I wear make-up because I just feel like I look better with it on. Why do you wear it? There are so many cosmetics choices on store shelves and if you’re anything like me, you worry more about price and color than what goes into the item. After some research, I feel like I should share with you what gross things are used to create some make-up products. Hopefully this information helps you make the best choices for your health and your skin.

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1. Placenta

The perks of placenta are making headlines these days, but you might be surprised to find that some products already contain it. In most cases, it’s animal placenta, but use caution if you’re pregnant or trying to conceive. Because placenta is storehouse for hormones, use of it can cause issues with your baby. It’s not terribly common, but if you’re unsure, it pays to find out more about a product before using it.

2. Lanolin

Lanolin might sound harmless enough, but it’s actually made from the grease in animal fur. I used lanolin cream while I was breastfeeding, but it also appears in some lipsticks. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I want that stuff in or near my mouth. Gross!

3. Ambergris

Otherwise known as whale vomit, ambergris is worth a lot of money and is used in a bunch of high dollar perfumes. This might sound like an urban legend, and indeed I thought the same, until I uncovered information revealing just how pricey this stuff is. It works to enhance the good smelling scents in a bottle of perfume and doesn’t have a powerful scent of its own. Rethinking your bottle of perfume?

4. Beetle Carcasses

No, you won’t find it listed on a cosmetic by that name. You’ll see “carmine” instead. To make red cosmetics, including lipstick and blush, manufacturers use the beetles to produce that red hue. The beetles get it by feeding on the prickly pear cactus. They are removed from the plant, boiled and crushed to get the carmine and then used to color make-up.

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5. Fish Scales

If you paint your nails at all, you might have a bottle of polish made from fish scales. Ewww! It’s listed on labels as guanine and lends your favorite shades that pearly effect that we all love so much. The scales are scraped from dead fish, then suspended in alcohol. It’s then swirled into the nail polish for your enjoyment.

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6. Mink Oil

How’s this for gross? Some make-up manufacturers scrape the oil off the backs of minks and use it in certain moisturizing cosmetics. I’m not sure I want that on my face, but it would be far worse being the person who has to do the harvesting of the oil. Sometimes, the oil from emus is used in the same way.

7. Road Kill

Road kill is used for the harvesting of tallow, a fatty substance that is present in the bodies of many animals, including raccoons, foxes and skunks. The tallow is used in many cosmetics, including eye shadow and lipstick to give them emollient properties and make them moisturizing. Grossed out?

Did any of these things surprise you? I immediately went and read the ingredients in all of my favorite products? Are you getting up to do the same right now?

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Feedback Junction

Where Thoughts and Opinions Converge

Thank u! Eye opener

I feel like these ingredients are not as bad as common chemical ingredients found in make up. Though gross to think about, they are at least found in nature. Which is worse? Animal parts or man-made chemicals we put on our face? I don't know haha

Lanolin is ok for your baby to put in their mouth, but don't want it near your mouth?? Yeah, ok.

Disgusting!

Well that's disturbing. I'm thoroughly disgusted.

This is completely ignorant. The man-made chemicals in personal care products are far more worrisome and harmful than anything listed here.

Alyx some of these products (she listed some snd some is not on there), some can cause acne, birth effects, allergies, increase of hormones and more. They mix this stuff with others. Creating a new chemical.

Very surprising

So you used lanolin while breastfeeding your baby, but you don't want it anywhere near YOUR mouth?

The beetle that feed among the aloe Vera plants in Lanzaroti in the Canaries and other places are used to make cochineal which gives the red colour in sweets and some foods. We have been using it since long before I was born nearly 80 years ago.