Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Are Toxins in Your Beauty Products Making You Sick? Unpacking the Risks of “Chemical” vs “Clean” Skin Care with Dr. Michelle Wong

Starting point is 00:00:00 People have died from contaminated products. We've kind of been spoiled by parabens and by preservatives. We kind of take it for granted that if we use a product, we won't get some horrific skin infection that could potentially land us in hospital. Welcome to another episode of Bite Back with Abbey Sharp, where I dismantle diet culture rules, call out the charlatans spinning the pseudoscience and help you achieve food freedom for good.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Today's episode is super action packed and I'm personally really, really excited about it because I know there's just such a heavy overlap between problematic clean eating wellness culture and clean beauty culture and that they both operate under the same misguided naturalistic fallacy. There is a lot of fear-mongering potential toxins and poisons and endocrine disruptors and this goes for products that you are putting in your mouth and also those that you're putting on your body.

Starting point is 00:01:07 I've done a lot of work here to help put into context the dose that makes the poison when it comes to common food additives and ingredients, and my guest today, Dr. Michelle Wong, is going to help us do the same for cosmetics and skincare. Dr. Wong, or Lab Muffin Beauty Science, is a PhD cosmetic chemist, fellow science communicator, and self-proclaimed skincare addict. For the past almost 15 years, she's been calling out the chemophobia in the beauty space and sharing her science-informed reviews to help people make the best decisions about what they're putting on their body. She's also a vocal advocate for sunscreen and as a pale freckly girly myself,

Starting point is 00:01:49 I am very very happy to hear that. Today we'll be debunking common myths around sunscreen, parabens and benzoyl peroxide. We'll also be chatting about why some natural alternatives might actually be more dangerous than synthetic. And I'll be closing off by breaking down why the clean eating and clean beauty lists and recommendations by the EWG, or Environmental Working Group, should not be trusted. Quick reminder folks that the information in this episode is never a replacement for

Starting point is 00:02:20 personalized healthcare, and I would love if you would follow or subscribe to the podcast and leave me a review because as a new podcast, it really, really does help me out. All right, folks, let's get into it. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Michelle. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Michelle. Thanks so much for having me. I am so excited to have you on because I don't know, even though I feel very equipped to kind of denounce chemophobia as it relates to food, I get very anxious when I see a doctor on TikTok like listing off all these toxins and some cosmetic product I literally have on my face. And there's so much overlap here in what I do and what you do as a science

Starting point is 00:03:10 communicator. But maybe you can kind of explain how chemophobia tends to infiltrate both diet culture and also the beauty space. Yeah. So I think I feel exactly the same way that you do, but with food, because I think we have our own domains of expertise. And so it's really easy to get swept up in all of that hype. And I think it's really similar in both. So there's a general trend in both where they just assume that natural is safer, it's better for you, it's better for the environment.

Starting point is 00:03:40 But in reality, that's just not true. There are so many counter examples of things in nature that we don't want to eat or get on our skin. And a lot of the time, it is that sort of stranger danger aspect as well. So things with scary long names that you can't pronounce seem scarier. And so with our gut, it just feels more true. And a lot of the time, yeah, it is the fact that something that's more processed is actually safer because a lot of the time that processing is done to make it safer to get rid of things that

Starting point is 00:04:09 we don't want on our skin or inside our bodies. And there's a lot of apps like, um, Yuka and the EWG, which actually cover both food and beauty. And I think it does kind of prey on women in particular as well. They do kind of, I think, take advantage of the fact that socially, women just don't tend to get encouraged to study science and understand science and a lot of our marketing also doesn't do that. And I think that's one of the big things I'm passionate about trying to kind of undo that bias, try to reach women. And I think a lot of people have actually told me that they've been inspired to study science because they were following my content. They thought they didn't enjoy it until they saw it in that sort of topic that they cared about. I love that. Oh my gosh. Yes,

Starting point is 00:04:57 let's get more women in STEM. I totally can get behind that. And I like that you've encouraged people because that, I mean, yes, I'm such a science geek myself. So like when I see another science communicator like getting down and dirty and like really getting to the nitty gritty details, I'm like, yes, I want to know about the molecule. Like I want to know the structure of that molecule. So that's awesome. And yeah, I totally agree. These things are kind of targeted towards women. Also kind of so ironic, there are a lot of these women out there touting, you know, going off about the toxins in the sunscreen, but they're more than happy to have Botox, which is an actual toxin injected into your face.

Starting point is 00:05:37 And I'm not knocking Botox because I love my Botox, but it just goes to show that a lot of these concerns and fears are not actually driven by logic or science like you're talking about. They're driven by elitism, healthism and fear. But I want to talk a little bit about kind of risk and protective factors here because I've heard from a lot of folks in the clean beauty space that your skin is your largest organ. So you are just way more likely to be poisoned by

Starting point is 00:06:05 what you put onto your skin than even what you eat. And I can definitely speak to the food part because we have digestive enzymes and stomach acid and intestinal barrier and liver detox enzymes to prevent toxins from harming us from the food that we eat. And then when all else fails, we got the old vomiting and diarrhea reflex. But are there any safeguards that help prevent potentially harmful substances that are going from the skin into the body and causing harm? Yeah. So our skin is actually mostly designed to be a barrier. If it wasn't, then we would have died a long time ago from walking into a swamp or like just getting mud in ourselves or just poop. So skin is designed to be a barrier. Not many things get through it. Some things do, but it really depends on the chemical structure. So things

Starting point is 00:06:54 need to be really small. They need to be a particular level of like oil versus water soluble to get in. And then on top of that, there's also the fact that our skin will shed. So we shed about one layer of skin every day and a lot of that is like anything that's stuck up the top, it gets shed before it can make its way down. And so microscopically, there's just tons and tons of molecules in our skin barrier. It takes a really long time for something to actually wiggle through. And that's actually one of the big problems with skincare. It's actually really difficult to design a formula that gets active, steep enough into skin to do something. So a lot of those topical products, very few things will actually get down deep enough to work on wrinkles. And so that's also kind of reassuring in a sense, because that means a lot of things, they can't get

Starting point is 00:07:41 down deep enough to really have a health impact. And on top of that, of course, there are regulations, there are lots of toxicologists who are calculating and recommending what percentages of ingredients formulators should be using in their products. So yeah, it is very regulated. There's like a big thing. I'm sure you get it in food as well all the time, just like the US has like zero regulations. You're just putting poison on your skin, eating poison, exactly the same sort of thing. There are regulations and our products are very safe. Yeah, it is so interesting because you're right, in the food world, it's the same thing.

Starting point is 00:08:17 We keep hearing this dogma, oh, you know, the European standards are different than the American standards and, you know, America, there's all these ingredients that are not banned, that are banned in the EU. And it's the same kind of argument, and I'm sure. But the reality is, is that they often do have the similar ingredients. They just are sold under different chemical names and vice versa, right? We have ingredients that are banned in the United States that are available in the EU. So I don't think that's like a good enough argument to make that America's industry is not well regulated when it actually is. But I want to go into some specific ingredients that are very commonly demonized by clean

Starting point is 00:08:56 beauty. And the first is sunscreen because I take sunscreen and sun safety very seriously because I'm fair and I'm moly and I'm a freckly blonde but there are so many influencers like even this one doctor who keeps popping up in my feed who is basically convincing me that wearing chemical sunscreen is now more cancerous than not wearing sunscreen at all and this freaks people out it definitely definitely freaks me out, especially when it comes to putting sunscreen on my kids. So what is the take here? What's actually going on? Yeah, this has been growing quite a lot in the last few months, I feel. But yeah, it's

Starting point is 00:09:37 not true at all. So there's a lot of evidence that the sun causes cancer. It's UV from the sun. It interacts with things inside our skin like DNA. It also interacts indirectly as well to cause cancer. We've got so much evidence on this. We've got things like cell studies where they put cells under UV and they see particular changes in the DNA that are the start of cancers. We've got animal studies where they get a lot of mice and they irradiate them with UV. And then there's human skin studies where they irradiate skin with UV, take a biopsy and look at what's happening microscopically. And all of these show changes that we know are the first step towards skin cancer. Like it is literally DNA will react in a way that forms these like four

Starting point is 00:10:22 membered rings, which are a signature for skin cancer. So there's just so much evidence there versus sunscreen. There's basically zero evidence that sunscreen causes cancer. There are lots of studies on sunscreen on high doses in animals, and these are all toxicological studies. So the point of those studies was to feed the rats enough that you would see a change. Because if you don't see a change, then that's not useful for their calculations to work out what's safe, if you don't know what's dangerous. So they have to feed them enough to see some sort of change. And then they work backwards and work out how much you should be allowed to have in sunscreen. And so because of these studies, I think a lot of people see them

Starting point is 00:11:04 because they are in the peer reviewed literature, but there's not really instructions there to tell you how to interpret them. Right. Yeah. If you just go there, it just looks like sunscreen causes cancer and rats. Yeah. Then you have to calculate it back and see how much you would actually use. So yeah, it's really ridiculous, but I think it's just not being explained very well by sunscreen companies. Again, I think it is a little bit of that, like, they don't need to know, they just need to trust us. And these days with the internet, it's not quite enough. No, it's not enough. Yeah, I'm all about transparency. And you're right, if you're not giving people the specifics in terms of, okay, what does this study actually mean in layman's

Starting point is 00:11:46 terms? They're just going to take it and run with it and interpret it. And one person will post an Instagram or a TikTok that is wildly inappropriate and misinformed. And unfortunately that spreads like wildfire. And what about the use of chemical over mineral sunscreens? Like how much better are the mineral ones? It's not. So yeah, so back to like, I guess, the whole safety thing. All sunscreen ingredients have been assessed for safety. They're repeatedly assessed for safety around the world. Every region has regulators going through the data all the time.

Starting point is 00:12:22 And so even though the US is a bit behind on sunscreens, which is usually what people freak out about, around the world every other region has been checking their toxicity and all of the chemical sunscreens approved in the US are also approved in other regions and most regions have extra chemical sunscreens approved as well. So yeah, there's not really like a bunch of sunscreens that have been banned or anything. There's been some which haven't been used since the 90s, I think, which have been banned in most places because we have better options now. And yet they are very safe. So with mineral sunscreens, I think a lot of it is still that stranger danger thing. Chemical sunscreens have longer names and

Starting point is 00:13:02 technically they are slightly more dangerous in that they can absorb through your skin because they are smaller. But the reason that they're smaller is because of the downsides of mineral sunscreen, which is if they are in particles, they sit on top of skin and it's a bit like mud. So if you have a mud mask or a clay mask, it kind of dries out your skin and absorbs oil. You can feel it on your skin a lot more than something that's soluble, which is what the chemical sunscreens tend to be. There are actually particulate chemical sunscreens as well. So again, it's like there's a lot of overlap in terms of everything, including safety.

Starting point is 00:13:37 Yeah, for sure. But yeah, chemical sunscreens, even though they are technically maybe a tiny bit more risky, chemical sunscreens, even though they are technically maybe a tiny bit more risky, they're all just super, super safe. We're talking the teeniest difference between them. Right. So really it is down to preference. If you prefer mineral sunscreens, which some people do, then that's a better option for you.

Starting point is 00:13:59 If you prefer chemical sunscreens, that's a better option. In terms of environmental as well, that's also not much of a difference. There was a big review by the National Academies, I think two years ago now, which just showed that all the toxicity completely overlapped. So there's no real advantage to either, except which one you prefer,

Starting point is 00:14:19 which one you enjoy using enough that you will apply lots of it and reapply it as well. That's so helpful to hear because it's often very hard to find a mineral sunscreen that doesn't make you look like a ghost and that my kids don't reject because it's ducky and difficult to apply. So I'm sure there's a lot of folks, women and also parents who feel at ease by that. So thank you. Okay, parabens. That's another ingredient that I find is demonized quite often by the clean beauty movement. And I know that parabens are used as a preservative to prevent mold and growth of harmful bacteria in

Starting point is 00:15:10 like your shampoo or lotions or makeup, which seems pretty important considering it's, you know, touching your face all day. But as with a lot of things, you know, we see these claims that they're cancer causing or endocrine disruptors, what's the deal? Yeah. So again, it is the kind of thing where because parabens were so widespread, they've been studied a lot and so it looks like there's a whole bunch of data showing like lots of little concerns. One of the biggest concerns was that they were oestrogenic. So in other words, they bind to estrogen receptors, but they bind very weakly. And this is also the case with a lot of phytoestrogens in food as well.

Starting point is 00:15:45 They don't bind that strongly, they don't bind as strongly as our natural hormones. So they don't actually have a sort of estrogenic effect inside your body as much. So there was this 2004 study which found parabens in breast cancer tissue but the bit they didn't really emphasize was that they didn't test non-cancerous tissue and they also found parabens in the blank samples, which are the ones that didn't have any tissue. And sometimes those were actually higher than the breast cancer tissue. That's so interesting. So it seems like it was really just because parabens are used in everything. Maybe it

Starting point is 00:16:20 was used in like the detergent that they used to wash the lab equipment. Right. But this got really blown up. And so there's just all these paraben-free products now. It's just been 20 years of just being told that parabens aren't safe. Most people don't like parabens now. But they've been repeatedly reaffirmed as safe. In 2021, the EU did a safety assessment of one of the, I guess, more potentially risky ones and they found that even if you use all of your products that day, have parabens in them at the maximum allowed concentration, you still get thousands and thousands of times less than an

Starting point is 00:16:58 amount that would still be safe. So it's just very safe. And if you look through the literature as well, there are things where people have used contaminated products, especially in hospitals, because there are more vulnerable people in hospitals, like people have died from contaminated products. So yeah, it's really just, I think we've kind of been spoiled by parabens and by preservatives. We kind of take it for granted that if we use a product, we won't get some horrific skin infection that could potentially land us in hospital. Oh my gosh. I had never even thought about that.

Starting point is 00:17:35 But you're right. I mean, considering the role that parabens play, it's kind of important. And like you said, with, you know, adding up all those, those touch points, because I think that's a very common argument that I see in, you know, clean beauty and of course, clean, clean eating movement is that, well, it's like all these exposures add up over time. But like you said, even if you do add them up, the dose makes the poison and the dose, you know, and to get to that level at which it is a poison is very, very difficult. And I, you know, so I always tell people if you see a content creator who is not clarifying the dose that would cause harm and whatever it is that they're promoting as being toxic or poisonous,

Starting point is 00:18:17 like it is an immediate red flag. But I think it just goes to show how much power the media has in kind of falsely creating this hysteria and anxiety. And it's now unfortunately extended to social media influencers who have no checks and balances in place. They're not doctors, they're not dietitians who have to answer to a college and therefore uphold, you know, evidence-based practice. And so when you hear these kind of fake news headlines once, you are just automatically more likely to believe it true

Starting point is 00:18:48 the more you see it. It's definitely terrifying. Bullshit is just this unstoppable train, right? Yeah, it's so frustrating because I think, I'm sure you see this all the time as well, and I see it in every science communicator. It's just, it's so much easier to make a reel that goes viral on social media if you can just make stuff up. Like, it's so easy. You're just like, hook, easy. Call to action, easy. I know. It is mind-blowingly frustrating to be a science communicator in this day and age where anything and everything can be said with absolutely no recourse. But I've got one more ingredient I got to get to is that's benzoyl peroxide, which I know we see it in a lot of skincare as like an acne treatment.

Starting point is 00:19:31 But again, we've seen these claims over the years that it causes cancer. What's the truth? So this is a newer one. So there's this thing where benzoyl peroxide, it's like, I think it's in Penoxil in the US, I think that's the most popular brand. It's in tons of brands. There's these new stories saying that it might be cancer causing. There's actually been a few older rumors as well because it does work by forming free radicals, which if you're into skincare, you know they are one of the reasons that your skin ages quickly, UV can cause them as well. But it seems like those free radicals are really confined to the top few layers of skin, which is where the

Starting point is 00:20:10 acne bacteria are. So it works by killing the acne bacteria through the free radicals. And it seems like acne itself causes inflammation, which also causes free radicals. So overall, using benzoyl peroxide, the benefit is just better than the risk. Now with the newer myth, there was a private lab called Valachol that reported that it forms benzene. Benzene is a known carcinogen. It causes a lot of blood cancers like leukemia, but it only really causes them in people with a lot of exposure. So usually as people with occupational exposure, they're using benzene as a solvent in their work or they work at a petrol station. So benzene is in petrol and you can already sort of see the dose thing coming in.

Starting point is 00:20:54 There's benzene everywhere because everyone drives cars. So the amount of benzene formed in the benzoyl peroxide is extremely low and you actually have to really force it under extreme conditions, high temperature, UV exposure, to get it to anywhere near as much as we breathe normally, just like by being in a city or even being near your car or having your car parked in a garage attached to your house.

Starting point is 00:21:20 So it's been really blown out of proportion and this particular lab, they kind of have a bit of a history of dodgy results in my opinion. So they've done things like they've tested, they were actually behind Zantac getting taken off the market because they tested it at a really high temperature where it actually decomposed. And so there's actually a lot of questions now about whether Zantac should have ever been taken off the market. It turns out the CEO of the lab, his brother-in-law, is a class action lawyer. They're really involved with class action lawsuits. They were collaborating with these lawyers before warning the public. So there's like a bit of a

Starting point is 00:22:01 question mark about whether they're actually caring about public health and they actually have a patent on stabilizing benzoyl peroxide And from the patent history, it looks like they knew about this problem since 2022. They warned people two years later So there's a lot of questions about their motives. Oh Boy, yeah I mean and that's so frustrating for people because it's stuff like this that makes it very hard for people to know who to trust. Because of course, we think we're being critical consumers when we look at these whistleblower labs doing these investigative

Starting point is 00:22:36 testing procedure. But of course, there's often this motive to kind of make a splash with a sensationalized headline. Or like you said, if there's potential kind of motive to try to, you know, get a law case going, you know. So that is just, it's very frustrating for the lay person to try to kind of unpack. Yeah. And on top of that, they really targeted dermatologists with their messaging and a lot of dermatologists. I mean, they're dermatologists. They have such specialized knowledge. They don't know about benzene. Like benzene on skin is just not really a thing that they ever have to worry about. But I mean, they're doctors, they probably got into medicine because they care about helping people. They're going to want to spread the message. And when you hear it from a doctor, it's very convincing. And yeah,

Starting point is 00:23:26 it was really quite frustrating. Like, I don't know, it was pretty offensive to me that they targeted doctors in this way. Yeah, no, 100%. Okay, so I have a question about kind of these natural alternatives. Because again, we always think that natural is better. This falls into the naturalistic fallacy that we've talked about a lot on our podcast here. But if you are removing a so-called toxin, it has to be replaced with something. Is there a chance that the natural something could be more dangerous? Definitely. So for parabens, which were the preservatives, one of the sort of replacements, there's, I don't know if it's really a direct replacement, like the sorts of formulas you can use them in are kind of different, but there was a massive rise in the amount of allergies

Starting point is 00:24:16 to something called MI and MCI. They're alternative preservatives that a lot of people are allergic to. I'm allergic to them, even though I'm not allergic to very much. And yeah, in the literature it actually calls it an epidemic of allergies in the wake of parabens getting phased out. So there's a lot of regrettable substitution where something that hasn't been tested has been used even though something that is much more tested had low risk. It just seems like when you know the risk, it seems sometimes scarier than when you don't know the risk. But in reality, yeah, it's not really a logical sort of choice. Oh, that you just hit it exactly. When you know the risk, even if it's a minute risk, you know, the chance of harm is so low. But if you know that there's even a sliver of a chance versus kind of going in there blind with

Starting point is 00:25:13 a kind of natural alternative that has potentially zero testing, you're going to go for the natural alternative because there is no confirmed risk at all, even though it could be much greater. The absence of evidence is not a good thing. Yeah, and I always think of like, you know, in the subliminal or like colloidal silver when it comes to like natural alternatives, and you see it was used to boost immunity. And you know, it was often also used for like antibacterial properties and skincare. But we know now that it also can turn your skin silvery and possibly have toxic effects. So people will think, okay, if there's no risk, then people will use more as well. And that's also a problem.

Starting point is 00:25:54 Like more is not always better. Okay, so I think about this all the time because I suffer from orthorexia in my teens and I feel that thank God I didn't have social media at the time because I think obsessing over clean skincare would have totally broke me. Like thankfully it wasn't a priority for me at the time. But then I got pregnant and I joined mom groups and holy shit, all the clean beauty MLM reps just came out of the woodwork and I was like served all these like listicles

Starting point is 00:26:45 and ingredients where if I put this on my body I was gonna hurt my baby. And I have this vivid memory of my first pregnancy standing in the drug store with my husband trying to read like size two font on a bottle to figure out if it was safe. And like looking at my phone, kind of like comparing, okay, Googling every single one

Starting point is 00:27:03 of these long chemical names. I was terrified to dye my hair. I had put false lashes on for a TV segment once and then later learned out that I had like a panic attack when I learned there was like formaldehyde in the lash glue. None of that stress could have been good for the health of my baby. But do pregnant moms need to be extra cautious about what is put on our skin? A tiny bit. So it's really overblown, just like most of those general rules about pregnancy. A lot of it is abundance of caution. It's not actually a risk like the smallest risk there is.

Starting point is 00:27:40 Gets blown up into all sorts of things. So in general, if you have a cosmetic product which is like anything you buy off the shelf in a drugstore, that is generally fine. The amounts in those are really low, the ingredients are very safe. The reason they're approved to be non-prescription is because they're so safe. So there's a lot of warnings about vitamin A derivatives which are called retinoids. The reason there's all these warnings is because of A derivatives, which are called retinoids. The reason there's all these warnings is because of isotretinoin, which is raw-acutein,

Starting point is 00:28:09 that's an oral prescription, that will actually cause birth defects. And because that did happen in the past, everyone is very scared of it and scared of recommending it. But if you actually look at how much gets through your skin, how much you put on your skin, how much ends up in the blood, the calculations, it is just not much of a concern, but people still say to avoid it. If you feel like you are more paranoid, which I think a lot of people are happy to skip things for nine months just to have that

Starting point is 00:28:39 peace of mind, then definitely do that. But if you put it on your skin a few times, do not freak out. Again, the stress is going to be so much worse than what that's actually doing. So topical prescription Tretinoin, that's not recommended. Again, the calculated exposure is so low. If you accidentally use it a few times, it's probably fine. There are a few other ingredients that you might want to avoid, but again, it's about the dose. So first off salicylic acid. This is similar to aspirin. There's a risk of Ray's syndrome at particular points during your pregnancy. But I think these days, low dose aspirin is fine for pregnancy. It's actually prescribed for pregnant women. So again, not a huge issue.

Starting point is 00:29:22 It's very standard with IVF. They usually give it for like the first trimester or first few weeks. So that's, that's good to know. Yeah, I think it's really maybe an issue if you put it all over your body, which some people do. But again, small amounts, not a problem. I guess the biggest risk is probably counterfeit products. If you are using things that you're buying off, I don't know, Tmoo, Etsy, that kind of thing, maybe skip those when you're pregnant because you're not sure if they are following the regulations. You don't know what they're actually putting in there.

Starting point is 00:29:55 So that's probably the biggest thing I've worn about. Anything that's like prescription, talk to your doctor. The most sensible recommendations I've seen are the ones from my state in Australia, which is New South Wales. They've got this really nice, very reassuring pamphlet that tells you exactly what the risks are. And yeah, it's the most sensible one that's not like really overly, scarily overcautious. I love that. We will, we will link to that in the show notes because I think women need fewer reasons to kind of constantly be anxious

Starting point is 00:30:31 about the things we put in our body and the things we put on our body, especially during a sensitive time like pregnancy when we are already at risk of heightened anxiety over everything going on. So I think that's really helpful. So we'll definitely link to that. And you mentioned counterfeit products. So yeah, I can see like how Tmoo would be a questionable

Starting point is 00:30:51 option. But what about like Amazon? Like what are some other ways that we can kind of protect ourselves against these potential counterfeit products? Honestly, I think on Amazon, it's pretty tricky. Just because there's so many different sellers, I think the best thing, the safest thing is to buy from a proper store in your area that has a good reputation. I think it's so much easier than trying to suss out if things on Amazon are safe or not, or if they're legit or not. I've heard of so many people buying counterfeit sunscreens on Amazon. I really wouldn't trust it for something that's very, um, something you have to rely on to not get sunburned. Right. Yeah. I

Starting point is 00:31:32 would probably avoid that. Just go to a store or just go to the official website. Yeah. That's, that's very helpful. Um, and for, you know, everyone else, not just pregnant people, but are there any tips for consumers for what to actually watch for or what to avoid in skincare? Like what do you personally try to limit or what do you recommend people actually try to limit, if anything? I personally try to avoid obviously the things I'm allergic to. So, um, am I an MCI? I think in general, if you do tend to be allergic to things, probably avoid those because those can cause allergies. And those are quite annoying because they have related compounds and a lot of laundry detergents and stuff. So now I have to be very careful about what laundry detergents I use. Yes,

Starting point is 00:32:14 I think that's probably a good one. What's the ingredient called or what's the full name? Methyl isothiazolone. So anything with a thiazolone ending is related. I think in laundry detergents, it's the benzoyl ones. Other things I avoid, things that are highly fragranced or things with a lot of essential oils. Again, generally, it's not a huge issue if you aren't allergic, but a lot of the time, especially with essential oils, I think a lot of those natural brands tend to like put a bit too much in there. They tend to be thinking that sort of thing where it's natural, it's safe, the dose doesn't matter. So I'm a little

Starting point is 00:32:55 bit careful about those products where anything where it's like changed in texture or color, I'm very careful about. Although I'm the kind of person who cuts off the mold. I know it's really bad. I cut off the mold and I eat the rest of the food. So I will use it on like my feet or something like low risk. Feet have thicker skin, so it's less of a risk. Yeah, if it's got like visible mold,

Starting point is 00:33:18 then that's going in the bin. Sometimes when things have a dodgy ingredient list, like where the ingredient list is not quite right, that's a little bit tricky to spot. Um, but when the ingredient list is not quite right or it says preservative free, um, something where I'm pretty sure it's not legit in terms of science, then I'll avoid it because I feel like if they're getting really basic things wrong, they probably at least aren't making a product that's going to work. That's probably the biggest concern of mine. Is preservative free a red flag?

Starting point is 00:33:53 If it's got water in it, yes. If it doesn't have water, if it's like an oil, something that's just purely an oil, then that's probably fine. But if it's preservative free and water based, there are ways of preserving things without using actual preservatives. And so they can get away with technically being preservative free while still being safe. Um, but I mean, there's so many options on the market. I would just pick something else at that point. Um, yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:18 Also things that are like a bit too strong. I think there is this temptation to just slap the strongest thing on your skin. I've seen people using peels and like leaving them on their skin for way too strong. I think there is this temptation to just slap the strongest thing on your skin. I've seen people using peels and like leaving them on their skin for way too long. I've even seen people derma rolling over them. Derma rollers are those like little needle, um, rolly things that are meant to stimulate collagen. They work, but you have to be really careful with, um, with contamination. So yeah, just rolling a really strong product into your skin is not a good idea. Like just try to be safe.

Starting point is 00:34:49 And then after that, I think it's mostly just preference. So I prefer not to use mineral sunscreens because I don't like that white look, little things like that. So I think most products on the market, if you're buying them from places that are legitimate, they should be safe. It's really the counterfeit things, the things where you're buying them from places that are legitimate, they should be safe. It's really the counterfeit things,

Starting point is 00:35:06 the things where you're not following the instructions where it gets really dicey. That's so helpful. Yes, always follow instructions. It should be obvious, but sadly it's not. And I think you make a really good point. More is not always better and natural is also not always better.

Starting point is 00:35:21 So I think some just general great takeaways. Thank you so much Michelle for being just an amazing resource for me and for so many of us science seekers online. And if you if anyone's looking for an evidence-based skincare guide, Michelle's got an amazing skincare ebook so definitely worth checking that out. Thank you again Michelle. Thank you so much. Okay, I'm so selfishly glad that we had that conversation because even though it's literally my job to screen for BS in my own field, I too have found myself feeling super anxious every single time I see these TikToks

Starting point is 00:36:14 listing off all the so-called poisons lurking in my skincare. So I hope that was as reassuring to you as it was for me to hear Michelle expose the nature's fallacy that really lies at the core of this content. It was also a really good reminder that not unlike most of the chemicals we find in the food we eat, that the dose to make the poison in most skin care would be very, very hard to reach. Conveniently, these are details that the clean beauty and clean eating creators love to overlook.

Starting point is 00:36:49 But it's one thing for an ultra-crunchy mom to go rogue spreading pseudoscience on TikTok. It is quite another when it's coming from a seemingly official source. Let me tell you a little about one of said sources that have caused many an eye roll for both Michelle, myself, and probably every other science communicator I know. And that is…

Starting point is 00:37:13 The Environmental Working Group, aka the EWG. Michelle briefly mentioned the EWG earlier on in the episode, but according to themselves, the EWG is an American activist group that specializes in research and advocacy in the areas of agricultural subsidies, toxic chemicals, drinking water pollutants, and corporate accountability. According to science communicators, though, the EWG is actually a persistent source of chemophobia misinformation and fear-mongering that draws on the lines told by the naturalistic fallacy to craft their baseless recommendations. Take conventionally grown produce and the dirty dozen that you've been taught to avoid. That list was developed and designed by the EWG. Unfortunately, as

Starting point is 00:38:04 many of my colleagues have pointed out over the years, the science upon which they base their recommendations has some major flaws. Not only do they not test organic products for the list, suggesting somehow that organics are pesticide-free, which, spoiler alert, they are not, but the conventional fruits and veggies on the Naughty List are chosen simply based on the presence of residues of pesticides. The presence of a pesticide residue tells us nothing about the dose, which as you hopefully know by now is a massive omission and a huge scientific red flag. Essentially this tells us about a strawberry posing a hazard, which can be defined as a

Starting point is 00:38:51 potential source of harm. But it tells us nothing about the risk, which is the likelihood that that exposure to a hazard will cause harm. As humans, we come in contact with hundreds if not thousands of hazards every single day. From cars potentially getting us into a crash, to lettuce potentially being contaminated, to the friendly neighborhood dog potentially and completely randomly attacking us. Most of us just kind of accept these hazards as part of life because the risk is relatively low. When it comes to a pesticide, the actual risk to our health would require that the dose was so great that it would hugely exceed the already conservative safety factor of a hundred. So the mere presence

Starting point is 00:39:42 of like three different pesticide residues tells us nothing about whether strawberries or green beans come anywhere close to exceeding the maximum residue levels, which by the way are heavily regulated by organizations like the USDA and FDA. In the cosmetic world, the UWG launched a similar dirty list called the Toxic 20 and used it to build their Skin Deep database, which claims to rate, and in some cases verify, the best and worst beauty products. Again, you can see that EWG's bias against ingredients that happen to have more than three syllables in their names can be made quite clear by their lazy science interpretation.

Starting point is 00:40:28 A lot of my colleagues have pointed out that the EWG has a tendency to cherry-pick studies to confirm their whole natural is better MO, while ignoring the body of evidence that proves an additive is safe. This is exactly the kind of problematic research interpretation that Michelle was talking about earlier on. Embarrassingly, some of my fellow science communicators have even pointed out their lazy work in building their citation list, as some of the papers they list to prove their point often come to the conclusion that opposes EWG's talking points.

Starting point is 00:41:06 So for example, in one blog post they published about the so-called endocrine disruptors in chemical sunscreens, they were trying to make a case that oxybenzone was super duper dangerous, while citing a research paper that actually concluded that it was safe. Whoops! Conversely, when promoting their more natural alternatives, they're quite content to give products a pass if there's nothing in the research to convince them otherwise, even if there's little to no data at all. You know, as we talked about with Michelle, it's not uncommon for widely used synthetic ingredients to be backed by a much more robust database of clinical research to confirm their

Starting point is 00:41:51 safety and efficacy compared to their natural alternatives. But does that mean that natural is automatically better? Absolutely not! Like, lavender and tea tree oil were thought to be 100% safe natural alternatives to fragrances and antibacterial agents, only for there to be later research linking them to early puberty in girls. Unfortunately, this is the core belief that is reinforced by naturalistic fallacy. There was actually this super interesting study experiment that illustrated this phenomenon quite clearly, where participants were offered a natural or synthetic drug to treat a hypothetical

Starting point is 00:42:30 illness and an astonishing 20% of individuals chose the natural drug even when they were explicitly told that it was less safe and less effective than the synthetic version. It is truly wild that we do this, but it is a very common heuristic that we're all kind of just susceptible to. It's just kind of shitty for an organization to exploit it for their own gain. Now, if you're wondering, well, what's the harm of avoiding all these hazards if perhaps there is a chance that one of them may become a risk. And honestly, I can think of many. For one, it may scare people away from healthy, safe food products and foods that they can afford, like conventionally grown strawberries, based on really poor science, bias, and also likely who's paying who. Two, it can create unnecessary stress and anxiety around clean eating or beauty,

Starting point is 00:43:30 which can become a very slippery slope for disorders like orthorexia. Three, it can lead us to make potentially more dangerous choices based on the belief that natural is always better, when as we've learned, the absence of data to thoroughly confirm efficacy or safety isn't actually a perk.

Starting point is 00:43:51 And four, this content and belief system it promotes can easily feed into a greater distrust in health authority. One minute you're innocently advocating for fewer chemicals in your face wash, and the next you're innocently advocating for fewer chemicals in your face wash, and the next you're posting conspiracy theories about dermatologists being paid by Big Pharma to give you cancer with drugstore products. Like ditto with dietitians and food.

Starting point is 00:44:17 This can and often is a slippery slope. Now I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be mindful of what we put into or on our body. I'm also not suggesting that there isn't room for improvements across industries. I would personally love to see greater innovation, and also more testing of natural products so that we can accurately weigh the risks and benefits of our choices. But next time you see a post on social media suggesting that a certain ingredient is like straight up poison, I want you to ask yourself the following questions. Are they giving me specifics on the dose at which it would be a poison?

Starting point is 00:44:59 Are they critically evaluating the actual risk? Or are they just making statements on a potential hazard? Are they cherry picking studies and purposefully excluding the larger body of evidence to prove their MO? And am I drawn to this content because the idea of something natural makes me feel more comfortable than something that's being crafted and studied by scientists in a lab. It's very hard not to be swayed by the romantic and emotive allure of nature's fallacy. But I invite you to put on your critical thinking hat anytime you hear the word toxin or poison

Starting point is 00:45:42 before rushing to your pantry or cupboard to clear out anything with a hard-to-say name. And that is all that I have for you guys today. clear out anything with a hard to say name. And that is all that I have for you guys today. Thank you again to Dr. Michelle Wong for helping me bite back against pseudoscience online. I will of course be leaving links to her content in the show notes, and I highly recommend that you check her out. Please don't forget to leave me a review,

Starting point is 00:45:58 it really helps me out, and share this podcast with a friend or online. Signing off with Science and Sass, I'm Abbie Sharp. Thanks for listening.

Bite Back with Abbey Sharp - Are Toxins in Your Beauty Products Making You Sick? Unpacking the Risks of “Chemical” vs “Clean” Skin Care with Dr. Michelle Wong

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