Mineral Oil Revealed

What really prompted me to change the tone of my e-zine was that I watched Oprah sev­eral weeks ago and the show was about things we take for granted but can harm or kill us. The show opened with an 18 month old baby who died from baby oil. Oprah never showed the name of the com­pany but as you and I know, what com­pany has the baby mar­ket. The baby opened the bot­tle and the oil ended up all over the him. The father imme­di­ately bathed the baby; how­ever, that wasn’t enough.

The baby oil was min­eral oil. The fam­ily was repeat­edly told by their doc­tor that it was the baby’s asthma and con­tin­u­ally treated for that but to no avail. The mother finally took the baby to children’s hos­pi­tal and the doc­tor treated the baby for min­eral oil inhalation. Mineral oil has hydro­car­bons and that was trapped in the baby’s lungs and he died from aspi­ra­tion. The good news as a result of the mother’s loss, she man­aged to change leg­is­la­tion and forced the man­u­fac­tures to make the bot­tles tam­per resis­tant. The bad news was, its still min­eral oil!!

I was on my high horse two years ago when I was doing a mar­ket research project for school and dis­cov­ered baby oil was min­eral oil. Through­out the above story, Oprah kept ask­ing “did you know that?” I yelled at the TV that I did. I just didn’t know how to get it out to the pub­lic at that time.

You can be assured Awak­en­ing Spirit does NOT use harm­ful ingre­di­ents in any of its prod­ucts. We use the finest ingre­di­ents and ther­a­peu­tic grade essen­tial oils. You can be assured that you won’t have any reac­tions unless you are aller­gic to an ingre­di­ent. And, that is your responsibility.

I don’t claim to know every­thing but it is our respon­si­bil­ity to edu­cate our­selves about the law,  products, food, finan­cial issues, etc. Aren’t you tired of being sold a bill of goods? Aren’t you tired of blam­ing every­one else for what’s wrong in the world?

Did you know can­cer is at an all time high? It seems like every­one knows some­one who has some form of cancer. Look at what you eat, drink, put on your body and clean with. It all has chem­i­cals that harm the body.

Here is what I found about the effects of min­eral oil. I have not changed any of the information.

Mate­r­ial Safety Data Sheet for nujol (Min­eral Oil)

Tox­i­col­ogy – may be harm­ful by inhala­tion, inges­tion and through skin absorp­tion. Irritant.

Per­sonal Pro­tec­tion – safety glasses, suitable ventilation.

The British Insti­tute for Allergy & Envi­ron­men­tal Ther­apy: Min­eral Oil Petro­leum Deriv­a­tive on Beauty Prod­ucts by Kit Anderson

Min­eral oil (classed as a petro­chem­i­cal pol­lu­tant and xeno­hor­mone) can have neg­a­tive effects on hor­mones and the skin’s abil­ity to breathe, attract mois­ture and detox­ify. It can also slow down cell renewal and be the sec­ond (after the sun) most likely cause of pre­ma­ture age­ing. In fact sun screens pro­duced from min­eral oil may pro­mote skin can­cer as well as colon and breast can­cer. How­ever, no cos­metic man­u­fac­tur­ers put health warn­ings on their prod­ucts and in the US, the FDA does not require this infor­ma­tion to be on packaging.

Min­eral oil is just one of the harm­ful ingre­di­ents that are used in prod­ucts found in the home – bub­ble bath, body­wash, sham­poo, soap, facial cleanser and deter­gents. Oth­ers include: SD40 alco­hol, talc, DEA, MEA and TEA (foam­ing agents), arti­fi­cial fragrances, artificial colour pig­ments, poly­eth­yl­ene gly­col and triclosan.

Of the 7000 odd ingre­di­ents used on the skin, the author states that only five or six have been tested for long-term safety and no syn­er­gis­tic test­ing has been done. Among these ingre­di­ents are 125 sus­pected car­cino­gens, 20 that cause adverse ner­vous reac­tions and 25 that are con­nected to birth defects.

Fruit-eze

Min­eral oil is obtained from petro­leum refining.

Warn­ings and side effects reported in med­ical lit­er­a­ture: Min­eral oil is not to be taken repeat­edly for a long period of time. Min­eral oil may be absorbed sys­tem­i­cally and cause a for­eign body reac­tion in lym­phoid tis­sue. Grad­ual build up in body tis­sues may cre­ate addi­tional prob­lems and may inter­fere with the absorp­tion of cer­tain food nutri­ents and (fat soluable) vitamins A, D, E and K. Not used dur­ing preg­nancy because it may inter­fere with the moth­ers’ absorp­tion of nutri­ents and vit­a­mins and may cause severe bleed­ing in a new­born infant. A form of pneu­mo­nia may be caused by the inhala­tion of droplets into the lungs. Large doses may cause some leak­age from the rectum.

Is Min­eral Oil a Safe Lubricant?

Min­eral oil does not make a good lubri­cant. Any­thing with oil in it, such as petro­leum jelly, baby oil, bath oil, and hand lotion, mas­sage oil, etc. are all rather unsafe because they block pores and do not allow the skin to breath [sic] and trap bac­te­ria which can then mul­ti­ply, which may lead to infec­tions. Oils are also bad for con­doms and toys since they dete­ri­o­rate break down latex. Some women seem to be able to get away with using very pure oils, such as olive or almond oils if they are not using toys or latex, but many of us will end up with infec­tions as a result.

Glyc­erin is a type of sugar which may lead to yeast infec­tions for some women who chron­i­cally get these infec­tions. Glyc­erin cal so con­tribute to the lubri­cants feel­ing sticky of tacky when the water in them begins to evaporate.

From the plasticindustry.org Worker Health and Safety Issue Brief Min­eral Oil Mist — Pro­posed change in ACGIH TLV-TWA and Car­cino­genic­ity Status

Back­ground:

By def­i­n­i­tion in the doc­u­men­ta­tion for these regulatory/authoritative bod­ies, min­eral oils and their mists include: white min­eral oil (con­sid­ered food-grade), paraf­fin oil, cut­ting oil, hydraulic oil, transformer oil, lubri­cat­ing oil, and oth­ers. Min­eral oils are a com­po­nent of met­al­work­ing and machin­ing fluids.

Issue:

Acute and chronic expo­sure to min­eral oil mists is reg­u­lated in the United States by an OSHA per­mis­si­ble expo­sure limit (PEL) of 5 mg/m³ as an 8-hour time-weighted aver­age (TWA) con­cen­tra­tion. A sim­i­lar approach has been taken in Cana­dian jurisdictions. Exposure to min­eral oil mist can occur through inhala­tion, inges­tion, and eye or skin contact. Additionally, both the National Insti­tute for Occu­pa­tional Safety and Health (NOSH) and the Amer­i­can Con­fer­ence of Gov­ern­men­tal Indus­trial Hygien­ists (ACGIH) have estab­lished a 5 mg/m³ based on the risk of res­pi­ra­tory effects.

ACGIH has cou­pled a review of the cur­rent sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture on min­eral oils, includ­ing acute, chronic and car­cino­genic­ity ani­mal and human stud­ies. On the weight of the evi­dence of these stud­ies, ACGIH pro­posed for 2001, to (1) lower the TLV-TWA of min­eral oil mists to 0.2 mg/m³, and (2) to assign an A2, Sus­pected Human Car­cino­gen des­ig­na­tion to min­eral oil mists. The pro­posed changes will be pub­lished in the 2002 ACGIH-TLV book, with the new TLV and A2 Human Car­cino­gen sta­tus to become final in 2003.

What you need to know:

If you use min­eral oils in any appli­ca­tions in your oper­a­tions, and this becomes an estab­lished ACGIH-TLV limit, in the United States you will be sub­ject to the pro­vi­sions of the OSHA haz­ard Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Standard, and in Canada, you will be sub­ject to the pro­vi­sion of WHMIS under the Haz­ardous Prod­ucts Act. The MSDS must dis­close all “health haz­ards” posed by a chem­i­cal and the prod­uct label must include all appro­pri­ate haz­ard warn­ings. In the United States, ACGIH car­cino­genic­ity clas­si­fi­ca­tions do not make the chem­i­cal a listed car­cino­gen, but it could be deemed to pose a car­cino­genic­ity haz­ard based on the result of sci­en­tific stud­ies.… Some plas­tics appli­ca­tions asso­ci­ated with poten­tial gen­er­a­tion of oil mists include met­al­work­ing and mold mak­ing, mist lubri­ca­tion, mold release agents, oil-lubricating tools and print­ing inks.