(NaturalNews) Have you ever stopped and wondered if many of your toiletries and body care products are necessary at all? Do you ever look at the ingredient labels of these products and wonder if these synthetic compounds were even meant to be put on human skin? Have you ever considered making your own body care products using natural ingredients? It turns out that simplifying the body care repertoire at home by using cleaner ingredients or no products at all may have as much, if not more, of an effect on your health as diet and exercise. Some of the chemicals in shampoos, toothpastes, soaps, deodorants and skin creams are so detrimental to your health that they can even disrupt fetal development in pregnant women.

Commercial products loaded with known endocrine-disrupting chemicals

Research teams from the Nancy and Poitiers University Hospitals, the French biomedical and publich health research institution Inserm, the University of Grenoble Environmental Epidemiology team and the CDC have brought together new findings which indicate that certain chemical phenols can absorb into the skin of pregnant women and disrupt male fetal development, both in the womb and in the first three years of the baby's life. The two most detrimental chemicals, they found, were parabens and triclosan. The results were published in the September 2014 issue of the journal Epidemiology.

All the chemicals in question in this study are known endocrine disrupters, which mean they disrupt the glands in the body that regulate proper hormone production. For instance, a person's growth, weight gain and sexuality are regulated by a healthy balance of hormones. The research team investigated the following endocrine disrupters:

• Parabens are the preservatives used in many commercial cosmetic body care products and healthcare products.
• Triclosan is pesticide with antibacterial properties that is used in commercial soaps and toothpastes.
• Dichlorophenols are compounds often found in indoor deodorizers.
• Bisphenol A is a plasticizer chemical used to make polycarbonate-based plastics.
• Benzophenone-3 is a UV filter chemical used in sunscreen products.
• Epoxy resins are leachable additives in the lining of food cans and dental amalgams.

Parabens, triclosan negatively affect growth and weight in children up to three years old

A mother-child cohort including 520 boys was established by Inserm and recruited by the Nancy and Poitiers University Hospitals between 2003 and 2006. Using ultrasound technology, the hospital recorded weight, length and height during pregnancy, throughout birth, up until three years of age. A CDC lab in Atlanta measured biomarkers in urine samples for exposure to the various phenol chemicals. Almost 95 percent of the pregnant women were exposed to these endocrine-disrupting phenols during pregnancy. Some of the phenols directly disrupted the growth of their male children. A very strong negative correlation was found between triclosan levels and growth of the children measured in the mother's third trimester.

The boys' weights were most negatively affected by parabens. The chemicals were associated with increased weight gain from birth to three years of age.

The researchers mentioned that "this is the first study concerning these environmental contaminants based on growth data collected during pregnancy, at birth, and up to the age of three years. Previous studies were focused on just one of these periods, and were usually restricted to the study of bisphenol A, without including other phenols."

The chemicals we put in and on our bodies affect the health of the next generation

After studies began showing the dangers of bisphenol A on childhood development, lawmakers moved to ban the chemical from infant food packaging. By January 2015, bisphenol A is set to be removed from all food packaging. As the dangers of parabens and triclosan come out of the closet, will they soon be banned as well?

Now that you know what these phenols do to the body, are you willing to stay ahead of the curve and start removing these synthetics from your household? The healthy growth, weight and sexual development of the future generation depends on adults' diligence to avoid and then remove these pollutants from our bodies and the planet.

Sources for this article include:

http://presse-inserm.fr

http://science.naturalnews.com