Big news on the Beauty by Earth natural lip balm front. All of their natural lip balm ingredients are Certified USDA Organic. All flavors, all configurations, all everything – 100% Organic. Sick of substandard conventional lip balms? Now you’ve got an alternative you can trust.
Here’s a little more information about this great announcement, as well as why it’s so important.
So I definitely want to repeat a key point I make in the video: it is extremely important to be picky about your lip balm ingredients. Why? You use lip balm on your lips, which just happen to be located next to your mouth. This makes it easy for anything in your lip balm to get inside of you.
That isn’t necessarily a scary thought, until you start learning more about common ingredients in conventional lip balms.
There’s a lot of nasty stuff in there. Here are the six that worry me the most.
The Six Most Dangerous Lip Balm Ingredients
- Parabens – Cheap preservatives that you’ll find in a lot of lip balms. They’re known to interfere with hormone function, which in turn can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer. And if that weren’t enough, parabens can also interfere with reproductive function.
- BHT – A little pet name for butylated hydroxytoluene (say that five times fast). Whatever you call it, this is an endocrine disruptor that’s linked to developmental and reproductive issues. Oh, and it’s also a possible carcinogen. Great.
- Synthetic Colors & Dyes – I’m looking at you, FD&C Blue 1, Yellow 5, and Red 33. Keep an eye out for any lip balm ingredients that follows this pattern. These colorants are made from coal tar and can deposit toxins on your skin.
- Chemical Sunscreen – These guys go by a number of different names, including oxybenzone, octinoxate, avobenzone, and octisalate. Whatever you call them, they wreak havoc with your body’s hormone system by mimicking estrogen.
- Artificial Fragrances and Flavors – The FDA has this fun little loophole where you can include almost any ingredient under the name “fragrance.” If you see that word on a list of ingredients, there’s no knowing what it actually contains.
- Petroleum Jelly & Mineral Oil – If you have these petroleum derived ingredients in your chapstick, you’re basically taking all those other nasty ingredients and keeping them trapped near your skin.
Is your stomach turning yet? I know mine is.
Thankfully, organic natural lip balm ingredients actually help your lips instead of harming them. They also protect against the elements, help soothe chapping and dryness, and taste really, really great while doing it. What’s not to love?
Hi, what about the natural Mica powder as colorant? The company sells them says it’s cosmetic grade and safe for lip balm use, but they want to sell the products right?! Do you use any colorant in your products?
Thanks.
Hi Stephanie,
I suggest looking at the EWGs Skin Deep database to check out individual ingredients and how they rate on a toxicity scale. We do not use Mica. Only colorants we use are some iron oxides, turmeric, cocoa powder and other raw ingredients like that.
Also, there is the danger of using lip balms with humectants that don’t contain occlusives, too. That way the humectants bring the moisture to the surface of the lip and, in the absence of occlusives, the water evaporates. So, if you have a problem with drying lips, you can try out the Burt’s Bees Lip Balm, which has a perfect balance between the two ingredients mentioned above.
Thanks for your comments. We actually don’t recommend Burt’s Bees due to the fact that it is contains soy.
Do you have a lip balm with sun screen or can you recommend one?
Hi Sheila, We do not currently have one. Most of them we have come across use chemical sunscreen ingredients in them. If you look for something with just zinc oxide you should be safe. Thanks.