Some may think beauty products are about the last thing in this world we need to sue over. Deodorant and lipgloss? C’mon.

But here’s the deal with wanting safe cosmetics: Those products, especially the ones we use every day, have the ability to do a lot of damage.

The cosmetics and personal care products made in this country are very under-regulated. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in charge of overseeing cosmetics, but only about 10 percent of the more than 10,000 cosmetic ingredients currently being used in beauty products have been tested for safety.

We are now well aware that the skin has the ability to absorb about 70 percent of what we put on it. These ingredients then make their way into our bloodstream and organs, potentially wreaking havoc on our health.

Sure, the government may say the stuff we health conscious consumers choose to avoid in our cosmetics and personal care are safe. But topically applied prescription medications are a big deal these days because they’ve been found to work. If a patch can deliver medicine to the body, cosmetics can deliver whatever they contain too.

Even those chemical cosmetic ingredients that have been deemed safe in controlled quantities are a farce. Not only does this practice not account for multiple product usage (the average person uses at least 10 cosmetic/personal care products daily), but many manufacturers use more than one type of the same ingredient in those small doses. Parabens are a prime example. It all adds up.

Consumers are the catalyst for change. You’ve heard the adage “vote with your dollars”. And it is so true. What we buy determines what manufacturers make more of, and the cycle continues. Now consumer’s voices and concerns over cosmetic safety are being heard on a larger platform. Enter, the beauty lawsuit.

We are not talking tiny little mom and pop shops here. These are big, well-known brands getting slapped with legal suits over product safety.

The most recent is the Old Spice lawsuit. Okay, no one thinks these products are natural or healthy, despite the nature-themed advertising. A Virginia man is suing Procter & Gamble, Old Spice’s parent company, for $25,000 in damages over the burned, irritated pits he suffered after using its deodorant.

I searched the ingredient listing on Old Spice High Endurance deodorant and it is chock full of propylene glycol. The ingredient makes the deodorant slippery and emollient. It is also known to cause skin irritation. The product also contains synthetic fragrance, linked to headaches, skin irritation, impaired fertility and fetal development, hormonal disruption, and asthma.

The Old Spice lawsuit is not alone. Wen by Chaz Dean and EOS lip balms have seen their day in court. And more recently, baby product giant, Johnson & Johnson, has been hit with a suit over the use of talc and its link to a cancer death. The company was ordered to pay $72 million in damages.

This may be treating the symptoms rather than the cause, at this point. Still, it may be opening eyes to the serious health issues of using harmful synthetic ingredients in cosmetics.

For now, the best practice in protecting yourself from adverse effects from damaging ingredients is to know what you don’t want in a product and read those ingredient listings.

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There are many more safe cosmetic brands on the market compared to a decade ago. But label reading has not gotten any easier. Time to up your cosmetic ingredient listing translation skills.

“I just love this skincare line, and it’s natural!” How often do you hear this said these days? It is great that more and more people are interested in healthy products. But the sad reality is, many “green” products really aren’t all that healthy. The labels may say it is natural, it may have a few plant ingredients and the name may sound natural, but these things do not mean a product is safe.

That is what we are truly after here. Safe products. Forget natural, even organic. Think healthy, good for you cosmetics. And there is only one way to identify safe products for sure. Read the ingredient listings.

You’ve heard it before, it is important to know what is in your products. But are you often stumped by hard to decipher cosmetics ingredients? They can be difficult to read and some not so clean manufacturers even go out of their way to make harmful ingredients less identifiable. All caps, bold print, and no readily apparent listings are just some of the ways conventional brands make ID-ing nasty ingredients tougher.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You can learn to read ingredient listings, simply and effectively. All you need is a few hot tips and one helpful crib sheet.

7 Steps to Reading Cosmetic Ingredients Listings Like a Pro

1. Like I said above, the terms on the front of a product label often mean very little. Reputable nontoxic brands mean what they say. But you will see everything from “Natural” to “Organic” to “Pure” on products that contain synthetic ingredients. Ignore the front of a product label and turn to the back (or the packaging) and look for an ingredient listing. No listing on the packaging or product? A brand website will sometimes carry ingredient listings. Still can’t find one? Consider it not worth your time and move on.

2. Speaking of ingredient listings on brand websites. Have you ever been searching products and notice all ingredient listings say “Key Ingredients”? Bet they are all healthy looking too, right? Many toxic brands who market themselves as clean will use this tactic to showcase the healthy ingredients they use. The problem is, they are not disclosing all ingredients, so we can’t be sure if it is safe or not. This is always a red flag to me and I assume they are using ingredients they don’t want us to know about.

3. When you do find an ingredient listing, it is important to know how to decode it. Ingredients are listed in order of concentration, from greatest to least. So say a product is aloe based (aloe making up the greatest portion of the product), aloe would be first on the ingredient listing. And so on.

4. Feel like you are reading Greek? Sometimes even natural ingredient names look chemical. Brands who follow the INCI (International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients) labeling standard are required to list ingredients using scientific names. For instance, Jojoba oil would be listed as “Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil”. This can make an ingredient listing look crazy long and hard to read. INCI also requires fragrance from essential oils be listed as “Fragrance” or “Parfum”, which both sound synthetic. Brands using essential oils for fragrance usually note this under the ingredient listing.

5. Of course, you are going to come across indecipherable ingredient names that are not healthy. Take a look at our 11 Toxic Cosmetic Ingredients to Avoid for help in identifying toxins. Bookmark for handy access while shopping.

6. We don’t always have time to peruse each and every label. When in a rush try this tip: Check the first five and last five ingredients on a listing. The first five make up most of the product, the last five are usually fragrance and preservatives. Not foolproof, but if these look clean, it is a fair bet that the product is safe.

7. Organically produced ingredients are healthier than the rest. But the most important first steps are to make sure a product is free from harmful ingredients. A product made with a few organic ingredients can still contain synthetics. Organic labeling for cosmetics is the same as for food: “100% Organic” means a product contains only organically produced ingredients, “Certified Organic” means the product is made of at least 95% organically produced ingredients, “Made with Organic Ingredients” means the product contains at least 70% organically produced ingredients. The remaining 5-30% is what you need to check out.

The long and short of ingredient listing reading is this: Don’t get fooled by natural or organic claims, know what you don’t want in your products, and do your own research. Your health will benefit from it.

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