Buyer Beware!

So yesterday I briefly mentioned about how companies like Tom's of Maine & Burt's Bees are generally viewed by the public as "greener" options.  While this was true at one time, you know back before you could buy it at Wal*Mart or Target this is sadly no longer the case with many of there products.  Part of the reason you can now buy either brand so many places is because they now have the resources of a multi-national conglomerate behind them.  In 2006 Tom's of Maine became part of Colgate-Palmolive.  While the original owners still have a stake in the company, slowly over the past few years Colgate-Palmolive has been changing the original formulations and using more chemicals, but they didn't really want you to know that part.  In 2007 Burt's Bees was purchased by the Clorox Company.  I mean come on, you want the same people who make your bleach to make your lip balm right?  Now thats not to say you should no longer buy there products.  Many of them are still good and one could argue there ingredients are more natural than other brands even though they may be just as harmful in the long run.  Sadly more than not it seems like the US (FDA/EPA) approves something for general use only to ban it later after using the general population as lab rats and realizing it has horrible side effects.  Basically it just means you have to do a lot more research before you buy something rather than going on the brand name its self.

I like so many people fell for the name recognition of a Tom's of Maine product recently.  When we started clean one of the things it talked about in the book was how many deodorants contain aluminium.  It is basically used to seal your pores shut so you wont sweat.  Well the problem with this is aluminium in large enough quantities is a neurotoxin.  Now there is an on going debate as to weather or not the amount of aluminum in deodorant is enough to cause any damaging effects in humans (some studies say yes, others say no).  However, when you really think about it, at the end of the day do you really want to be putting something that is a known neurotoxin on your body daily when you can easily find deodorants without aluminium in them?  You can read more about the debate here.

So in search of my new aluminum free deodorant I found Tom's of Maine 24 hour odor protection long lasting aluminum-free unscented deodorant.  I thought great, this has to be better then the Degree Adrenaline series that was I uses a large amount of aluminum and just went ahead and bought it.  Well once I started doing research on deodorants I found out in the end that while my new Tom's of Maine deodorant may not have aluminum in it its first ingredient is propylene glycol.  So what is propylene glycol?  It is "natural gas from the earth" used for consistency.  See because its "natural" I don't really need to worry.  Also, really?  There was nothing else you could use for consistency besides natural gas?  My old deodorant scored a 4 over at EWG, and the new Tom's of Maine deodorant only scores a 2.  So while it is definitely an improvement over my other deodorant many of Tom's of Maine's other deodorants scored a 4 as well.  Not exactly the "green" image most people hold of this company and not nearly as eco-friendly as I had hoped.  Especially considering the effects of drilling for natural gas on the environment.  On the bright side though it does contain several natural ingredients like aloe and sunflower seed oil.  I can at least report that the deodorant does work.  I didn't sweat at all today (it was in the 90's here).

Through my general research it seems that when it comes to deodorants it is rather hard to find a truly natural or totally green way that works.  Apparently you also have to rotate them frequently.  So while I love the idea of getting rid of every chemical in my house, practicality has to come first.  I'll probably keep looking, but for the time being I'll probably just stick with the Tom's of Maine deodorant.  Its not ideal, but nothing in life ever is and either way I'm lowering the amount of daily chemicals I'm exposed to.