cynical about it.

In the last couple of days the FDA have declared that they can find no reason why parabens cannot be deemed safe. “The FDA believes that at the present time there is no reason for consumers to be concerned about the use of cosmetics containing parabens.” Oh, ok then…but what’s changed?

In fact, there’s never been enough solid evidence to deem them completely unsafe, hence them being used as a preservative in cosmetics and beauty products since 1984. Previously, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has alleged that parabens are linked to cancer, endocrine disruption, reproducing toxicity, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity and skin irritation…all of which sound well worth staying away from and the FDA has been continually reevaluating them as an ingredient. Most of the concern seems to stem from the fact that parabens seem to act like estrogen which has been linked to breast cancer but, the reality is that parabens have far less estrogen activity than the body’s natural estrogen.

So, as far as the FDA is concerned, parabens are now safe. I have no idea whether that’s true or not and I suspect, neither do you. I have no idea whether they were ever really unsafe. All I know is that ‘paraben’ has become a dirty world in the beauty industry but what can we do? We are simply at the whim of laboratory boffins who tell us in one breath they’re not safe and in the second that they are. It’s down to personal choice geeks…to paraben or not to paraben? That is the question.

Until then…geek on!

The Ed.

 

[sunshineinme]

Thank you for posting! Very interesting!

 

[Mrs Geek]

Surely it's similar to the age old chestnut in regards to the 3-FREE products in Nail Polish - no DBP, Formaldehyde and Toluene. At the end of the day, we were polishing nails with polish containing these ingrediants for years and years and guess what - we were all fine and so were our clients!!

It's those damn scaremonger groups who go to battle and always use the C word to get us scared.

Do you know that you would have to bathe in nail polish 24 /7, 7 days a week for like 20 years in order to get harmed by polish containing the 3 banned ingredianets mantioned above.

And I will say this here and now - nail polish was BETTER when it contained those ingedients - it worked better - just saying... I bloody hate people who have nothing better to do than to scare us over the slightest thing. :irked:

 

[Envy]

Personally, I can't beleive it's taken this long for an official stance!!

Chemophobia - once again mass hysteria has proven to be a lack of understanding...

 

[emmajane57]

I personally wouldn't trust the FDA as far as I could throw them. If parabens are a concern for you do as much of your own research as possible. Any agency working along side the government and pharmaceutical companies don't give a stuff about people and in my opinion not to be trusted. I am not opening a debate I am expressing my opinion.

 

[The Geek]

Wow. Give some examples of the FDA willingly contradicting valid research? If anything, they are overly cautious on their positions and are the bane of pharmaceutical companies.

You list anything and I could "research" up something that supports that it isn't good for you. But that doesn't make it a fact.

 

[emmajane57]

Neotame: 13,000 Times Sweeter Than Sugar And Even More Toxic Than Aspartame

Thursday, 15 March 2012 09:09

'In the event that the public becomes too informed and savvy about toxic additives in our food supply, what's a multi-billion dollar industry to do? The first step is to create another more toxic version of the additive. The second step is to collude with regulatory authorities such as the FDA to convince the public that the new, more toxic additive is safe. The third and final step is to prevent the toxic additive from being listed on any ingredient labels.
From the folks that brought us Aspartame, meet Neotame, a deadly sweetener that you'll never see on a label because...well that's just the way the FDA wants it.'
Read more: Neotame: 13,000 Times Sweeter Than Sugar And Even More Toxic Than Aspartame​

 

[emmajane57]

FDA Scandal: Board Members with Drug Maker Ties Voted to Approve Drug That's Killing Women

Thursday, 15 March 2012 08:20

'An investigation by the Washington Monthly and the British Medical Journal has found that at least four members of an advisory board which voted to approve a drug used in birth control pills had either done work for the drugs' manufacturer or received research funds from the manufacturer. Though the four committee members disclosed their ties to the FDA, the FDA decided that the ties did not matter and did not make the disclosures public. Tragically, the drugs the committee endorsed have been killing the women who take them.'
Read more: FDA Scandal: Board Members with Drug Maker Ties Voted to Approve Drug That's Killing Women

 

[emmajane57]

How FDA and Big Pharma mislead millions into taking dangerous anti-depressants

• http://www.infowars.com/how-fda-and...into-taking-dangerous-anti-depressants/print/

Paul Fassa
Natural News
March 2, 2012
The anti-depressant fraud toothpaste is out of the tube, at least partly. A Harvard Medical School psychologist, Irving Kirsch, who has been studying placebo effects for three decades, recently came up with the documented conclusion that pharmaceutical anti-depressants don’t work.
This is big news for many Natural News readers and writers. But this conclusion had the prescription-pad psychiatrists and FDA crying foul, loudly. Why? Kirsch’s conclusion was featured in a national CBS 60 Minutes television report.
Even more importantly, Kirsch’s conclusion was evidence based on documents from obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Those documents were trial results from drug companies that were not published and presented to the FDA.
Drug companies pay the FDA for approving their drugs. But the FDA doesn’t do the trials or reports. They simply take them from the drug companies who all do their own trials and decide which reports to publish and submit.
Kirsch discovered that most anti-depressant trials showed no proof of efficacy. Those results were simply hidden from view. So if 12 tests were done, and only two showed any efficacy at all, those two would be submitted to the FDA, and the FDA would essentially say “pay your fee and go to market.”
After analyzing the results of all the tests he was able to procure via FOIA, Kirsch concluded that anti-depressant drugs had only a placebo effect on patients with mild to moderate depression. In other words, a sugar pill would suffice. He went public with this conclusion.
CBS did a limited hangout

 

[emmajane57]

Wow. Give some examples of the FDA willingly contradicting valid research? If anything, they are overly cautious on their positions and are the bane of pharmaceutical companies.

You list anything and I could "research" up something that supports that it isn't good for you. But that doesn't make it a fact.

Yet you believe that if the FDA say something it is a fact? I wasn't opening up a debate I was giving my opinion. I have been brought up to question everything. Please feel free to give me examples of the FDA being the bane of pharmaceutical companies and if overly cautious why was the unfinished testing swine flu jab freely given to children with the doctors getting £5 per jab from pharmaceutical companies? Or the HPV vaccine that is also not fully tested. How very overly cautious of them.

 

[The Geek]

The only facts here is that sensationalism sells.

This isn't a debate, you are welcome to your opinion and more than welcome to avoid parabens without actually reading and digesting the relevant studies; opting instead for hyperbole via Google. The FDA isn't a membership program where $ buys you admission any more than a tin foil hat will prevent the govenrment stealing your ideas. None the less, I can find countless sites outlining the importance of wearing tin foil hats. It is up to you if you choose to wear them or not.

 

[emmajane57]

The only facts here is that sensationalism sells.

This isn't a debate, you are welcome to your opinion and more than welcome to avoid parabens without actually reading and digesting the relevant studies; opting instead for hyperbole via Google. The FDA isn't a membership program where $ buys you admission any more than a tin foil hat will prevent the govenrment stealing your ideas. None the less, I can find countless sites outlining the importance of wearing tin foil hats. It is up to you if you choose to wear them or not.

How utterly offensive. These are my beliefs, but as they don't conform to your beliefs you refer to them in a derogotary manner. Had we been discussing my religion or culture you would have have been reported to the site appropriates and action would have been taken. What a patronising and rude quote or do you not understand what the tin foil hats refers to or implies. You asked for evidence I posted some articles then you refer to them as sensationalism I think that I have the right and responsibility to question everything as I have three precious children as even the hint of anything causing them harm is enough for me to digest as many relevant studies from every source possible. If that means sources other than the (trustworthy ;-)) government sites then so be it. Check out FDA approved Aspartame thats how I started.

 

[The Geek]

It wasn't my goal to offend you, simply to make the point that just because it is posted on the net, it isn't fact. Sensationalism is the act of making a story or event more dramatic and likely to stir emotions.

I came across a site the other day where they took part of the findings reviewed by the CIR which states that the estorgen from paraben exposure is 10,000-100,000 times below what the body would naturally produce.

FDA is aware that estrogenic activity in the body is associated with certain forms of breast cancer. Although parabens can act similarly to estrogen, they have been shown to have much less estrogenic activity than the body’s naturally occurring estrogen. For example, a 1998 study (Routledge et al., in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology) found that the most potent paraben tested in the study, butylparaben, showed from 10,000- to 100,000-fold less activity than naturally occurring estradiol (a form of estrogen). Further, parabens are used at very low levels in cosmetics. In a review of the estrogenic activity of parabens, (Golden et al., in Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 2005) the author concluded that based on maximum daily exposure estimates, it was implausible that parabens could increase the risk associated with exposure to estrogenic chemicals

Yet, the author of this article went on to say that regardless of any published scientific studies and their findings, we should ignore fact and avoid paraben containing cosmetics.

Suffice to say, this article stating that "safe wasn't safe enough" was also a site dedicated to living a totally organic lifestyle. So, some would say they actually had financial motive to scare people into ignoring the facts.

Marketers have taken advantage of the confusion and now you easily avoid the use of parabens by using paraben-free cosmetics. You can also avoid being injured by a care by never leaving the house (data suggests that you are wayyyy more likely to be hurt by a car accident than through paraben exposure).

Parabens are preservatives in costmetics. They have been studied heavily by the CIR. Both the FDA and European Commission have concluded that there is simply no threat in their use in cosmetics.

You can choose NOT to believe the FDA, CIR and EC and I am sure you can find plenty of articles across the web that disagree with their position (though much of this is self serving).