SciShow Tangents - Cosmetics

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been putting on lipstick, applying perfume, wearing fake nails, and just generally making themselves look nice for all sorts of reasons. Heck, there are even some animals in on it!  Head to https://www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy your very own, genuine SciShow Tangents sticker! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!  While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen [Definition]https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/it-cosmetic-drug-or-both-or-it-soap[Trivia Question]Carthamus tinctorius Lhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8126054/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263051/[Fact Off]Vultures painting themselves redhttps://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19076-zoologger-vultures-use-twigs-to-gather-wool-for-nests/https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.1840https://www.newscientist.com/article/2130980-vultures-smear-their-faces-in-red-mud-which-they-use-as-makeup/https://www.audubon.org/news/these-birds-wear-makeupWWII nylon-replacing liquid leg makeuphttps://books.google.com/books?id=OygDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_765873https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/nylon-a-revolution-in-textileshttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-nylon-stockings-changed-world-180955219/http://www.cosmeticsandskin.com/ded/liquid-powder.php  [Ask the Science Couch]Dangerous cosmetics (lead, radium, atropine) https://books.google.com/books?id=A3C_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=LpplCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT67&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/https://cosmeticsandskin.com/aba/glowing-complexion.phphttps://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/Mind_and_Spirit/belladonna.shtmlhttps://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-8614-99/atropine-ophthalmic-eye/atropine-sulfate-ophthalmic/details[Butt One More Thing]Butt hair forensicshttps://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/AY/D0AY01068Ehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128119082/coronary-artery-diseasehttps://archives.fbi.gov/archives/about-us/lab/forensic-science-communications/fsc/april2009/review/2009_04_review02.htm#racebodyid

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. So now that the controversy has died down a little bit, who should be the next host of Jeopardy? Because I didn't want to talk about it when it was happening. It seemed too hot. I think that the time to talk about these things is after everybody's made up their minds and we can all just be a little bit more chill about it who should it be and why should it be me oh you it didn't even occur to you well no i actually think you'd be great at it though i can't read very well uh i think that like you really have to get it every time and I'm a

two-take wonder. I don't expect myself to get it on the first try and I think that the contestants would find that pretty annoying. Yeah, might confuse them. You really can't mess up because once the thing's up, they're getting ready. Hell, maybe I should do it. Yeah, you're a reading champion.

First Santa, then Garfield and now Jeopardy host Sam Schultz. Chris Pratt can't have all the fun. That's right. I have to also be omnipresent. Sari, do you have thoughts about who should be a Jeopardy person? No, because I don't know who can do that. What was Alex Trebek's CV that made him qualified?

He had hosted other game shows before that. That's all he was, though, yeah. There aren't that many game show hosts anymore. Certainly not new ones. There's not a bunch of other game shows before that. That's all he was, though. Yeah. There aren't that many game show hosts anymore. Certainly not new ones. There's not a bunch of new game shows happening. No. Drew Carey is the newest of all. It's like 20 years old. So every week here on SciShow Tangents,

we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic, which we're just so good at. Our panelists are playing for Glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And the episode arrives, and one of them will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic

with the traditional science poem, This Week from Sam. And I've been told it's very good. Sam could not shut up about it. It's a sary killer is what I like to call it. You think her poem was good? Oh. Wait till you hear this poem. I'm ready.

I'm excited. There once was a lady from Egypt. Oh no. Who needed red lips. So then she just squished up some bugs, smeared them on her mug and said, now I am ready to be kissed. In jolly old Victorian England, dark lashes were a thing that was quite in, but there weren't

no Revlon, so people had to depend on homemade stuff made of ash and berry skin. You want cheeks that look like they're blushing?

Back to Egypt, then we must be Russian. They mix red dirt and fat, on their faces put that, and said, now it looks like my face is blood gushing.

In Rome, people had blemishes to hide, so white chalk on their faces applied. But those of higher station used lead paste as foundation and ended up sick and then died. Sam Schultz has introduced our topic, which is cosmetics, with a historical limerick journey through the ancient world and all the different ways that we have painted upon our faces. It's been a while since we've had a series of limericks to introduce it. Sari, what is a cosmetic? Well, I can't answer. I'm dead. I'm slain from Sam's poem. So cosmetic, broadly speaking, is any sort of chemical,

either human made, so synthetically made or from natural sources that is applied to the body. And I think especially we call things that we put on our faces cosmetic, like makeup related things to improve appearance in some way. Well, it doesn't have to improve it. I think so. I can use cosmetics to make myself look worse. I've seen people do that on TikTok. Yeah, it looks spooky or something.

That's fair. I don't know. You're improving your humorous nature, maybe. Expressing yourself in some manner, I suppose. Yeah. Or to just change the appearance. Yeah. Yeah. Or to just change the appearance. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah. So, that can be either like mixing pigment in with liquidy stuff or just like splashing the pigment on you or, I don't know, makeup and nail polish and deodorant. Oh. I was wondering, like moisturizing face cream or like deodorant, those feel more like pharmaceuticals or something. Well, I wouldn't go that far. I did a deep dive into the FDA and it made me almost want to take a law school class because it is so freaking wild. So there's like cosmetics. So things are either classified as cosmetics or drug. Like that's

the binary. Okay. And so products intended to cleanse or beautify are regulated as cosmetics. So soap is a cosmetic. No, soap is a third category. So you lied to me. Yeah, sorry.

You just jumped the exception. You gotta get the foundation before you learn about soap, Hank. Okay. So like cleansing or beautifying. So like makeup or toothpaste or deodorant. But if the product affects the function of the body, and this is where the line gets wibbly to me, science-y, but the FDA draws it pretty starchly. It's a drug.

So any sort of like acne treatment, if it's not a deodorant, so you're like slathering it on your skin, is a cosmetic. But if it's antiperspirant, it stops you from sweating, then it's a drug. stops you from sweating, then it's a drug. So now soap is a special category because the regulatory definition of soap is if you mix fatty acids and something alkaline like sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide or something like that, and the metal, so like the sodium or potassium, links up with the fatty acids to make soap. So it's chemically defined. And then if it has a disproportionate amount of not that specifically chemical, if it doesn't meet all that criteria, and if it has more detergents or more other stuff or has fragrance and other non-directly cleansing related things, you can't call it a soap.

So like most body washes, I think, and shampoos and whatnot are not FDA classified as a soap. They're all cosmetic because they're like, oh, they have so many scents in them that they're not a soap. Well, look, only a little bit of the world is America. Yeah. Oh, look, only a little bit of the world is America. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. And this seems very, some people had to figure out how to regulate things. But I think that deodorant is not a cosmetic.

Like, I don't think perfume is a cosmetic. But, well, now I have to look up what cosmetic means. Sari's probably going to tell us what cosmetic means, right? I do have it. It comes from the Latinized form of the Greek cosmedike, the art of dress and adornment. Oh, wow. Well, there you go. So it does seem like visual.

Visually based. Yeah. But like an art of anointing or decorating the human body. But you can like anoint with smell. Anointing is always about smells. You got to get those oints on. Now I feel like it's pharmaceutical because ointments are often pharmaceutical. So it's always been messy.

Yeah. And it only gets messier because the root word is cosmos. Of course it is. So which just means order or ornament and And it started out meaning order, and then later on was used to describe the universe. Oh my God, this is surprisingly complicated. I want to fight about it all episode, but we can't. We have to move on to the quiz portion of our show,

where I have a game for you. It's Trick or Fail. Are you ready to be presented with three facts and only one of them is true? Yes, please. Many of our modern day cosmetics have their basis in trends or techniques that have been around for millennia, but some of their present day forms are rooted in advances made in the 20th century to create or improve new products and packaging. Sometimes those innovations came from the most unlikely of stories. So for today's truth or fail, here are three stories of cosmetic ingenuity, but only one of them is true. Fact number one. The metal case holding lipsticks was invented

after World War II, when the owner of a munitions factory that was no longer needed realized he could repurpose his equipment and materials to make a convenient lipstick case. But it could be fact number two. In the 1960s, a pharmacist invented the first mascara wand by loading an empty tube with pigment and adding a pipe cleaner, which was usually sold to tobacco smokers, to make application easier for his customers. Or it could be fact number three. Acrylic nails were invented in the 1950s when a dentist broke his nail while working and turned to the materials around him to create a protective barrier while his nail grew back. So what do you think it is?

The Munitions Factory lipstick bullet, the pipe cleaner mascara wand, or the Band-Aid acrylic nail? Oh, I feel like after World War II, bullet manufacturers just said, let's keep selling the same amount of bullets always and wouldn't have changed their bullet factory into something else. Is that what the implication was? You think that we use the same amount of bullets during war as not during war?

Not use, maybe sell. This is a boy from Montana right here. You never know when you're going to need some bullets. Let's just keep making them. People aren't going to not want our bullets. Exactly. And this is my unfamiliarity with guns, but I feel like a bullet casing is too small for lipstick.

There are lots of different, what do they call them? Calibers. Calibers of bullets. Thank you, Montana Voice. I've never touched a gun in my entire life. I just, you know, know some gun words. Yeah, so maybe a caliber for like a big

one. So the pipe one is basically pipe cleaner. Yeah, a pipe cleaner that was used for cleaning tobacco pipes. He was like, what if I stick this in a little vial of ink and people can make their eyelashes look bigger? I guess that would make some logical sense because early makeup was just like soot anyway in some ways where it was like charcoal mixed in with Vaseline or whatever. And so I could see just like maybe even with the tobacco so it just like oh

yeah it works start with that eyelashes longer and then like ah my eyes hurt now so maybe i should do like some some ink thing instead what's the last one a dentist with his gnarly nail yeah the broken nail and he invented the acrylic nails this way. It was like, this is actually, actually, it looks quite nice. What are acrylics used for in dentistry? Oh, I don't know why he had acrylic around. I feel like you'd have extremely hard acrylics that would maybe be unsuitable for nail replacement. Have you seen these people's nails? It's very hard.

I guess so. I guess that's true. Doesn't he like he'd have everything he'd need maybe. Yeah. And then I guess when it got long enough

if it regrew you could just cut it off or something or whatever. You could just wear a band-aid too though. But look

this guy maybe he's like I want to solve this problem long term and I'm doing this to people's teeth and I'm going to do it to me now

and then I'm going to be a millionaire because, look, everybody wants these nails. Look at me. I wasn't going to take it, but I'm maybe recency biased. I'm just going to say I think it's the dentist man. That one now sounds like the most likely one to you after that performance that Hank just put on. You didn't like my Vogue? I liked it, but. Look, they all sound fake to me and so like a dentist doing his

nail to fix a practical thing feels better than some guy sticking a pipe cleaner in ink and feels better than some gruff montanan bullet guy being like you know what we should stick some lip goo in here yeah that's true. I think I'm going to go with the mascara one. I think the lipstick one is more, like that would be a more complicated invention process than that. And the other one's just obviously transparently bullshit. Well, fake nails date back at least as far as 600 BCE with the long nail guards worn by aristocrats in China.

But the modern acrylic nail is the product of a dentist named Frederick Slack, who cut his nail while working in a dental lab and decided to use some aluminum foil and dental acrylic to fix it. Over time, he and his family would go on to formulate different acrylic formulas and gels as part of their acrylic nail systems.

This is not the first time that dentists would create a fake nail. In 1935, a dentist named Maxwell Lapp created a fake set of nails to help patients who were biting their nails too much as well. Look, fingernails are like the teeth of your hands. I guess that's what we've proven

today. If that many of them have had this idea, two, that's a lot. And then the first lipsticks were significantly before World War II. In 1915, Maurice Levy created the Levy tube, a two-inch long tube that had a lever that allowed you to push the stick up the tube. And mascara was a thing, and it was made out of coal dust. So, Sarah, you were right when you were talking about soot.

And combined with Vaseline. And it wasn't until 1957 that the first person, a woman named Helena Rubinstein, created the Mascara Matic, which was a wand that could be dunked into the tube

that you see now. It's a really fun name. Yeah. That was such a good time for the Madics. Everything was Matic because we were so into machines. And now we're less into machines.

Everything's Matic now, so it doesn't matter. We can't call it that. Yeah, it's not exciting. We're going back to the natural roots everything's non-gmo even things that everything's gluten-free even things that aren't don't have gluten in them yeah non-gmo salt i saw non-gmo salt the other day and i was like really so the the rock is not genetically modified did you really see that yeah what. What the hell? Oh, yeah. I've seen non-GMO like water,

on water bottles. It's like, what is, this H2O? There's no organisms. There's no Gs to M. There's no O. Not an O.

It's just part of the long human tradition of being duped by extremely dumb bullshit. Well, it's true.'s not gmo it's water anyway next up we're going to take a short break and then it'll be time for the fact off Welcome back, everybody. Sari is in the lead with one point to Sam's zero.

And now it is time to hear their facts. So each of them have brought a science fact to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge which one of them can be made into the better TikTok. And I will award Hank Bucks to that fact. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. Lipsticks aren't just for aesthetics. Some of them are made with UV protection built in. Blank extracts like Carthamus tinctorius L, or CTE, are used to add a natural red-orange color, and those extracts absorb UV radiation due to their chemical structure. So what SPF can 50 milligrams of CTE extract provide for your lips? I'm looking for like a two-digit number.

Cool. Well, I know sunscreen is generally like somewhere between 15 and the high end is is like 80. I'm going to say 30. That feels middling. Sari went for 30. Would it be middling or would it be really watered down? I'm going to say 10.

Well, it didn't really matter because Sari almost got it right on the nose. It is 31 and that means that Sari gets to go first or decide who goes first. Isn't she just so smart? She's super smart, but she's never hit me with a limerick like that, Sam.

Yeah, and I'm not even here anymore. This is the ghost of me. I've been slain by your limerick. Remember Sam? I guess so. Continuity. Doesn't feel real. Feels like you guys are patronizing me. You want to go first to prove your manliness? Oh, fuck.

Yeah, I guess so. I was settling in to listen. So Egyptian vultures are vultures that live in Egypt and also across Africa and southern Europe. And they're a striking looking bird with very yellow faces that they apparently get from carotenoids that they obtain from eating the excrements of ungulates. That's a quote from a paper I read. And more importantly, bright white feathers, except some of them have reddish ochre feathers and they don't have reddish feathers from eating anyone's excrement. They are covered in red dirt. So researchers have noted for a long time that many Egyptian vultures are covered in red dirt so researchers have noted for a long time that many egyptian vultures are covered in red dirt in the past but i guess they must have just thought

they were dirty or something and they didn't really look into it but in 2017 researchers at an observation station in the canary islands observed something since they had tagged each bird they could tell that there was individual variation and just how red each of the birds were some were white and some were like drenched in red dirt and everywhere in between. So they put out a basin of red muddy water next to a basin of clean water to see what would happen. And so over the course of the day or the amount of time that they were watching these vultures, about 90 vultures stopped by to grab a drink and hang out. Most of them ignored the muddy basin.

But 18 of the birds walked up to the mud and started rubbing their heads and chest in red goop. And some slopped on a lot. Some only did a little bit. Some took like two or three baths in this red dirt. And there wasn't any seeming pattern to the gender or age of the birds. Some just did it and some just didn't do it.

There are other types of birds that take dirt baths and almost all of them are doing it to shield themselves from like bugs and parasites and creepy crawlies then there are other birds that paint themselves with mud but they do it for like practical reasons like camouflage or very clearly like mating related purposes uh but since not all that many egyptian vultures are painting themselves and there isn't like a gender or age specific split in those that do it and those that don't the researchers don't actually know why they do it and think that it's possible

that they're painting themselves red purely for cosmetic reasons based on their own personal preference. And these birds otherwise are really smart. Not that painting yourself isn't smart. They're also smart in addition to that because they've been seen breaking eggs open with rocks and using sticks to pull wool off of sheep

to bring back and use in their nests. So it doesn't seem like off base that maybe they'd want to look nice. Right. And plus purely social reasons, like as in not mating or camouflage based feather coloring has been observed in just one other bird total, the bearded vulture. But researchers know that bearded vultures, which are solitary, are painting themselves as a way to signal dominance or like scare each other or something like that. But Egyptian vultures are social and they just hang out in big groups and seem to paint themselves for no discernible reason.

As of 2017, the researchers were planning to, to get birds and paint them themselves in different ways, or even to put out different color mud to see what kind of reaction that would get from the birds. But I couldn't find any follow-up. I want to see if they put a bunch of muds out if some birds are like, I don't like red.

I want to be purple. A blue bird. Yeah. Maybe the other ones aren't painting themselves because they don't want that color. That could be it. That's super cool. I love the idea that they just have a preference. I just felt like we'll go in red today. Yeah. Which I do.

That's how I feel sometimes. Sometimes I want to go purple. Yeah. So, Sari, what do you have for us? So, stockings have been around for centuries as basically long socks. They're two tubes of fabric, one for each leg, made from animal hide, cotton, linen, wool, silk, or other fabrics. Some fabrics were warmer than others, while some were more form-fitting and some were more expensive because they were harder to come by, like silk. Regardless, stockings were a practical

fashion staple for people of all genders for a while and eventually were advertised more specifically to women for warmth and or modesty beneath skirts and dresses. And transparent, aka sheer stockings, became more popularized around the early 1900s. And in my totally not a historian opinion, this seems like where function and aesthetic started to blur. Like instead of just being colored leg socks, stockings were sheer flesh tones that could help even out the color on bare legs. They were typically made of silk, which like I said, were expensive, or a synthetic fiber made from cellulose called rayon, until the chemistry company DuPont manufactured and widely released a different synthetic material called nylon. Chemically, nylon is a polyamide, which is basically an organic compound with some nitrogen

in it, and became widely popular because it was strong, elastic, heat-resistant, sheer, and relatively cheap. So nylon stockings were mass produced by DuPont in the United States starting around 1940. However, another little thing was going on in 1940, World War II. So after around a year of nylon stocking abundance, in November 1941, DuPont shifted to producing nylon products for military purposes like parachutes and ropes. And this is where women and the advertising industry turned to cosmetics. Nylon stockings were nearly impossible to come by, but not everyone was comfortable bare-legging it. So, liquid stockings started to catch on, which were bottles of leg makeup that had been around for a couple decades in the US, mostly for theater and movies.

Chemically, as far as I can tell, this leg makeup was just pigments suspended in stuff like water and glycerin, and you could slather it on with a sponge. And then never sit down. Yeah. That was the problem. The makeup often wasn't waterproof or could smudge over the course of, like, living your life. Yeah. And the liquid stockings didn't simulate the seam that was on the back of stockings so very meticulous women would draw that seam on the back of their legs with an eyebrow pencil

how do you draw on the back of your legs very carefully i i can't even imagine yeah i don't know you could turn yourself into a pretzel to get yourself a seam. No, it would be easy. Try drawing on the back of your leg right now. But like. Yeah, you sit cross-legged and you go. But like, oh my, I guess. I just drew myself two seams right now.

I guess you're not going to go that high up. Yeah, I could go all the way up to my butt if I wanted to. Well, you can't see that though. You can't see it. You got to look at your ass in the mirror. I can intuit the shape of my ass. I don't need to see it. You can draw a seam just right up over the butt cheek up to your shoulder.

If you tried hard enough. I'm wearing full body liquid stockings. Yeah. And just wearing liquid body. But all that to say, we obviously do not paint on liquid stockings today. And people were very relieved to be able to purchase nylon stockings again or pantyhose, which are just connected stockings. So you don't have to put on each leg separately. I learned that researching this fact.

But liquid makeup didn't disappear completely. In fact, before the 1940s, as far as I can tell, most makeup was powder, like you powdered your face with foundation or blush. There were a couple creamy things like lipsticks or formulations of calamine lotion for itches or stage face paint, but not so many skin tone colored pigments suspended in liquid. So it seems like the rapid demand and competition for liquid stockings help push more innovation in this area of cosmetic chemistry. Chemists improved the suspension of pigment powder in liquids and worked on things like how fast liquid makeup dried, how evenly it coated skin, and how much it resisted being rubbed off. And nowadays, liquid makeup, like foundation that you apply with fancy sponges, is really plentiful. So I wouldn't be so bold as to say the nylon shortage

paved the way for all modern liquid makeup, but there is a link between what we have now and the chemistry innovations of the 1940s that I didn't know about until recently. That's super cool, Sari. And I appreciate that you didn't, as any good clickbaity article writer would have done, say, and we wouldn't have foundation if it weren't for parachutes. Which would, you know, that's the headline that you want.

That's the headline. But you can't have it because it's not true. No, there's so many other chemists doing so many other things that, like, absolutely ridiculous. I saw it there waiting, i wanted to like weave it in so thank you for appreciating yeah i guess it's my turn now to decide who who's gonna win it i feel like in the end it's sam oh thank god i like those i like those boys it's good pictures too uh cute huh yeah i don't know like i think that tiktok might appreciate a makeup fact and uh and i just love birds thinking living their lives i think that the win has to go to

sam to reward him for his limericks oh thank god again i needed that it's been a while been having a tough time i was thinking sam just off screen your basement, you have a dartboard with my face on it. I'm like, I'm going to get you. Now it is time to ask the science couch where there are some listener questions for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. This one is from Trinity R. Cook, who asks, what ingredients used in cosmetics throughout history were the worst? Sam already told us about lead, which was the thing that I mostly knew about. There's also a lot of poop that's involved, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. So here are the three categories of worst.

Grossest, most dangerous, and most destructive to the world outside of the person who's putting the makeup on. And I don't know any of them except for lead. But, Zari, how do you feel about my three categories? I love those three categories. And I wish we had this conversation like 24 to 48 hours ago. Because that would be a great direction to take this. But unfortunately, we didn't. So I just looked up dangerous because that's what I had off the top of my head.

And it felt easiest, like the lowest barrier to entry for me to Google because I need the right direction. And easiest because Sam already did one of them for me. But yeah, lead was used for a really long time. So starting in Greek and Roman times, used as kind of like an all over concealer for any freckles or marks. White lead was also used in paintings as well. So it was just like, well, you paint the wall and you paint your face. Same thing. like 16th and 17th century england where uh it was used also as a cover-up but also as like a whitening paste so uh pale skin and probably some degree of racism also played into this this cosmetic ideal but you wanted to be as pale as possible also the beauty standard of paler was associated with wealth because you weren't laboring and you were rich enough to stay out of the sun. So I think that's why across a lot of cultures, not being tan for a long time was the peak of beauty because it was like, oh, you're wealthy enough to be pale.

to be pale huh this one's kind of a throwaway but but a number two dangerous thing that makes my top three worst cosmetics list is radium everything yeah because i i don't know it's just fun to talk about because when radium was discovered in night in 1898 everyone was like radium this radium that and sort of like and everything was matic everything was also radio something because we were like it's glowy it's modern it's cool um and so there were brands like radio based in london uh that was started in 1917 that what did it what what you do what did people just glow yeah i think so or just put some in it like in face screams soaps powders and blush and in 1930s though radia thor radia because i think thorium was also incorporated in it um created cosmetics i don't know if they were

bright enough to glow i think it was more like it was just like a cool thing yeah yeah it's like putting it's putting like putting non-gmo on water you know this is like oh we put radium in it yeah there are some cases of people regularly using these radium products dying but i think most of them they were just sold a fad yeah but the people who did end up dying were the people who worked in those watch factories. So like the Radium Girls, which were a group of about 4,000 factory workers in the United States who painted watch faces with glowing radium paint. Like that's when you hear it's not really cosmetic, but they would like paint on their faces as something to do while they were bored in the factory. to do while they were bored in the factory and using that unofficial makeup they they ended up uh getting a lot of anemia and bone cancers and other bad health conditions um so that's that's pretty worst in my opinion and then one of them that i feel like gets overlooked but is very fun to talk about is uh deadly nightshade eye drops so i mean atropine

or atropa belladonna okay and belladonna like the species name means beautiful lady in italian and that's the name of the plant came from because women would use extracts of this plant drop them in their eyes to dilate their pupils and make them look really wide and like baby-like and beautiful because like a huge dark pupil

was in vogue. Do you just in like constant light-based pain? Is that what would? Yeah. Yeah. Ugh. Or you like would stay

in the dark to be like a vampire and stay away from the sun. But the thing is, it sounds like you shouldn't do it because all we know about it is it's like a smooth muscle relaxant. But in very, very small amounts, this is the same toxin that eye doctors use to dilate your eyes. Even now.

Even now. We just use it in small controlled doses as opposed to just like shoving the plant in your eye. Yeah. But we haven't found a better. Here's a bunch of like really strong muscle relaxants to keep in your home, which is not a good idea. Yeah. And it's like a medical use versus a cosmetic use. Uh-huh.

But wild. I love that, this thing that was used dangerously for beauty. It's like, still, it's the best way to see to the back of your eye. I don't know. Gotta look in there. Yeah. I have looked up, I have found two destructive cosmetics that hurt not the people. One, a bunch of stuff made out of whales.

Just tons of stuff made out of whales. So let's not, we're mostly not doing that anymore, but still a little bit we are. And then second, microplastics, which which like these little beads they're like a really nice way to like create texture and like i mean like little plastic beads that we we did that for a long time i'm starting to do it less because look you make a little plastic bead it's never going anywhere it's gonna get in a fish one way or the other that's permanent that's forever you've created a lot of tiny beads what about all the stink we took out of beavers? That's probably. Yeah.

Also probably not great for the beavers and the environments that they control. Castoreum. The beaver stink. For sure. So let's do that less and also poison our eyes less. Yep. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents, where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord.

Thank you to at Chris B., at Mooney Riot, and everybody else for your questions for this episode. If you like the show and you want to help us out, it's so easy to do that. You can go to Patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a patron. You get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes, which are very fun and stupid. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen.

That's super helpful and helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us.

I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes, along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia-Frieto.

Our editorial assistants are Taboki Chakravarti, Emma Douster, and Alex Billow. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you! And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. But one more thing. If you've watched CSI, you might be familiar with the idea of using hair as a tool to identify the people involved in a crime.

The most reliable analyses often come from head or pubic hair, but other body parts, like the butt, can also leave hair behind. And you might think that an assailant could throw the investigators off the trail with cosmetics like dyeing or bleaching hair. But in a 2020 paper from the journal Analytical Methods, researchers used Raman spectroscopy to determine if the hair was dyed, bleached, or dyed then bleached with 96% accuracy. So hold on to your butt hairs because cosmetics can't cover up a crime. That was a bit of a reach, but we got there. Now wait a minute. You know, the first thing I do when I commit a murder is bleach my butt hair. Yes. You should probably just...

Just in case. Yeah, you gotta wax all your butt hair off just in case even more. Yeah, before you commit a murder, just become Mr. Clean. You know, anything hair. That's good too because he has all that cleaning product on hand as well.

Oh man. He is the perfect murderer. Wow. Mr. Clean.