The Chemical Free Cosmetic Myth
Submitted by Beauty Brains Blog
The cosmetic and personal care marketers of the world continue to frustrate the scientist in me. They take perfectly good products, craft meaningless stories around them and use blatant lies to dupe the public into buying. When did it become OK to make completely bogus product claims?
The myth of Chemical Free
What has ruffled this half of the Beauty Brains feathers so violently? This story about the Xenna Corporation and their new hair relaxers.
According to the news release, Xenna is launching a new “chemical free” relaxer.
That’s right, it’s “chemical free.”
Which leaves me to wonder, “If it’s chemical free, what’s in there?”
Everything in the known universe that’s made up of matter is a chemical. Water is a chemical (H2O). Air is a chemical (mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc). In fact, every bit of material that makes up all human beings is a chemical. We’re walking blobs of proteins, polysaccharides, amino acids, enzymes and more.
The only things that are not chemicals are things like magnetism, light, electricity, radio waves, empty space, and maybe dark matter & energy. Unless Xenna or other companies peddling similar claims has figured out how to harness the powers of these natural forces for cosmetic purposes, they just aren’t telling the truth.
Are they really selling empty product containers?
Between the Chemical Free Lines
The reason a claim like “chemical free” really bothers me is because it plays into and fosters a fear of chemicals. The implication is that chemicals are bad and evil and should be avoided at all costs.
In the cosmetic and personal care world, it leads customers to pay more money for products that don’t work better (they’re usually worse) and aren’t any safer. People get a false sense that they’re doing something good when it’s usually just foolish.
Even worse, this mentality leads people to make dangerous decisions about their health and well-being. They avoid drugs proven to be effective in treating disease. They use untested, unsafe herbal supplements believing it’s better for them. But worst of all, they stop getting their kids immunized for fear of the chemicals in the vaccines. Uniformed politicians blame vaccines for autism. These people are reacting to unfounded fears and making all of society unsafe from debilitating diseases.
The Beauty Brains bottom line
It’s fine for companies to sell products that use novel technologies. But you should avoid any company that would lie to you about the lack of chemicals in their products. Chemical-free cosmetics don’t exist.
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