"There's Lead in Your Lipstick" by Gillian Deacon + Giveaway

A Special Earth Day message from Gillian Deacon:

Earth day shouldn't just be an annual tip of the hat to greener living. This year, make it the day you recalibrate your everyday patterns to be more earth-friendly all year long.

You don't have to be a treehugger to care about avoiding toxins in your everyday bodycare. Synthetic chemicals in personal care products contaminating groundwater and wildlife is alarming enough - but they're also contaminating us. Those hard-to-read ingredients you squint at on the back of a product label? They're building up inside your body and in your children's bodies - on Earth Day and everyday.

Make today the day you start paying attention to that fineprint. Turn a product over and read the ingredients label before you are seduced by the "green" imaging on the package. The good news is, there are lots of safer products on the market.

Good luck and I hope you'll check out There's Lead in Your Lipstick for more ideas on how to clean up your act!

My Review:

Wow. This is an incredible book. I thought I was doing a great job when it came to personal products but Gillian Deacon has shown me that I'm not doing the best job. My motivation to switch to natural products came when I discovered that the products I was using on my daughter's hair contained formaldehyde! I was shocked, it was a product designed specifically for children! It was then that I started to do research into the ingredients in our personal care products. And I couldn't believe how many carcinogens and chemicals I was putting into my system and my childrens' systems. I knew I had to make a change.

I've always avoided parabens, sulfates, and phthalates. But those are only a few of the chemicals in our products. In There's Lead in Your Lipstick, Gillian Deacon walks you through the various chemicals, tells you what to avoid, and tells you what the best products on the market are to use. This is an easy to read and easy to understand book. Believe me when I say you will be sitting down with all of your personal products and reading their labels after you have read this book.

An excerpt from the book:

The Real Cost of Cosmetics

There's a reason why these more healthful options are usually more expensive. Most conventional cosmetic manufacturers use parabens to preserve the ingredients, claiming it is a necessary evil. Parabens are estrogenic, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which means they mimic natural estrogen and can wreak havoc on your hormones. When your hormones are out of whack you can experience mood swings, irregular menstruation, skin irritations, and other troubling symptoms. Parabens are also potentially carcinogenic.

From There’s Lead in Your Lipstick by Gillian Deacon (Penguin Canada). Copyright © Backbone Inc. FSO Gillian Deacon, 2011

The Giveaway:

One lucky reader will win their own copy of There's Lead In Your Lipstick and an Eco Kiss kit from Saffron Rouge.

To win, leave your name and email address in the comments section. This contest is open to Canadian residents only. The contest will run until 11:59 PM EST on Sunday April 24 and the winner will be announced the following day.