Beware of Toxic Halloween Makeup

beware of toxic halloween makeup juicygreenmom

For my daughter’s first time trick-or-treating as a 14 month old, she had a little Hello Kitty hat and white cuddly clothes for her costume. A friend suggested to me that I draw whiskers on her, and I thought about it. Of course it was relatively last minute, so I didn’t really have time to look. But I also thought about how I didn’t want to toxic Halloween makeup on my sweet baby’s face. So I opted out of putting anything on her face (also to save us both the trauma of trying to draw straight lines on it!).

Halloween is a fun time for dressing up in costumes, and these often involve some kind of face paint. But beware of what you are putting on your own face, and your kids’ faces!!

Here’s an excerpt from Environmental Defence about the scariest thing they found at Halloween:

“Halloween is the time for all things scary. Goblins, ghosts, haunted houses…
And while I was prepared for these frightful sights, the scariest thing I saw this week was at a popular drug store chain.

Like many parents this weekend, I was shopping for Halloween makeup for my three young children. I picked up a package of face paint plastered with photos of young kids, and turned it over to read the instructions. At the top of the package it read, “This product is safe for use”.

The irony is what came next:

“Not to be used on children under 12”.

Reading the ingredient list, I found a slew of hard-to-pronounce chemicals, including petrolatum and parabens (a cancer-causing estrogen-mimic). And the rest of the Halloween makeup on display was not any better. They all listed dangerous chemicals in their ingredients – even when having claimed to be “safe for use.”

How can cancer causing, hormone disrupting chemicals be “safe”? I do not want these chemicals being absorbed by my children’s skin – do you?

What’s even worse, is that companies get away with very minimal disclosure when it comes to what’s in their products. That means they could be concealing all kinds of bad chemicals that are being absorbed through our skin.

And, I can only imagine what else is in this stuff that’s so toxic that it shouldn’t be used on little ones, the very target market for face paint, let alone what slathering on this toxic sludge means for us adults.”

You can donate to Environmental Defence here, to help them work towards getting toxins out of our products.

For a safer alternative, try some natural face paints which have none of the gross chemicals the traditional products have!

What kind of face paint do you use?

(Disclosure: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the Amazon.com.ca, Inc. Associates Program, affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com & amazon.ca. This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase products via these links, a small percentage of the sale will be given to me at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting juicygreenmom.ca!)

Share

4 Responses

Verified by ExactMetrics