It’s all ‘go’ at Skinsmatter….

01/02/2013 By Leave a Comment

Skins awards logo 2013

Just in case we had not told you before….. The FreeFrom Skincare Awards 2013 opened for business yesterday! Anyone wanting to know more about them should check in at the awards site – www.freefromskincareawards.co.uk - where our rather smart new ‘count down clock’ will tell you that you have, at this precise moment, 43 days, 8 hours, 12 minutes and 3 seconds to get your entry in… And to do so, you need to email alex@skinsmatter.com for the entry forms.

The awards are significantly larger in ‘year two’ –  twelve categories instead of just three – including Babies, kids and Mums-to-be, Men’s grooming, Face and body oils and serums and Problem Skin Products as well as the ‘Take off’/'Leave on’ Face and Body care products and Make up and nail care categories from last year and two across the board categories:  Best ‘FreeFrom’ Skincare Brand and, the champ of the show, Best Overall FreeFrom Skincare Product.

And we are delighted to report not only that the successful team from 2012 – sponsors, NATorigin and associates The Green Beauty Bible and the Allergy+FreeFrom Show – are back on board for 2013, but they at they have been joined by Janey Lee Grace who presented the awards for us last year and will do so again in June this year. We will all be organised, chaperoned and generally kept in line by Alex Gazzola who is not only running our social media and proof-reading our websites (very much needed as some of you may be only too aware….) but will be running this year’s awards. So please don’t anyone offer him any more jobs – we have already got him fully booked!!!

We were very agreeably surprised last year by the number of entries we got in our very first year and if the interest shown since (and the 34% increase in entrants to the FreeFrom Food Awards for which entry closed last month) is anything to go by, we will be awash in body oils, afloat on moisturisers and our skins will glow with buttery balms….


Skinsmatter logoBut that is not all that Skins Matter has on offer this January…

To help launch the new awards, SkinsMatter is launching its own monthly e-newsletter this weekend – free to all who might enjoy it, you can sign up right here. And just to give you a flavour, issue one will include:

• Kelly Rose Bradford reviewing the best aloe vera based skincare products

• Tony Frost exploring whether water softening treatments can help eczema

• Rowena Wilson advising on make up and skincare for those with rosacea

and that is just for starters….

Filed Under: Eczema, FreeFrom Skincare Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lead contamination in lipstick

04/29/2012 By Leave a Comment

Being a ‘foody’ person, when we first started the FreeFrom Skincare Awards I found myself wondering whether there really was a need for such an award. It did not take long for me to realise the error of my ways. Just drawing up the criteria for what would be acceptable in products entered for the awards made it very clear, very quickly, that there were all too many ingredients that appeared in high street personal care products that, if you thought about it, you would not want any where near you, let alone applied to the skin.  How many people realise that applying something to your skin is, apart from injecting it, just about the quickest way to get that substance into your bloodstream?

So, when I saw this alert in a recent Natural News, I read on. This is not a new story. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics‘ report back in 2007, A Poison Kiss: The Problem Of Lead In Lipstick found that two thirds of the lipstick samples that they tested contained lead and that half of those contained more lead than is permitted in candy. But now the FDA (US Food and Drug Adminstration) has tested a further 400 lipsticks and found some lead in every single one of them; in 380 out of the 400 the amount was greater than the 0.1 ppm (parts per million) allowed in candy bars, in some up to 70 times as much. (Click here for the full report.)

The FDA say that we should not worry as we do not eat lipstick whereas we do eat candy bars. Clearly that that was written by a man! Of course we ‘eat’ lipstick – where else does it go and why else do women have to keep reapplying it. (I gave up wearing it years ago as I ‘ate’ it so fast that I needed to re-apply it about every ten minutes!)

It is true that 0.1 ppm is a very small amount but – lead is extremely toxic and given that we are subject to a certain amount of unavoidable environmental lead contamination every day, deliberately ingesting even 0.1 parts per million seems unwise. So, I suggest that if you want to wear (and therefore ‘eat’) lipstick, you go for the ‘freefrom’ and natural ones which are certainly the least likely to be lead lined!

 

Filed Under: Allergies, Environmental Issues, FreeFrom Skincare Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,