How Are We Feeling About Parabens?

If there's one thing that the beauty world is full of, it's controversial ingredients. This is mainly because a) to get so magically effective, products are often packed with sketchy chemicals and b) makeup & fancy lotions fall under the category of "things you definitely don't ever need."

Is magical mascara that gives you the false lash effect worth it if it also gives you cancer?
Obviously not.

But unfortunately things are rarely so clear cut. It's usually "A link has been found between x product and x disease, but further research needs to be carried out." And as we all learned in 9th grade science, correlation is not the same as causation. Product X is innocent until proven guilty, if you will.

So here's the deal with Parabens:

- Are preservatives that keep bacteria and mold from growing in your makeup/skincare
- Extend the shelf life of a product
- Have been used in cosmetics regularly since the 1920s
- Tend to be easily replaced (not that the chemicals they replace them with are any less controversial)
- Show up even in "organic" and "natural" skincare products - Always read the ingredients list!
- Have been found intact in breast cancer tissues
- Are super easy to identify in an ingredients list
Hint: it's any ingredient that ends in 'paraben' or '-paraben'
- Are naturally occurring in blueberries (methylparaben), a fruit that is often recommend for helping to prevent cancer.
- Even the experts disagree very strongly.

If you're interested, there are thousands upon thousands of articles on this subject that you can find on Google - some of which are written by actual scientists and are therefore much more interesting that my short, insufficient summary.

Some studies claim that parabens are completely safe, while others make you want to do an immediate clean out of your makeup kit and call up your mother so that she can do the same.


What do you think?

Personally, I've got really mixed feelings on this one. Aside from the fact that going through and chucking half the lotions I own would be incredibly wasteful, I'm just not sure I buy it.

I feel like though the internet has greatly increased our knowledge and access to information, it's also become a platform for a lot of fear mongering. If you stopped doing everything the internet tells you might potentially be bad, you might as while just climb under a rock to die right now. You can look up anything you want on Google, and you find a plethora of articles claiming that it's going to kill you eventually.

That being said, I'm still going to be a bit more cautious, because breast cancer runs in my family. Better safe than sorry right? I'll be finishing up what I have and then slowly replacing products with paraben-free alternatives when it's convenient, without going nuts worrying about.

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How are you ladies feeling about Parabens? Are you completely against them? Do you think the worry is all just a bunch of crap? Or do you just not care in general?