Personal care products from body lotion to shampoo and toothpaste offer essential hygiene and health benefits, making establishing a routine with these essentials an integral part of self-care. However, some may contain chemicals with long-term health implications.
Emerging pollutants include plasticizers such as phthalates; disinfectants like triclosan and triclocarban; and fragrance pollutions including galaxolide, toluene and phenols.
Hygiene and Grooming
Hygiene and grooming products provide essential protection to skin, hair, nails and external genital areas from germs while improving their condition. Examples include soaps, body washes, shampoos, conditioners, deodorants, facial cleansers as well as toothbrushes and tweezers.
Personal hygiene products can also help enhance grooming and support dignity in care, for instance using pomades to achieve certain styles of hair or nail clippers and files to maintain healthy nails.
Other hygiene practices include handwashing, clothes laundering and disinfecting surfaces that come into contact with fecal matter. Furthermore, infant feeding hygiene requires the cleaning and sanitization of milk bottles and pump parts.
Skincare
Skincare products include cosmetic preparations, antiseptics, tonics, lotions and creams designed to massage, cleanse, stimulate or otherwise enhance any aspect of a person’s scalp, face, arms, hands, neck legs or bust. It does not include invasive procedures like hair removal.
A basic skincare routine starts with using a gentle cleanser twice per day to rid skin of sweat, oil, and dirt; moisturizer hydrates skin to ward off dryness and age spots; serums target specific concerns like wrinkles or dark spots while masks offer deeper cleaning that delivers ingredients directly under occlusion for targeted treatments such as acne or dryness treatment.
Fragrances
Fragrance is a combination of chemicals carefully assembled to produce an enjoyable aroma, used in cosmetics like shampoo, soap and body lotion, as well as household cleaners.
Perfume has an immediate and tangible effect on one’s mood, as its pleasing fragrance has been found to increase self-appeal and self-confidence while decreasing anxiety and stress levels. Furthermore, pleasant odors may boost cognitive functioning and promote better sleeping conditions.
Moisturizing before applying a fragrance is key, since dry skin tends to absorb perfume more readily. Furthermore, some types of fragrances can irritate sensitive individuals’ skin or even lead to contact allergy dermatitis. [1] [2]
Cosmetics
Cosmetics applied directly to skin or hair can help beautify, maintain or alter its appearance. Examples include lipstick; perfumes, colognes and toilet waters; shaving preparations; soaps, shampoos and conditioners; as well as depilatories.
Some cosmetic products such as antiperspirants and perfumes that remain on your body for hours at a time contribute to eutrophication of freshwater ecosystems, but these wash off more easily than expected.
Other products, like sunscreens, are rinse-off products that contribute more directly to water pollution because they wash down drains into oceans, lakes, rivers and streams. Staying up-to-date with personal care product regulation and ingredient safety is integral for good health.
Preservatives
Many personal care products contain harmful toxins that can accumulate over time and pose potential health hazards. Selecting high-quality products requires researching ingredients, allergens and third-party certifications in detail.
FDA regulates many of the cosmetics you find in your bathroom cabinet or makeup bag as cosmetics, including lipstick, face creams, perfume, fingernail polishes, hair dye and shampoo. But unlike drugs which must go through stringent testing to gain FDA approval before being released for sale on the market, cosmetics don’t have to prove their safety in order to go on sale – making it harder for consumers to determine whether products contain harmful chemicals – especially during critical life stages such as pregnancy, early childhood development or puberty.
Customization
Personalized products foster intimacy between consumers and brands. For instance, choosing fragrances that resonate with individual consumer tastes creates an emotional tie with the product and increases levels of satisfaction. Furthermore, distinguishable packaging reinforces brand identity and encourages repeat purchases.
Technological advances are making personalization of products simpler. From artificial intelligence to data analytics, these tools allow manufacturers to gather real-time insight about consumer preferences – information which they can then use to formulate more targeted skincare formulations.
Utilizing sustainable ingredients is another way to customize products. Doing so shows off a company’s dedication to social responsibility while building customer trust.
