The Toxic Truth About Nail Polish And Kale
Anyone who’s ever googled “Food Babe Airplane” knows the snowball effect that can happen when a blogger puts information out there without checking the facts. Though Vani Hari, the woman behind the Food Babe movement, has long since removed her infamous post about airplane pressure shrinking your organs, it lives on through the internet as many blogs and even scientific sites have reposted it in an effort to discredit her entirely. Unfortunately, when misinformation is posted, it not only discredits the blogger, but it hurts the whole movement and community behind them. I’m not hating on Vani- One has to applaud the strides she’s made in bringing awareness to both consumers and those marketing unhealthy foods, alike. But sensationalism aside (which is her tactic), bloggers have a duty to do as much research as possible. Not only to ensure they’re spreading truth, but also because when they don’t, it can cause other people to get hurt as collateral damage. Which is why I always try to have my little duckies in row and research the hell out of something before I post about it. But I’m only human. I make mistakes, we all do.
Which brings us to nail polish. This week it was brought up that some of the nontoxic polish brands I use and love contain Benzophenone-1 and a popular blogger alleged that these brands were knowingly marketing a toxic product as nontoxic and that Bensophenone-1 has links to cancer, endocrine disruption, developmental and reproductive toxicity, organ system toxicity, irritation, ecotoxicity and more. Then I got a ton of messages from people about it, since I’ve talked about two of these polishes often. I have no problem in calling out brands who are greenwashing and we absolutely need to be holding these companies accountable, but we all need to be sure our information is accurate first. I’m not here to take sides on what was said this week (it got a little heated). I’m on the side of truth for my readers. And as a nail polish addict, with a rather large collection of “nontoxic” nail polishes and as someone who’s recommended some of these polishes to my readers, I really needed to get to the bottom of this and see if these brands were knowingly misleading us and just how toxic Benzophenone-1 really is. SO into the rabbit hole I fell.
You guys know I’m pretty strict about researching product ingredients before I ever use them. The two polishes I use and have recommended are Aila and Treat. Both brands clearly state Benzophenone-1 on their labels and websites and when I was initially researching their ingredients, I looked at Skin Deep which rates Benzophenone-1 as a 4 (I usually stick to products that rate no higher than a 2 or 3, but a product containing one ingredient rated as a 4, that is far down in it’s ingredient list is not a major red flag for me). The rating was based on mild to moderate health concerns of possible skin irritation or allergic reaction (immunotoxicity). Not exactly toxic. So do these brands know something I don’t? Did they willingly pull the wool over my eyes and try to deceive me?
If you give a blogger some nail polish, she’ll probably want some facts to go along with it..
The initial blogger who called them out used this site as their sole reference. This is a site I know and trust, however you can’t take one site at face value. Typically, I like to see results from at least 2 or 3 different sites and I actually read the studies cited. So I’ve spent the last few days reading one mind-numbing study after another listed on the website and searching for (and struggling to find) other websites to support the information provided. Where to start? So some of the studies cited weren’t even studies. They were anything from blank search pages on european sites, such as this one or just general information saying: “This is an ingredient used in cosmetics” without offering much safety data like this one. Ok, get ready to geek out here… Pretty much all of the studies talked about different derivatives of Benzophenone (as in Benzophenone-8, oxybenzone, etc), but not Benzophenone-1 specifically, and yes there is a difference. Gonna be honest, I had to call in help to decode the studies on the Benzophenone derivatives. Luckily, my brother is a nuclear physicist (or commonly referred to as a rocket scientist.. I know, such a smarty pants. What happened to me?) and happens to have extensive knowledge of chemistry as well. As he explained, ‘Each derivative could possess similar properties and many times do, but they could also react completely differently, as it is it’s own molecular chain with a distinct electric field. So, it’s inaccurate to cite a study about another derivative and make a blanket statement that all the other derivatives follow suit. How they react depends a lot on the manipulations made to them.‘ So to be clear, none of the studies cited by this site actually show that Benzophenone-1 specifically causes any harm, however, a reader did find one study that linked it to ovarian cancer in mice models.
What are the facts?
According to the data provided by Campaign For Safe Cosmetics and from other studies I could find, I’ve found absolutely nothing that shows that Benzophenone-1 is an endocrine disruptor, has organic toxicity, etc. There is one study I’ve found linking it to ovarian cancer in mice models, without giving information how much would be needed to cause this. So can we allege a company using this ingredient is knowingly marketing toxic products as nontoxic? Semantics, semantics.. Look, truly anything can be toxic in the right amount, even Kale. And in all likelihood, benzophenone-1 may carry some risk, but due to the fact that apparently little to no studies have been done on it’s use in cosmetics, it’s hard to say what the risk may be and in what amount would you have to use it to experience the effects. And that’s a problem. A problem we need to take up with congress, the FDA, the EPA, anyone else who would have the power to test this and require safety testing be done across the board on ingredients being used by cosmetics companies. This is not something that we need to beat up small companies who are already trying to make safer products over. Let’s keep some perspective. Am I going to keep on using my nail polishes? Yup, although I may use them a little less. I’ve found the cleanest versions I can that actually work. Will I use them on my daughter? No. I have painted her nails with real nail polish exactly 2 times her whole life (once with Aila and once with Treat). Ironically, both times I put it on Instagram, so I misguided my followers and for that I’m sorry. I represented something that actually differed than my true beliefs, because long before this whole nail polish scandal ever happened this week, I’ve known that no polish can ever be 100% natural and I’ve always been cautious about using them on or around my children. But twice she caught me painting my nails and begged, so I gave in. I thought it looked cute, so I took pictures. And then put them on Instagram.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself
One last thing to add to this totally long winded post. I am not an expert. I did call in an expert (my brother), but like most bloggers, I’m not a chemist or a formulator. I always want to encourage you to do your own research. And it REALLY bothers me to see people taking a blogger’s words as being an expert opinion, when in reality, they’re just a concerned consumer with a computer who may or may not have done a little more research than you. Please don’t take everything you read on the internet at face value, do your own research. And if you’re a blogger reading this, you have a responsibility to research and make sure you’re writing the truth. What are your thoughts? Any studies I missed or favorite polishes that don’t contain Benzophenone-1? Did you google “Food Babe Airplane” before even reading this? haha. xoxo
**Update: After some back and forth, the blogger previously referenced provided the following studies, which support the claim of it being a possible carcinogen and endocrine disruptor http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25849766, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25682003, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26773395, and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26440554. While these don’t cover all the claims, it’s a start.
Also, Treat added the following to their website: http://www.treatcollection.com/blogs/look-deeper.
Thank you Molly, for being a voice of truth and reason amidst the recent brouhaha over nail polish. I know that a few other people along with myself were very disappointed with the name-calling and accusations flying all over the Internet by a self-styled expert, and how the damage it was doing to small business owners trying to do some good in the world. Nail polish will never be 100% natural or safe but like you said, but it is nice to know that we have safer alternatives available. So very appreciate your thorough research and pursuit of truth. This is why I am a loyal reader!
OOOOH Molly, i keep my mouth shut this week because i was very painful about all this Saga. The day i saw this post with her daughter, i had trouble sleeping.. I’m not very good to express my thought in english so i’ll keep again my mouth shut, but for me it was “une campagne de salissage” (smear campaign) and not an information campaign. I’m agree with information and i love to learn more, but the way this action was taken i’m not agree.
Ok Molly thank you for this post, i made a lot of research too and i take to a lot of people & brand this week about this, but i don’t have a chance to have a scientist brother 🙂 OOO ask your brother for coffee.. I research a lot on endocrine disruptor on internet and i found a lot of list with coffee in it. Is it real ? Julie xx
Molly you wrote such a great post. I enjoyed your sass and fact checking. Nail polish is a Treat for me 😉 and omg your brother is awesome!
I have so much respect for you and your blog — you strike just the right tone, you back up your assertions with information, and you have pretty pictures. What’s not to love?
As for nail polish, I immediately went to Think Dirty to look up some polishes I’d bought (and some I’d received in subscription boxes) from shops I trust. Benzophenone-1 rates a 9 there, but I didn’t have time to go beyond and figure out what they really base their ratings on and what their source info is. Thank you for helping track that down! This is all such a great reminder to look up ingredients ourselves and not trust others to vet them for us.
I’ve also polished my kids’ nails, and with far worse than Aila and Treat. I think there’s a lot to be said for moderation and allowing ourselves a bit of freedom and fun here and there.
What a breath of fresh air!!! Thank you Molly for taking the extra caution, research and sharing your findings on this recent controversy. Blog posts like this are why I as your reader admire you even more! Lets keep the momentum and cultivate self researching at all times for our own discretion to make a decision in every personal choice 🙂 Bravo Molly!
I LOVE you for this! I too had insomnia when this sh!tshow (sorry, but no better way to describe it) was going on and I was so incredibly perturbed. And I too fell down the research rabbit hole with the exact same conclusions as you. Wasn’t going to wade in because YIKES, but so grateful that you did! Xxx
I read this and was relieved because I’m so tired of these “green beauty fanatics” that often don’t know what they’re talking about and decide to scare monger people. I was upset over the tactics another blogger used to call out a few lines including using an image of a child. She was so righteous and felt justified with quite a few excuses about it. In any case, it’s obvious that she ‘s part of the “scare mongering” movement in green beauty and that’s her style. We should all be concerned and research just as you did, but we should be fair and cautious about our approach. At the end of your post you write that bloggers have a duty to be responsible. They SHOULD feel a sense of duty, but so many don’t. I stopped blogging because of this. What I have seen an increase of is bloggers writing content for money and to work with brands that pay them or bloggers who need attention and have created a platform for that reason. Real, considerate bloggers who write about what they love and take the time to research are rare these days since so many will write, promote and say anything for cash. I’ve seen and heard some of the most popular green beauty bloggers admit they don’t like or use all the products they receive free they just posted reviews for money. So everyone should take that into account as well when someone gets on her high horse because she has thousands of followers. I’ll take an honest blogger with a few hundred followers that writes better researched posts any day.
Oh, Molly. I could not love you more right now. It was so clear to me that said blogger was trying to stir up self-created controversy for blog hits, and to do it at the expense of two amazing small brands livelihoods was irking me to no end. So I really hope that anyone who bothered to participate in that discussion comes here for the truth. Unlike most bloggers, I do have a scientific background – one that lead me to green beauty in the first place. So I’m pretty up on my chem and bio and endocrine disruptors, and as your brother stated, to blanket call out Ben-1 without reading ANY of the studies provided (or even having read them) when most of them site a Ben-8 or Ben-3 is like (to go off your example) calling out Spinach because of something Kale did. It makes no sense. And I appreciate the time you took to educate your readers and anyone else who may have fallen way too far over into the gossip side of blogging instead of sticking to the facts. I hope we all realize that everything we use has a certain level of toxicity – even plastics, food and our vitamins. A certain amount of this can actually be healthy for us, since when we are exposed to the correct level of toxicity it can actually help WARD off cancer and other ailments (think chemo – but less extreme.)
Thanks for all you’re doing to educate, spread awareness and allow people to chill on this subject. Girls, it’s just nail polish. And Aila and Treat are doing right by you without leaving you with watery nail polish. Want watery nail polish? Buy that instead. 🙂
I arrived at this post via a green beauty company that I follow…so glad that I did. This was a great read! I saw several posts on IG this week from one blogger…not sure if the same one that everyone has mentioned but she listed Zoya as one of the polishes that contains Benzophenone-1. I checked the ones that I have and could not find that ingredient. As someone who is continually striving to learn and make better choices in my green journey I value honest opinions and someone who has done their research! 🙂
I eat about five cups of kale each day…is that too much?
AMEN! THANK YOU SO MUCH for putting all of this together. You could not have diplomatically called out someone or put the truth together any better. A lot of great brands that are doing great things were bashed this week. I want to hug you right now!
I saw the post you’re referring to Molly and, initially, I was just kind of shocked. Like anyone (or maybe just the neurotic bloggers 😛 ) , I went and did research on benzophenone-1 to see if the claims were true. I found the same kind of inconclusive data as you. Most studies referred to benzophenone-3,-4,6,7 or 8, but not really benzophenone-1 directly. I couldn’t find too much on it at all and I’m aware that the same name doesn’t mean same thing, esp. if the numbers differentiate to note a different chemical structure. Sometimes I think some bloggers get too extreme and then maybe they just want click bait or something. Its unfortunate, because the blogger in question is a good blogger, as far as I know, with tons of loyal followers. It would be a shame for her credibility to be shot just because of this one instance of speaking before doing the proper research. I don’t think it’s right to defame/smear campaign brands like that when you’re not a chemist or don’t know the facts. Which she doesn’t seem to have done. It was biased at best. Also, I checked after reading that post to see if there were, in fact, any clean nail brands that don’t have this ingredient, but all of them do as far as I can tell.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
Stop by and chat with me ♥ http://storybookapothecary.com
You have made some good points. In my opinion cosmetics can not be completely natural!! But we can avoid some really bad toxic products for sure. But let’s face it when it comes to beauty especially makeup there is no way we can find anything that’s 100% natural.
Dear Molly, I didnt really hear much about the nail polish discussions from the past few days until just a few minutes ago when I read about it on the Green Beauty Insiders forum. Few people cited your article with great regard, so I got intrigued. After reading your post, I wanted to say thank you for being so eloquent and gracious in you writing. It is very empowering to see a blogger take such dedication and understand the power they have over others. I am not going to comment on the nail polish topic, as I feel enough solid points were raised already, and your article makes it beautifully clear on the options we, as consumers, have when it comes to deciding what to paint our nails with.
* just a little note for my previous comment, smear campaign is maybe not the good word to describe, I don’t know how to translate campagne de salissage en anglais, but my thought is ALL NAIL POLISH are not good for our body, so pointing 2 small brand and using a picture of the Aila founder child make me sick, that’s my point. I’m agree with information, but i feel a lot of sadness when i saw the discussion between the founder of Aila and some people on this instagram post.
Great post Molly! I appreciate the time taken in researching the topic. I’m glad you explained the pictures you’d posted of your daughter with nails polished. That’s really where I tend to agree with one point of the controversy. I don’t like the use of children in marketing products that contain ingredients that need more research to completely rule out as toxins. Children are more susceptible to chemicals and caution needs to be recommended and exercised. It seems there is a trend in dressing up little girls as miniature women. It’s sad to me to think many people (not yourself) are more concerned with meet social expectations of external beauty while many times neglecting to nourish inner beauty and character development. Many times this is taking place while ignoring “potential” hazards for beauty’s sake.
I think this article is a good coming from a true expert http://www.zaega.com/nail-polish-101-the-truth-about-natural-nontoxic-nail-polishes.html
Tricia, it means the world to have you as a loyal reader! I agree, it’s nice to have safer alternatives and I applaud the nail polish companies that have made products that truly work and have still managed to cut out all of the big offenders. xo
Julie, Thank you so much for reading! My scientist brother definitely helps in deciphering all of this and at the end of the day I think more research needs to be done on many of the ingredients being used currently. Until then, hopefully we can all work together to create a positive change in the industry. <3 Molly xx
Thanks for reading Erika! xo
Jenny, Thank you so very much for your kind words! There are lots of sites and tools out there that have done such a great job at gathering studies and helping us determine product safety (such as ThinkDirty), but truthfully, none of these are scientific institutes doing the tests themselves and sometimes mistakes are made (and then crossed over to other sites that share data with them). The good news is that in 2016 we have some exciting launches happening, including a group that plans on testing products themselves for safety. I’ll share more about that soon! In the meantime, I think a little bit of balance in life is good for us :). xo
Jessy, Thank you! We hear a lot of different messages as consumers, but at the end of the day YOU are responsible for your purchases and what you bye for your family. I think a little research can go a long way and I think we can all work together to promote positive change in the community! Companies like yours that make quality products that work well are what’s going to win people over to safer products in the long run. xo
Thank you Lola! It goes without saying that I absolutely loved your recent post as well! I think a little perspective goes a long way here and we can promote positive change without tearing down the brands that are already trying to make a safer product. xoxo
Virginia, Thanks for reading and thank you for your thoughts. I agree that there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to shed light on the green beauty movement and my hope is we can concentrate on all of the positive things that have happened even within the last few months (I mean, green beauty at Target? Who would’ve thought??). I’m sorry you stopped blogging. We all have a voice and the more authentic voices we have out there, the more positive change will come out of it! Thank you again, Molly xoxo
Tara, Thanks for stopping by and reading this post. I completely agree that a little research and awareness goes a long way. So many studies out there are ambiguous and don’t really prove or disprove anything. Let’s all take it up with the people that have the power to change the industry and not take down small companies that are trying their best to match performance with safety. xo
Hi Rhonda! So glad you found me :). Thank you for reading! xx
Ah that’s probably too much. May want to have your heavy metals levels checked ;).
Thank you Ashley! I’ll take that hug, even if it’s through the computer :). xo
Hi Tianna! Totally the neurotic blogger (and reader questions) that drove me to dive so deep into the research. I’m glad I did though! Thank you for reading. xoxox
Thank you for reading Ophelia! xo
Maryna, Thank you so much for visiting my blog and for reading. Thank you also for the kind words. I think the world of our green beauty community and that includes brands and bloggers alike. We all have so much power to influence others and I think a little knowledge and kindness goes a long way. xoxo
Julie, You may feel your english doesn’t cover the situation, but I understand you perfectly. Thank you for your unending kindness and support of the Green beauty community. xo
Thanks for reading Renae! xo
Thank you for sharing that article! The more information, the better! xoxo
https://www.poofyorganics.com/products/1594-angelwish-nail-polish.aspx
I also love there nail polish remover it’s like an oil but removes nail polish and best thing it does not evaporate like regular polish removers so you just need a tiny amount.