My guest Joy Wicks is a married mother of 3 who became committed to starting and running NaturalJoyBeauty.com after learning about the toxic ingredients in most makeup and body care products. During her transition to natural and organic products she found that health food stores didn’t really offer what she was looking for. Most of the products they had still contained ingredients she didn’t want to be using. After locating products that met her new ingredient criteria (from many hours of researching) the desire grew to have a store for people that offered them. We’ll be talking about toxic ingredients in makeup and body care products, and how to choose safe ones. www.debralynndadd.com/debras-list/natural-joy-beauty
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Being Beautiful Naturally
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Joy Wicks
Date of Broadcast: July 9, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world. Even though there are toxic chemicals all around us in all kinds of consumer products and in the environment, in the food we eat, the air we breathe, our personal care products—everywhere we look it seems.
There are many, many products that do not have toxic chemicals in them. There are ways we can remove toxic chemicals from our homes and our bodies. And that’s the kind of thing that we talk about on this show, how we can be happy, be healthy, be productive and do what we want in our lives without being hindered by toxic chemicals.
Today is Tuesday, July 9th 2013. And I’m here in Clearwater, Florida where the sun is shining. It looks like we may not have a thunderstorm until later in the day. So we shouldn’t be interrupted by that.
We’re going to be talking today about choosing organic and natural and toxic-free beauty products, personal care products, and cosmetics. But first, I want to give you a quote that came in my email this morning. This is from Peter F. Drucker who is a very successful businessman. He said:
“Start with what is right, rather than what is acceptable.”
And when I read that this morning, I thought, “Wow! We live in a society where it’s acceptable by many pp to have toxic chemicals in our products. But it’s not right. And there are many of us, including probably many of you (that’s why you’re listening to this show) that know that what is right is to have products and things and practices that we do at home that are contributing to sustaining health rather than damaging health.”
And so, I like that idea, that we should always be considering what’s right, what is contributing to our health, what is contributing to sustaining the planet, what is contributing to life and happiness and health rather than what might be acceptable by people who are not contributing to those things.
So, I’m happy to introduce my guest today, Joy Wicks who is a married mother of three, who became committed to starting and running her business, NaturalJoyBeauty.com, after learning about toxic ingredients in most make-up and body care products.
Thanks for being with me, Joy.
JOY WICKS: Thanks for having me, Debra.
DEBRA: So, why don’t you go ahead and tell your story instead of me telling it?
JOY WICKS: Okay, I appreciate that. Really, I think where it started for me was about five years ago. I was a stay-at-home mother at the time. And I started thinking a lot about the different things that I was using to clean my home.
For some reason, cleaning products and make-up and body care all kind of came together at once in my mind as far as being curious about the ingredients and what effects they may be having on myself and my family. Unlike some of the guests you have who have had health concerns or health issues that have caused them to have to make the changes, I can’t say that my story was really like that. It was more of a curiosity.
As a child, I remember standing in the shower and reading the shampoo labels and just thinking those words were kind of funny words you couldn’t pronounce, not knowing what exactly those ingredients were. And I think some of that kind of came back to me as an adult. I was right around the age of 30 or 31 at the time. And it just really started to make me wonder what we were doing to ourselves every day.
I’ve worn make-up pretty much every day since I was 13 or 14 years old. And I like to use powder make-up over the top of my foundation and things. And I started to wonder, “What am I inhaling? What am I doing to myself?” I was using things like scrubbing bubbles-type cleaners to clean my bathroom. You breathe those things in while you’re cleaning. And so, a lot of that just kind of made me wonder what are these things doing to me.
And as soon as I sat down at the computer and started googling, it was like opening Pandora’s box. There was so much information out there. And I was amazed to start learning about the thing.
And so, I spent literally hours of my time because I was able to do that researching and making a list of the ingredients and things I wanted to avoid.
And your website was one that I found very early on. It was a great resource for me as far as helping me changing dishes and things like that, my house cookware, all sorts of things, the cleaning products.
DEBRA: Thank you.
JOY WICKS: But then, the make-up thing—of course, because of my love of make-up (as I said, I’ve been wearing it since I was allowed to)—that’s where my focus went, with more on the make-up and the body care side of things.
And I was just amazed because I hadn’t shopped at health food stores. I was like the general public. The mass, I would go just to the mass stores. And I didn’t know a thing about it.
So, I assumed that if I walked into a health food store, they were going to have these products I was not learning about. They were going to not include those ingredients.
And I was astounded to go in with my little list in hand and find out that a lot of those products still contained synthetic fragrance and pthalates—well, usually, the pthalates are in the fragrances. Propylene glycol was still in a lot of the things at the health food store and just lots of different ingredients that I didn’t want to be using.
And so, I had to again spend lots of hours researching products. As a mom, I didn’t always have time to spend in the store for hours. So I would write down brand names and then take them home and try to find ingredients.
And then, I found a lot of companies try to hide their ingredient list online. They’re not really open about what’s in the products.
And that’s usually a good way for people to—it’s not always the case. But it’s a good way usually to judge a brand.
DEBRA: I agree.
JOY WICKS: If they don’t openly display their ingredients on their website, they’re usually hiding something.
DEBRA: I totally agree. And that’s one of the things that I look for too.
JOY WICKS: Yeah! And one of the little tricks I’ll use is I’ll put “key ingredients.” I’m sure you’ve seen that where, in the list, they have organic shea butter and all the great anti-aging benefits of it. Usually, the yucky stuff is at the end of the label anyway, down where the preservatives and fillers and things are. And so, that’s what I had found.
And even now, after having my business for five years—it’s been about nine years I’ve been in the natural products, but I’ve had the business now for a little over five—I’m still always researching products and finding out things. And sometimes, I even get disappointed to find out brands aren’t upfront about something in a product. We have to pull it and not sell that product anymore. It’s an ongoing process even for me to always educate myself because there’s always some ingredient I haven’t heard of or that new information comes out about.
And so research is a big part of it I think for the consumer. And I try to do as much of that for the consumer as I can. That’s the premise of our website—so that you can just come on there and trust what you’re buying that researched and assessed I can.
I do try to keep things updated and change if need be what we’re stocking and what we’re offering for people.
DEBRA: I would like to ask you particularly because you weren’t motivated by a health concern where you had some kind of chemical injury or had some other illness like cancer or something where it’s known that there’s a connection with toxic chemical exposure. What was it that motivated you as an average consumer? I heard you say that you’ve just always been interested in these things. But it’s so unusual for someone to do as much as you have that doesn’t have a reason, an urgent reason like “I need to get well.”
JOY WICKS: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. I think, for me, I was concerned about my health and my family’s health even though we weren’t suffering from any particular illness or allergies or chemical sensitivities.
So, for me, I can’t say exactly what it was. It felt more intuitive maybe, that my body just wanted to know these things. And I’ve learned a lot more about that. Having gone more natural, you meet a lot of people that are into intuitive types of therapies and trainings and things.
And I really think it was just something that I felt led to do, for lack of a better way to put it. It was a natural path that my mind and my body and my spirit, however you want to put it, all kind of felt led to start following down.
And then, as I’ve said earlier, once I opened up Pandora’s box, it was like, “Wow!” I couldn’t stop.
I even got to a point where—I like to bring this up because I know a lot of my customers mentioned the same sort of issues—you can actually get to a bad place with that information, where you become depressed to think that everything is so toxic in the world and that there are no good products.
DEBRA: Right! But you solved that. We can’t say there are no good products because you found them.
We’re going to talk more about this after the break. My guest is Joy Wicks. She’s the owner of NaturalJoyBeauty.com where she reviews the toxic chemicals found in consumer beauty products and finds the safe ones so you don’t have to do that research.
I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. And we’ll be back in a moment.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Joy Wicks, the owner of NaturalJoyBeauty.com. And Joy was interested in make-up and concerned about toxics, so she started reading labels to find beauty products that did not contain toxic chemicals.
Joy, I’m looking on the home page of your website. And you have a list of what you won’t find in the products that you carry. So tell us something about the ingredients and their toxicity and what you think are some of the most important ingredients for people to avoid in personal care products.
JOY WICKS: Certainly! We have that list that’s right there on the home page that you’re talking about, a bulleted list that tells the things you won’t find.
We also have under the categories on the sidebar (on the left-hand side of our website), if you go down, there’s actually a little article thing on why natural, why it’s important, but there’s one that says The Ingredients to Avoid. We even recently updated it in the fall of 2012. And that will give a little more in-depth list for people and actually give some of the reasons behind why the ingredients are bad versus just listing them. It’ll give a little more detail for customers.
DEBRA: I just click them. I see that. This is a really good list. Let’s talk about a few of those because some people are listening and don’t have their computers in front of them.
But before we do, I just want to make the point that there are several ways that toxic chemicals can get into your body. And people usually think of, if you eat or drink something with toxic chemicals, that that’s the worst. But in fact, what you put on your skin is actually worse than if you were to drink something or eat something. When something goes into your body and goes in through your stomach and intestines, you’ve got fats and proteins and food that mix with it before it actually goes into your body, into your bloodstream. But with something that you put on your skin, it goes straight into your blood in seconds.
And so, I consider a toxic chemical going on your skin to be even more hazardous than any other way it can go in your body except for breathing. Well, I would say: skin, one; breathing, two; and ingestion, number three.
JOY WICKS: I would totally agree with you. I would totally agree.
DEBRA: Yeah, if people are concerned about what’s in their drinking water or food additives and you’re not paying attention to what you’re putting on your skin, pay attention to what you’re putting on your skin. This is so, so, so important. I can’t emphasize it enough.
So, tell us, Joy, some of the things. You’ve got a long list here, so pick out some that you think from your research are the most important.
JOY WICKS: Okay. I’m going to bring up some that are what I call “greenwashing” ones that you’ll see the most, the brand that claim to be natural.
DEBRA: Good idea!
JOY WICKS: The big thing right now is for brands to say they’re paraben-free. And a paraben is a chemical preservative, for those that don’t know this, that is a hormone disruptor. It’s linked to all sorts of toxicity issues in the human body. And it’s in most products—methylparaben, propylparaben. The word will just be a chemical name that ends with “paraben.”
And a lot of people are learning about that. So now you’re going to see all these brands coming out with paraben-free products. But what they’re doing is a lot of them are using things that are really not any better as a preservative. It’s just not a paraben.
And a couple of those things that you’re going to see, one is phenoxyethanol. That is in a lot of products. They use other names for it too like optiphen. There are different names they kind of trick you with in case you already are learning about phenoxyethanol. It’s really where a lot of these companies are hoping the consumer isn’t educated on the ingredients and won’t question what they’re doing.
But it is in natural products quite a bit. It is carcinogenic. It’s toxic. It may not mimic estrogen in the body, but it has other toxicity and carcinogenic properties to it. So you want to avoid phenoxyethanol.
The other one is germole or germaben. They will contain things like the phenoxyethanol or propylene glycol. Propylene glycol is a penetration enhancer. And that is in a lot of the deodorants, even the ones that claim to be natural. It’s in toothpaste, lotions. It’s in a ton of products. I mean there’s too many to name that have propylene glycol in it.
Japanese honeysuckle is the one that a lot of the popular brands right now that are touting themselves as natural are using as a preservative. And there have been studies out there showing that it does mimic hormones in the body much like parabens.
And so, if you’re putting it in there to replace parabens, you’re really not changing the product and making it any healthier for the consumer. And the customers don’t know that. You see something like Japanese honeysuckle on the label, and it just sounds sweet and natural and harmless. And it’s really sad that people just aren’t aware of it.
And then, fragrance is a big one for me because that’s one that a lot of brands sneak in. A lot of soapmakers—and sometimes, I don’t even know the people that handcrafts them. I don’t think they do it deliberately. I think sometimes, in their cases, they’re not even educated well about the difference between an actual scented oil…
DEBRA: I think that that’s a very important point to make. I think that it’s not that a lot of people are being malicious. It’s that they just don’t know.
JOY WICKS: That’s true. Sometimes, that does happen with companies just like with GMO’s and food and things where they’re deliberately not wanting to change things and hide information. But I do think a lot of the times too that some of the people that are making these products or selling these products are just not educated enough themselves to know the things that they’re putting in there.
And synthetic fragrance is a bad one because it can contain thousands of different chemicals, not just pthalates in it. And a lot of companies are using pthalate-free fragrance oils and thinking that that’s enough, thinking that that allows them to label their soap or their lotions as all natural. And in reality, that isn’t an all-natural product. They should be using essential oils and CO2’s and things like that to scent a product if they truly want it to be 100% natural.
So, in our shop, we don’t allow synthetic fragrance. All of our vendors that we purchase products from are claiming to use actual essential oils or some of them use organic flavor oils so that we can offer some fun flavors that you can’t find in an essential oil because there’s a company out there that provides those. And they’re USDA certified organic.
DEBRA: I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. And my guest today is Joy Wicks who’s the owner of NaturalJoyBeauty.com. And she has done all the legwork of reading all the labels and finding out the toxic chemicals and finding the cosmetics and personal care and beauty products that are the least toxic that she can find. I was just looking at her site during the break, and she even has toxic-free nail polish.
And so, Joy, you’ve got so many products. Let’s talk about some of them.
JOY WICKS: Sure!
DEBRA: So, nail polish, there’s no toxic chemicals in it?
JOY WICKS: No. Now, on our website, we’ll tell people it’s not 100% natural because there isn’t a hundred percent natural nail polish. You still have to have some acrylic in it. But they have removed all of the things like toluene and the pthalates and the formaldehyde.
Now, one thing you’ll find too, out on the market, there’s a lot of nail polishes now claiming to be 3-free or 5-free. What they mean when they say that is that they don’t have those things that I just mentioned. They’re the three big ones. Some of them will even go as far as to remove five of the main chemicals that cause that horrible smell and toxicity to nail polishes.
But those 3- and 5-free nail polishes will still smell bad. They still have that polished solvents now. And they still contain a lot of chemicals in them, whereas the ones that we carry are all water-based. And the water-based polishes are a lot safer. They don’t contain any of those smelly products. They’re great for people with allergies and sensitivities to the scent. And really, the only unnatural ingredient in them is the acrylic that helps it to stick to your nail.
But the coloring used are all natural. They’re primarily water-based. And there’s a couple of different brands that we carry right now and offer for the consumer.
DEBRA: Yes, I am constantly looking at nail polish. And I think that you’ve done a great job at choosing the least toxic ones available for people who want to wear nail polish.
For myself, I still wouldn’t put acrylic on my nails. But I think that if somebody wants to wear nail polish, I think you’ve done a fabulous job at choosing one that removes the most toxic things.
JOY WICKS: Thank you. And that’s all you can really do when it comes to nail polish because, really, the only other option are some of those natural buffing kits that someone can use and try to buff and do the shine to their nails.
DEBRA: Right!
JOY WICKS: But other than that, really, the ones that we’ve chosen, the Environmental Working Group has their rating system. And for the most part, I usually agree with their ratings—not always on products. I still try to research above and beyond just using their website. But they’re a good starting point.
The Aquarella that we carry, that is the safest rated nail polish even with them, with the EWG. And then, also, like the Kiki brand that we carry—and there are some others that we don’t carry that are good too like HoneyBee Gardens and SunCoat Naturals. Those are a couple of other good water-based brands. And they rate just slightly higher than Aquarella. Aquarella was the cleanest. And the cleanest of the Aquarella would be the conditioner, the clear polish. If someone is extremely concerned, that would be the lowest as far as the ratings there on the toxicity scale with the EWG.
DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. I think you’ve done a good job on that.
So, tell us about, of all the beauty products and cosmetics, what do you think is the most important one or the most important few that people should be concerned about and find an alternative for besides nail polish. I would say nail polish is the most toxic one.
JOY WICKS: Yeah, it’s pretty toxic. But also, women cover their—not all women, but there’s a good chunk of women in our society that wear foundation. You’re covering your entire face with that all day long. If I had to pick out a make-up, mascara is probably going to be a little less on the scale because mascara, especially if you get it taken off at night before you go to bed so that it’s not sitting on your skin (the residue of it isn’t sitting there overnight), mascara is sitting on your lashes, for instance.
Even though I think it’s important to change, it’s not my top priority.
But foundations, the eye shadows, the things that lay on your skin for hours, those are the things that I worry about. Lotions are big because you’re covering a massive amount of your skin, your largest organ of your body, with it. And obviously, you do absorb those chemicals as we know because even the drug companies and things make medications that are absorbable—topical application medications—because they know that it will get into your skin.
DEBRA: …and patches.
JOY WICKS: Yeah, and the patches, exactly. It’s the same thing with putting lotion on. If it has bad ingredients in it, you’re going to absorb that over a really large part of your body.
And I think shampoos and things like that are really good too—and soap—because you’re covering yourself with those while you’re in the shower. And yes, you’re rinsing them off, but they’re on your body long enough. And most people shower everyday. So, those are things that, on a regular, you’re absorbing.
I think toothpaste is another one because we all pretty much brush our teeth two or three times a day—or should be. And there’s a lot of things in our toothpaste too. So it does go beyond just even the make-up. We have a lot of different body care products that are on our website.
He toothpaste we carry, you could honestly swallow it, and it wouldn’t even do any harm to your body because there’s just none of the toxic ingredients or the fluoride or any of those things in it.
DEBRA: Yeah, I was just looking at your homepage, and you have a video on your homepage right now. What’s the brand? It’s called Earth Paste, amazingly natural toothpaste. I didn’t try that actually yet, but it looks fabulous. It looks very natural.
JOY WICKS: It’s great. And their video is really funny. They’ve got a cute, little spoof of a video that they did to keep it light and to show humor, but also educate the consumer about the things that are in toothpaste.
That’s just one of those things a lot of people don’t think about. They don’t think twice about what they’re brushing their teeth with. And the dentists and everybody else are telling you you need the fluoride and you need these different brands.
You know, triclosan, that antibacterial agent, is one of the things that they’re putting in all the antibacterial soaps and things.
They’re now introducing that into a lot of the toothpaste like the Colgate Total thing.
DEBRA : Oh, my God!
JOY WICKS: And customers don’t realize that. When you see the commercials where they show how someone’s breath stayed fresh for 12 hours, it’s because they’re putting antibacterial agents in there. And so it’s not bad enough that we’re already absorbing it through our skin with all the hand soaps out at places or that people are bringing into their homes, but you’re also absorbing it through things like your toothpaste. They’ve put it in deodorants and things too.
Dateline had a report. We had it posted on our Facebook page and shared it with our customers. But they did a report where one of their producers actually did her blood test prior to doing her report to check for toxic chemicals in her body. And she did do some changes in how she heated up things in plastic containers and micowaves and stuff. But one of the things she did was she changed the make-up that she was wearing. And her levels were really high in BPA and pthalates and all sorts of chemicals. She changed her make-up and stopped heating things up in certain products. She then did her blood test, and her levels were down significantly just by making a few changes.
DEBRA: Yeah, BPA actually doesn’t stay in your body very long. And so if people have high BPA levels, it’s because they’re being continuously exposed. You just stop using it. And within a week or less, you won’t have some of the BPA in your body.
And that affects your endocrine system.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest is Joy Wicks from NaturalJoyBeauty.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And we’ll be back after this message.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. And my guest is Joy Wicks, owner of Natural Joy Beauty where she has done the leg work of looking at all the ingredients and studying which ones are toxic and not toxic and choosing the products that do not contain toxic chemicals. She has everything from cosmetics to facial care, hair care, an apothecary, baby and mom, coconut-free products, gluten-free products, vegan products, laundry and cleaning products.
There’s just so many things that you can use basically for household and personal care on her site where she’s already done the work to find the toxic chemicals and choose products that don’t have them.
Joy, this is our last segment. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t talked about?
JOY WICKS: Well, I just think a good thing that I want people to know—I brought it up earlier in the show—about how it can be really overwhelming once you do open up to educating yourself and to learn about things. It can be really scary trying to find products, and overwhelming.
And I like to tell people to take it a day at a time, a product at a time. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to make the transition to where you just are in a panic mode. Understand that each thing you eliminate, each toxic product and ingredient that you eliminate out of your daily routine, is going to be beneficial for you, to realize that that’s all going to add up in the end, and that it’s okay if you can’t afford to change everything all at once. Baby steps works just fine.
If you can afford the luxury of just learning about things and changing all of your products, that’s great. Do it! But for a lot of people, that’s not practical. And I think they need to realize that.
Another thing we like to do on our particular website is we do carry samples of a lot of the products too, so that customers and can really try things before they buy the full size and make sure it’s the right fit for them, the right color for them.
DEBRA: That’s great, yeah.
JOY WICKS: In the case of all of those with chemical sensitivities and allergies, they can test for allergies and things with the product because even natural things, you can obviously be allergic to. You mentioned that we have coconut-free products.
That was one I was not aware, people with coconut allergies. There are people with that allergy, and they can’t use commercial products because those chemicals are coconut-based. But then, they go to the natural products, and they’re all containing coconut oil in the soaps and things.
So, we found vendors who make products that don’t contain any coconut oil for those people that need that.
DEBRA: Yes, you’ve got a lot of these things covered.
I agree with you that people should take just two things one by one because it can be overwhelming. I know in my particular case, once I discovered that toxic chemicals in my environment were making me sick, I just wanted to get rid of them all at once—and I did. I just went through my house and I took out everything that I could identify that was toxic which left me with kind of an empty house.
But then I had to find products. And when I was doing this back in 1978, it was very much, polyester was the most popular thing. We didn’t have all those natural products that we have now in 1978. And to even find something like a bar of soap, back then, people were using ivory soap because it was the purest stuff that existed, but Ivory is very highly scented with synthetic fragrance. But still, it was the most natural product you could find in 1978 when I started
So, we’ve come a long way. There are so many products that are available now that it’s not a matter of them not being available, but a matter of people choosing them and finding the ones that worked best for them.
There’s a lot of reasons why a lot of products need to exist, because everybody has their own individual preferences and sensitivities. But you’ve given a really good selection. And I think that a lot of people will be able to find exactly what it is they need on your site.
I can’t say enough good things about what you’ve done, Joy. You’ve done a really great job.
JOY WICKS: Well, thank you, Debra. I appreciate that. And you were, as I mentioned before, a big part of my journey in the beginning too. And throughout the years, your website has been a great resource. I always tell people about it because there’s so much valuable information on there that can help change the things that they’re using, not just in their bodies, but in their homes.
DEBRA: Thank you. So, I think the question that I would like to ask you personally is tell us about especially mineral make-ups. There’s a lot of new mineral make-ups on the market. Are there ingredients in the mineral make-ups that we should be watching out for?
JOY WICKS: There are. Bismuth oxychloride is one that a lot of people are sensitive to. It’s not necessarily toxic, but it is one that can cause sensitivities. It’s in the major brands (without naming names) that most people see on infomercials and in the mall. They use bismuth oxychloride; a lot of the popular brands do.
A lot of the ones you’re going to find at your drugstore, the traditional brands of make-up, have all come out with their own versions of mineral make-up. They’re putting parabens, they’re actually still using paraben preservatives which you don’t need in a dry mineral make-up, so I’m not sure why they’re putting it in there. And they’re using talc. That’s something that we avoid in the products we carry.
A lot of the other issue are the nano-particles. You may hear about that where the particles are so small that they’re getting into the bloodstream, and they’re easier to be inhaled and cause problems for the body. So we like to even offer options with that.
None of the products that we sell are nanoparticles or contain nanoparticles, I should say. But we do offer pressed and cream make-up and things like that for those that are just extremely concerned about inhaling any of the powder products. We do have options for them to help minimize inhalation or take it away by being a cream eye shadow or cream blush or cream foundation.
But the bismuth oxychloride is a big one. As I’ve said, those other companies are putting in lots of the same chemicals that they’re using in their regular liquid foundations and things. They’re just putting that in the mineral make-up for whatever reason.
And so, the other thing to watch out for is that, even if you get into a mineral make-up line—a lot of times, the powders may be fairly safe. But start looking when they have primers and mascaras and things that are cream or liquid-based.
Watch out for those things we talked about earlier like the phenoxyethanol and the Japanese honeysuckle extract, and synthetic fragrance, because a lot of times, they sneak those things into those products , and you don’t realize it. You just kind of buy into the line because it’s mineral make-up. And the primary products like the facial, make-up and blushes and things are safe—or fairly safe ingredient-wise. And you don’t realize that when you start buying the other thing from the brand, they may not be what you’re actually looking for.
DEBRA: Yeah! Once of the things that I’ve realized as I talk to manufacturers, but also I talk to people who are looking at regulations and various things. But there’s an awareness level that needs to change.
And you and I and others are all working on this because it needs to change on the consumer level, but it also needs to change on the manufacturing level and on the regulatory level because manufacturers, they aren’t a lot of manufacturers, who really understand the issues as well even say you and I understand them.
JOY WICKS: True!
DEBRA: Yet they are. We need to be really focusing on those manufacturers who do understand and are trying to do their best, and are producing the purest products, and then bring along the other manufacturers as well.
I can imagine from the viewpoint of a manufacturer that’s making a really toxic product, their entire income and their business are all based on producing toxic products. And maybe they didn’t know that they were toxic in the beginning (although a lot of toxic things have been known for decades, and people still use them).
But there needs to be a change. There needs to be a shift. And it needs to happen across the board where we all start learning what are the toxic chemicals and what are the non-toxic chemicals and be making the products out of those materials that are safe.
Most of the time, they’re not going to be man-made chemicals (although there are some synthetic chemicals that are not too toxic). But it’s going to be the small shift to turn around and start figuring out a new way to make things. And that needs to be supported by consumers. Consumers need to understand and want to buy the products that exist, so that we’ll continue to support that market. Wouldn’t you agree with that?
JOY WICKS: I would. And a lot of times, it’s cost because a lot of the chemicals are a lot cheaper to use than the natural, organic ingredients. But sadly, I don’t think these companies realize that consumers would gladly pay an extra dollar or two for a product if we’re going to be safer for them.
And that’s where there has to be more education. As you said, I don’t think that all of the companies are bad guys, per se, or doing it intentionally. But there are companies that are knowingly putting out toxic products just because of the cost, and so they make more money off of it.
And I think that there does have to be more awareness, more education, as you’ve said, with the companies themselves, with the consumers and consumer demand. As we’re seeing now, consumers are saying, “Hey, we want our food labeled whether or not it has GMO’s in it.” And I think the same thing is going to need to happen with the beauty industry.
Some of these companies actually produce safer products to sell in Europe and other countries, safer versions of baby washes and things like that, that they won’t sell to us in the US. And it’s all because of profit margins. And the consumers in the US don’t really understand and aren’t educated enough to ask for something different.
And so I really think that your show is a great platform for educated people. And that needs to happen.
DEBRA: Thank you. And here comes the music, and so that’s the end. Thank you so much, Joy, for being with us. Again, her website is NaturalJoyBeauty.com. If you’re looking for some beauty products, go over to Natural Joy Beauty and see what she has.
JOY WICKS: Thanks again, Debra.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. Thanks for listening.
