I just saw this video (brought to my attention in a tweet from the lovely Grey) and thought it was worth sharing.
Safety in cosmetics is very important, however this is purely scaremongering. Most things in the world from air to cucumbers have been linked to cancer by now (especially in the Daily Mail) and when you combine a carcinogen with a scary scientific word that most people won't fully understand it's easy to believe that big cororations are posioning our babies. So it's great to hear from someone who can sensibly decrypt the scientific mumbo jumbo.
Science is real!
They forced us to watch this DvD in my school, that annie chick is seriously misinformed. There is some truth in what she says, but shes not going about it the right way. I found her entire skit so boring to watch, she just used the word "toxic" like a hundred times and dramatisized everything.
ReplyDeleteI saw this video yesterday, funny how he completely discredits all of her claims!
ReplyDeleteHaha, I see you've seen the sketch that Russell Howard did on his show about things being true because they were in the Daily Mail.
ReplyDeleteI remember a while back, I was on a forum and a lady was practically freaking out because she ate a burnt chip and was convinced that it had given her cancer because she had a really bad headache and a dry mouth. She didn't say that she had been drinking and had nobody asked her, she would have fully convinced herself that she had cancer.
I watched her dumb video a few weeks ago. It's just "TOXIC TOXIC BLAH TOXIC" I was like uhhh some data please? Little cartoons of people dumping toxins into bottles aren't exactly convincing.
ReplyDeleteThankyou for posting this, Lillian! This is exactly the sort of thing that really, really grinds my gears. OH NOES, CHEMICALZ! Everything you see on a cosmetics bottle is a chemical, you ignorant goat. Water is a chemical.
ReplyDeleteAgh. If anyone is interested in decoding bollocks, I'd really,really, really encourage you to read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, its amazing.
Ohhh chemicals. Whenever someone says that everything natural is better in cosmetics or that we "INGEST 3498584LBS OF LIPSTICK A YEAR!!1" I feel like shoving some poison ivy down their throat and see how naturally good for them that is.
ReplyDeleteThe word chemical has been so twisted and misrepresented now, that our only hope is to sit the entire world down in one massive chemistry lesson and knock some sense into them.
Agreeing with Robyn, Ben Goldacre is the man!
I always say if it's that dangerous, surely they wouldn't be allowed to sell it?!
ReplyDeleteIt's FUD...from someone other than MicroSoft.
ReplyDeleteThe cosmetics industry isn't quite as regulated as food or even children's toys or pet food...so even if something's dangerous-but-not-immediately-so, the company selling it wouldn't be barred from selling it.
Then again, under the dangerous-but-openly-marketed: think of cigarettes. The use of those is directly linked to cancer and has been for years - and cigarettes are even dangerous to people who are around users of the product - yet cigarette sales are not banned. Frowned upon, yes, but not banned. So trying to make logical sense of the beauty industry is kind of a lost cause.
Though once a product demonstratively starts killing people, all bets are off.
"Yes, let's use big words and intimate that all women are passive fools who don't know how to use a dictionary or look up a word on Google. Ooooo, let's scare them with all the chemicals that are around us all the time! THINK OF THE CHIL-DRUN!!!"
That video is toxic, in that it's guerilla epistemologicide.
Let's face it, we put chemicals onto/into our bodies everyday. We're made of chemistry ourselves, so chemicals are bound to have an effect on us one way or the other. But we do it all the time. We do it when we eat, when we walk down the street in the sun inhaling polluted air...good luck avoiding all of that! XD
ReplyDeleteLOL
ReplyDeleteI love this video!
To be honest, there is no way we can completely protect ourselves...
So we should maybe just relax a bit
x