Not in your body but on it... Olivier comes out clean

Okay so this isn't food exactly, but it is stuff that you put on your body and therefore gets absorbed into it. We're talking soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, cosmetics that sort of thing. Now there has been lots of criticism of the cosmetic industry and the stuff they put into "beauty products" like phthalates (plasticizers), but good old US-based Environmental Working Group has a whole database on cosmetic products and the chemicals they contain that is pretty scary. EWG brought this database to my attention again in an email in response to a US Presidential Cancer Panel that admitted that "health officials have grossly underestimated the extent of environmentally induced cancer among the 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with the disease annually". EWG put out its Cancer Prevention Tips - you know, filter your water, avoid things like Teflon and Scotchguard, eat the Clean 15, avoid the Dirty Dozen - but they also pointed to things like avoiding carcinogens in cosmetics (including sunscreen by the way - check out their report on that one!). Well so I checked out their database (you pump in a cosmetic brand name/product and out pops an analysis of just how chemically contaminated the thing is).Well I put in "moisturizer" and what to my wondering eyes should appear on the "clean" list but moisturizer by Olivier soapary as one of the cleanest products they have listed. That's Olivier from right here in New Brunswick. Yup, Bouctouche way for the original soapery but Olivier products are available in Saint John, Moncton and Dieppe markets and they have shops in other spots (they're opening one soon in Riverview across from Moncton, complete with a cafe and local art). And you can order stuff on-line. Anyways, as you can guess from the title the main ingredient of Olivier's stuff is olive oil (obviously not an NB product, but hey, the soaps and moisturizers and shampoos and lip balms etc. etc. are all handcrafted here in NB). So yay for us and Olivier.

Check out EWG's cosmetic database at: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/?inlist=Y

And Olivier, if you don't know them yet: http://www.oliviersoaps.com/