Hidden Chemicals in Your Personal Care Products

by Dr. Nick Zyrowski June 02, 2025

Thinking about your morning routine, how many different items do you use before you leave home? Many people use shampoos, soaps, deodorants, lotions, and toothpaste that contain toxic ingredients everyday. It might shock you to know that most of them haven’t been tested for long-term effects. (1) In fact, the chemical list is so long it is hard for consumers to keep up with them all.

In this article, we will show you the most dangerous ones to be aware of and some easy swaps you can make for a healthier lifestyle. Keep reading to learn what’s really in your skincare routine.

Profits over health

Now, while we want to believe that we are making great strides to remove toxic chemicals and even see many politicians claiming to work hard to make the earth a safer place, that is frequently a political diatribe. These candidates often say what we want to hear. In actuality, some of the companies may agree to change chemicals and just use another one that is as bad but under another name. What we quickly learn is that these organizations care about profits more than they care about health.

Complicated wording

We aren’t accusing these companies of using complicated wording to confuse consumers, but it certainly can make it difficult to know what you are getting. For instance, have you heard of PFAS, PFCs or PFOS? These are part of a group of substances that have long words like Per fluorinated chemicals, perfluorocarbons, and poly-fluoroalkyl substances. (2) Now, most people picking up their skincare or household goods aren’t going to know what these ingredients are and we don’t blame you. They are also known as “forever chemicals.” An easy way to remember that is that they are called this because they do not break down in the environment. Moving past these products, a study also has reported these forever chemicals in the foods we eat, like eggs, seafood, rice, meat, and even coffee. (3)

Most dangerous toxins in common skin products

Since it would be impossible to cover every product on earth that includes dangerous chemicals, we will show you the most common ones you should know.

Soaps

Most of the typical grocery store soaps contain irritants, fragrances, preservatives, and chemicals that affect your health. According to the EWG, formaldehyde is highly toxic and is included in numerous soaps. (4) You know we mentioned how these companies can use different naming conventions so you have to know the other words, too. Look for ingredients like paraformaldehyde, methylene glycol, and quaternium-15. Another dangerous chemical in soap is triclosan, which may disrupt hormonal health, and affect how you respond to antibiotics.

If you want a healthier, safer option, look for soaps that are natural and contain oils from plants or animals. Make sure they don’t have parabens, binders, or preservatives. You can find these online and in stores.

Shampoos

There are so many shampoos on the market today and many of them contain ingredients like ethanolamine compounds, UV filters, parabens, sodium laureth sulfate, and Formaldehyde. (5) One of the worst offenders is undisclosed fragrance because so many products have it and this can be a mystery cocktail of epic proportions. (6) Basically, you won’t know if you are getting 5 or 500 ingredients in this undisclosed fragrance or where they come from. Many of these are harmful to a woman’s reproductive system and some have been banned in other countries due to the possibility of causing cancers.

When buying shampoo, look for natural, organic products that don’t contain these chemicals. Many of these will proudly display that they contain only non-toxic ingredients.

Lotions

If you like using a moisturizer daily, and work hard to keep your skin soft and smooth, you could be doing more harm than good. Some of the most dangerous chemicals in these lotions contain butylated hydroxyanisole, polyacrylamide, petrolatum, and UV filters. These chemicals may cause cancer and at the very least cause skin irritations. (7) Don’t fall for the unscented varieties either as many still have solvents, dyes, and stabilizers to mask smells in the product.

If you want to use something that makes your skin feel absolutely amazing and nourishes it, consider a tallow lotion. We use Great Lakes Organix tallowlotion that includes grass-fed tallow. If you’re reading this and thinking this is going to have a bad odor or make you smell like beef, we can alleviate those fears. This unique combination of essential fatty acids, antioxidants, and essential oils has a rich, luxurious feel and no smelly odors. It comes in unscented and scented varieties with lemon, vanilla, or lavender. It also comes in a glass jar so you aren’t concerned with synthetic ingredients found in those plastic containers.

Makeup

Women like to look their best, and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet, the skincare industry has played on fears and emotions for decades, pushing all kinds of unhealthy products for women to use on their skin. Things like face powders, blush, and eye shadow are filled with harmful ingredients. Look for talc, silica, preservatives, titanium dioxide, carbon black, and PTFE. (8) Some of these are known carcinogens and we are putting them on our skin. Also, if you see wording like “long-lasting,” or “wear-resistant,” that is not a positive thing. There is a reason these are hard to remove and many of the ingredients can get into your eyes, having direct access to your brain and you do not want that.

You want to look for nontoxic products from organic sources. These are produced without dangerous chemicals and can nourish your skin, leaving you looking healthy. Brands like Mineral Fusion or Physicians Formula are better options.

What about those stored toxins?

Now that you understand the depths these companies have gone to, including confusing combinations of ingredients, you might be wondering how to remove the toxins you may already have from years of use. When you want to be as healthy as possible and purge those built-up toxins, we recommend doing a 90-day detox. The True Cellular Detoxincludes a prep, body, and brain phase to remove those harmful toxins to heal and increase healthy energy levels. This three-phased system promotes overall health optimization to naturally remove those dangerous chemicals. A quality detox can be life-changing for your health.

Low-hanging fruit

We understand that sometimes it can be overwhelming to think about all the toxic materials we are exposed to in our daily lives. It can be hard to change everything at once, so we recommend doing the easy things first and building up momentum as you can. Some of the simple changes we’ve mentioned aren’t expensive and can even save you money. We weren’t meant to cover our bodies with these unnatural ingredients and make ourselves sick in the process.

If you have questions about more steps you can take for a healthy lifestyle, contact us and we will be happy to give you some information on what we use and how we approach natural health in our clinic so that our patients can have restored vitality and live their best lives.