Nail Polish Clean Up

Some people buy lipstick, I buy nail polish. You never know when you might need that perfect shade of glittery pink. I also never throw away nail polish, some of these bottles are more than 6 years old!

One of my daughters favorite things is having me paint her nails and toenails. She really likes it when they are all different colors!
Which got me thinking, what's in my nail polish? I've read about formaldehyde and DBP in nail polish, but I've also read most of the major nail companies have replaced those chemicals. I got a fantastic little card from the Environmental Working Group (ewg.org/skindeep) when I donated $10 to them. It tells you the chemicals you want to avoid when you buy nail polish. They suggest avoiding all nail polish with:

• Formaldehyde or Formalin 
• Toluene
• Dibutyl phthalate (DBP)

So I decided to go through all my polish and throw out those with the questionable ingredients.

At first I thought I was going to have to throw away 30 bottles! All of these contained Formaldehyde Resin. Thankfully, I did some more research before I put them in the trash.  According to the Environmental Working Group, ewg.org, (my "go to" website for research) Formaldehyde Resin is different than straight up Formaldehyde and it is safe.

In the end I threw away 13 bottles that had Toluene in them. It's still a little scary, because I know I used some of these colors on my daughter and Toluene was the second ingredient listed, which means the content was pretty high.

This is really hard for me because I hate wasting stuff and I hate throwing things away. I would always rather donate. But, as the saying goes, when you know better, you do better. So, I can't in good conscience use these anymore on myself or my daughter or even feel comfortable donating them, plus I don't even know if you can donate nail polish.

Though, I have to admit I did write down some of our favorite colors in hopes that they've been reformulated without the bad chemicals so I can buy them again.

A lot of the newer polishes don't contain these chemicals anymore, but I recommend always checking. And a warning, the ingredient list print is tiny!