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My mom emailed me this article the other day.

Scary stuff! Luckily, I know that this preservative, methylisothiasolinone, is not causing my eczema since the only commercial skin care product I use is lotion, which thankfully does not have it. It has other things, though. I really need to officially switch off of that. I need to work on sunscreen, too….

Anyway, this goes beyond just this one preservative that was found to cause problems. It’s scary to think of all the junk and chemicals that goes into products we use on our body, in our homes, and let soak into our skin and blood stream (and don’t even get me started on what we actually ingest). We just put these chemicals on (and therefore into – the skin is the largest organ) ourselves and assume they are safe. But they aren’t! A “simple” preservative is causing skin allergies. It isn’t even the part of the product that makes it work!

Some people think that people like me are just paranoid, crunchy weirdos. But as this article shows, these chemicals are harmful. They are harmful to us, and they are harmful to the environment. Did you catch that bit at the end? Methylisothiasolinone is just one of many chemicals used in hygiene products that could cause an allergic reaction, so a test at the dermatologist may be necessary to determine which it actually is. How about we just avoid all of them!

Remember my food rule about pronouncing things? Same for other products in my life: “If I can’t pronounce it or I don’t know what it’s purpose is, I don’t buy it.” Am I perfect? No. As I said above, I still use commercial body lotion on occasion and I exclusively use commercial sun screen. But I do try, and that is better than nothing.

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