Body Shop: caring about animals, careless about people

I'm a fan of the Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil Face Mask. It was my daughter who introduced me to it--she had the usual teenage angst about the tiny amount of acne she suffered, but she found it helped. I tried it despite not having any acne, and I've been using it ever since. It has two almost magical effects, the second of which may be confined to me alone.

The first and most magical thing is does is instantly to appear to remove a film of crud from my face, so that it looks startlingly brighter and fresher once I've used it. I'm still surprised by the difference, every time. 

Now the second apparently magical result seems to have something to do with its being a luminous intense green cream which you smear on your face till you look like you might be taking part in an anthropological documentary about the rituals of some obscure rainforest tribe. Cue for the magical effect. Without fail, someone will come and ring the doorbell. It happens to me every time almost without exception, and I've managed to startle quite a range of friends, neighbours, postmen, meter readers and delivery men that way.

Because of magical effect (1), I've become quite inured to the embarrassment of magical effect (2).

So I was miffed when it went out of stock at The Body Shop. They kept promising they'd have some soon, but "soon" turned out to be about four months. Meanwhile, I tried one or two of their other face masks, but none of the others were a patch on the Tea Tree Oil one. True, one painted me blue and did not seem to produce the doorbell-rings phenomenon, but it wasn't worth changing to.

So when Tea Tree Oil Face Mask came back into stock, I ordered a load of it. I didn't want to be left without it again. And with the order, I got a little pack of freebies, mainly little sample pots of Body Shop's latest products.

I gave the samples to my daughter; she's much more open than I am to experimenting with new toiletries and beauty products. Once I discover something I like, I'll just keep on using it unless I'm presented with strong evidence that something else might be better.

I didn't think any more about it. Then a few days ago, I got this email from my daughter:

I tried some of the Moringa Seed Oil Body Butter - I'd used other body butters from Bodyshop before, so I wasn't really worried about it, and not being food, it didn't even enter my head to check the label.  I didn't put it on my face (thank goodness) but put some on my back and chest.  A couple of minutes later I was about to go to bed, and realised that I was becoming short of breath. 

 I thought this was odd as I'd taken my night-time antihistamine (one of the stronger 6-8 hours ones) about an hour beforehand and had been fine, and this was very sudden.  

I tried lying down to see if it would help, and could feel my airways contracting and the prickly itching under my chin that makes me think "I've eaten Brazil nuts".  I was confused though, as I hadn't eaten anything, so I called B in and asked him to check the ingredients on the body butter.  I have no idea what Moringa seed is, so it could have been a new allergy that I'd need help with, but jokingly said, "There isn't anything like brazil nuts in that stuff, is there?"  Checking the ingredients, brazil nut oil was one, so I found that I had rubbed into my skin a reasonable amount of the stuff.  Being very greasy and already rubbed in, it was hard to get off, but I washed it off and took a ridiculous amount of antihistamines, and thankfully didn't get to the stage where I had to use my Epipen.  

Took me about an hour to get to to stage where I was breathing easily enough to go back to bed.

My daughter has a severe brazil nut allergy. This first emerged when she was two, and I fed her a brazil nut one evening. Within minutes, she was screaming and her face swelled and puffed out till she looked like a baby version of the Phantom of the Opera. I gave her a couple of spoonfuls of liquid anti-histamine for kids and called out the emergency doctor, who told me I'd done the right thing. It took almost a day for her to recover. Any time after that that she's accidentally come into contact with any trace of brazil nuts-- a single chocolate in a selection of pralines, even salad from a salad bowl that had previously had brazil nuts in it-- she's had the same extreme reactions, of which the accompanying breathing difficulties are the most alarming.

But neither she nor I had suspected that beauty products might contain brazil nut ingredients. And there wasn't any warning on the product. I looked up Moringa Seed Oil Body Butter on the Body Shop web site. It's advertised as "new" and even bears an endorsement from Good Housekeeping Magazine, but there's nothing in the instructions or "tips" on the sites to alert you to what the effect of using the product could be if you have brazil nut allergy.

This is the list of ingredients carried on the web site:

Do you know the botanical name for brazil nuts? I didn't, despite my daughter's allergy. It's Bertholletia Excelsa. So you would only realise that if you knew. My daughter's never been aware of brazil nuts as a component in a cosmetic product, so she hadn't checked the label before she used it. She told me that the actual pot does include an identification of Bertholletia Excelsa as brazil nuts.

Nowhere on the Body Shop site have I been able to find any indication that there might be problems of any sort for allergy sufferers with any of their products.

Given the severity of my daughter's reaction, that's really surprising--and alarming.

I did a web search to find whether there were any sites that picked up similar reactions with Body Shop products. I found this,  this and  this . 

What most concerns me is this apparent response from the Body Shop's Consumer Help Desk in Canada:

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. 

Because anaphylactic allergies are dangerous, we cannot guarantee any of our products to be nut-free. Our manufacturers use the same equipment to make different products so we cannot guarantee against the possibility of cross-contamination in any of the products we carry. 

We hope this information helps. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us. 

Consumer Help Desk 
The Body Shop Canada 

As an approach to Consumer Help, I'd say it must deserve a place in a Hall of Shame for which there's quite a lot of competition. However, that's the Canadian branch. 

I'll be writing to the UK Body Shop. For a start, that sample of Moringa Seed Oil Body Butter was included in a "free gift" given out unsolicited to customers. Had it been tested for allergy reactions? Does the Body Shop give any warnings to its customers about potential allergic reactions? How do they respond to customers who experience them? And what do they do about products where users report reactions as severe as my daughter's.

As she said when she first let me know about it, the Body Shop is very committed to not testing on animals, and to using "natural" products. Does that mean it feels its products therefore must be pure and good, and it's up to the customers to find out if there's any problems with any of them?

I'll let you know what the UK Body Shop has to say. Meanwhile, if you or anyone you know has an allergy to brazil nuts, perhaps you could alert them to the possibility of a very nasty reaction they might get if they try Body Shop Moringa Seed Oil Body Butter.

Comments

[Dysthymiac]

Hi Judy - I came here because I always visit people profiled at The Fabulous Norm blog.

Sympathy and empathy for your daughter re the fright she got from the Body Shop sample - caveat emptor indeed.

I get the whole scary allergic reaction to a FRUIT, and it's embarrassing to have to ask
"has kiwifruit ever even touched this food I am going to eat?"

Plants are chemicals, sometimes scary chemicals - heroin starts out as a FLOWER for godssake.

best regards and good luck to you

[Judy]

Thanks for the good wishes--and I really like your own nom de blog. I'm mildly allergic to kiwi fruits myself, though not enough to stop me from eating them in small doses.

[ainur]

Body Shop: caring about animals, careless about people I’m a fan of the Body Shop’s Tea Tree Oil Face Mask.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=510027197]

I also have a nut allergy and The Body Shop have told me "they can not guarantee any of their products are free from nuts". Most companies have a list of product information that covers what has nuts in and what hasn't. Why is it so hard for The Body Shop to do the same? I use to be a Virgin Vie consultant and we were given a guide with loads of information on all the products. Through reading this I found the strangest things contain nuts. It even gave consultant information on what other names were used for nuts (botanical names I think it’s called) so we could be doubly sure. I always made sure I could advise my client on which product are safe or not. The Body Shop is a massive company with branches all over. It's so simple but they just can not provide us with the information we need. They have just coped out and given a general answer! "Caring about animals, careless about people" I totally agree with this statement! What can we do to fix this problem? I Love The Body Shop’s fruity collection products such as the body butters (All have Shea Nut in) and body washes, body shimmers. Apart from Avon is there any others out there selling products similar to The Body Shop?

[efusjon reviews]

great info. i will suggest Body Shop's Tea Tree Oil Face Mask to a friend. i'm sure she'll like this one.
--efusjon reviews