Guardian.co.uk

The Borough Market is home to some of the Britain's most delicious organic produce - and to Neil Yard's Remedies, perhaps the first Brit natural skincare line. Located in the heart of the Borough Market, the tiny store also offers all sorts of holistic treatments.

Imagine my disappointment: besides all the hopes and organic hype, only few ingredients in Neil's Yard Remedies creams, toners, and cleansers were certified organic. The company insists that wild-harvested is far more superior than organic, and that's why they claim they use "wild plants" in their products. However, it's impossible to certify whether that wild pristine meadow wasn't accidentally exposed to pesticides leaching from nearby conventional farms or there were no harmful residue from exhaust fumes from a nearby highway. I prefer my beauty certified organic, thanks.

Then, there's an issue with synthetic ingredients. Why on Earth would you use in one product a certified organic chamomile and phenoxyethanol, an ethoxylated preservative linked to allergies and cancer, or polyethylene glycol (PEG) alongside certified organic pine oil? The presence of carefully concealed synthetic and potentially harmful chemicals was a major turn-off for me. If you use synthetic ingredients, don't call yourself organic.

Last but not least, the prices were often hard to justify. While I can easily splurge 80 dollars on a Dr.Hauschka skin conditioners or something equally non-essential (but so pleasant to use!), I would happily buy a 5-dollar organic shampoo, why not? I look at the formulation, I look at the price, and if they both seem reasonable, I go for it.

But how on earth would you explain a $12 price tag on 50 ml (1.7 oz) Neil's Yard Remedies baby oil consisting of jojoba, olive and borage seed oils - and that's it? These ingredients cost a few dollars per gallon of certified organic oil (I know, for I have my own organic skincare line) and the glass bottle itself costs not much more.

I have my reservations about using glass bottles around baby unless they are feeding bottles, but this is another issue.

What bugs me most is that Neil's Yard formulators didn't even bother add some soothing, healing plant extracts - or anything, just anything that could justify 10-fold profit!

And who puts denaturated alcohol into baby bath, let me ask you? Or levulinic acid, used for the phototherapy of wrinkles?

The most expensive Neil's Yard Remedies baby product, a diaper balm called Baby Barrier Cream, consisted of sunflower oil, glycerin, zinc oxide, beeswax, and Roman chamomile oil. Now, that's something really, really basic. I would whip up such balm in my kitchen in a matter of minutes and it would cost me about 50 cents per ounce. Not 25 dollars.

This is what I call organic greenwashing. Make a natural-looking label, pour the sunflower oil into a vintage-looking bottle, surround it with powerful marketing fleur, and sell as a magickal potion for all your life's maladies.

I left the Neil's Yard Remedies store with mixed feelings. On one side, I was disappointed with yet another example of profiteering on organic idea. On another, I was glad and uplifted, for I now knew that I have reserved my skincare allowance for something much more exciting.

Julie Gabriel, November 2011

 

Is your sunscreen setting you up for cancer? Quite possibly. For how else can you explain the meteoric rise of skin cancers in countries where sunscreens are heavily propagated, and everyone slathers cupfuls of sunscreens each time they see a ray of sunlight?

 

A study by the Environmental Working Group found that one in every eight name-brand sunscreens offers virtually zero protection against UVA rays which cause sunburns and ultimately lead to skin cancer. UVA radiation causes premature aging at a somewhat slower rate than the others, but this type of radiation causes melanoma, a very dangerous type of skin cancer. UVA is not blocked by many conventional sunscreens but can be effectively blocked by physical sunscreens and clothing.

 

SPF, or sun protection rating, only measures the sunscreen's effectiveness in blocking ultraviolet B (UVB) rays.

 

The incidence of sunburns has increased in the United States, a sign the many people aren't using proper sun protection. A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that sunburn rates increased from 31.8 percent to 33.7 percent from 1999 to 2004.

 

The National Cancer Institute estimates there will be 62,480 new cases of melanoma in the United States in 2008, and about 8,420 deaths caused by the disease. By comparison, there will be more than 1 million new cases of non-melanoma skin cancers in 2008, with fewer than 1,000 deaths. (MedicineNet.org)

 

Worldwide, the countries where chemical sunscreens have been recommended and adopted have experienced the greatest rise in skin cancers, with a simultaneous rise in death rates.

 

In the United States, Canada, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries, melanoma rates have skyrocketed, with the greatest increase occurring after the introduction of sunscreens at the end of the 1970s. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, death rates in the United States from melanoma doubled in women and tripled in men between the 1950s and the 1990s; yet melanoma remains a relatively rare type of cancer, killing twenty times fewer people than lung cancer.

 

Could it be that sunscreens promote skin cancers instead of preventing them? Absolutely not, but there is something about sunscreens that needs careful attention. One explanation could be the ineffectiveness of sunscreens made in the 1980s and 1990s. Older formulations did not provide protection from all spectrums of the sun radiation. Those sunscreens shielded more from burning UVB rays but did almost nothing about the more damaging UVA exposure. Both UVA and UVB types of sun radiation have been shown to mutate DNA and promote skin cancers in animals.  UVA also penetrates deeper and stimulates melanocytes at a much higher rate, yet for some reason UVA dangers were ignored.

 

Slathered in sunscreen, people stayed in the sun longer without having proper protection, often over a period of ten or twenty years, before clinical symptoms of skin cancer appeared.

 

"Most cancers in the United States are skin cancer, and incidences are rising, while the incidences of most other types of cancer are remaining stable or going down," Dr. Martin Weinstock, a professor of dermatology at Brown University Medical School, said to HealthDay. "The most important avoidable cause we know about is exposure to ultraviolet radiation."

 

U.S. Food and Drug Administration now plans to set standards for labeling sunscreens for UVA protection as well as for UVB. "Ratings for UVA would be based on two tests, one to measure the sunscreen's ability to reduce the amount of UVA radiation passing through it, and a second to measure the product's ability to prevent tanning and potential long-term skin damage," MedicineNet says in an article by Dennis Thompson of HealthDay.

 

The new UVA ratings won't appear sunscreens until 2009.

 

However, Environmental Working Group insists that unless the formulations change completely, such measures won't do any good. According to their research, most sunscreens have problems with toxic hazards, for they contain tons of chemical ingredients that break down, interact with each other, penetrate the bloodstream, accumulate in the body, and develop toxic and even genotoxic components.

 

Meanwhile, choose sunscreens made with minerals that reflect all types of sun radiation, including UVA and UVB. Unlike chemical sunscreens that dislodge under UV exposure releasing toxic compounds into our bloodstream, mineral sunscreens sit on top of our skin and do not break under UV pressure.