Natural is not always safer

Whenever I look out for ingredient used in cosmetics, I almost always run across advocacy for "natural products" over products with synthetic ingredients, along with other scaremongering tags (SLS-free, paraben-free and the likes). Now, by all means I am not against the use of organic products (in fact I reviewed a couple, one of which turned out to be an excellent Vitamin C serum), but I do not like the fact that most of these products are much more expensive compared to their synthetics-laden, more effective counterparts.

The main points to those who advocate for anything "natural" is safety. So let's presume these products really are derived from natural products - say, vitamin C really came from citrus fruits are not from synthesis. Of course, the process of extraction of such from natural produce may require synthetically formulated chemicals, but let's ASSUME this possibility is bypassed by hippie magic. So are products made of natural ingredients safer?

Wild Cherry. All-natural. May contain cyanide. (Image from www.eatweeds.co.uk)

An office mate of mine who is so into natural remedies and organic products says if it comes from nature, it must be safer (than synthesized chemicals). I don't know, but poison darts are made from certain frogs, the most toxic substances come from bacteria, and a plethora of plants use toxic substances to defend themselves. In fact, of the seventeen deadliest compounds known, 10 are "natural". So I have no idea where she got that. Blindly using extracts of natural products not usually used may be dangerous as these substances are not yet "tested". Imagine using new kinds of preservatives which may be worse than parabens in terms of performance. Then your product may start breeding who-knows-what-kind of bacteria.

According to Wikipedia, the use of PR or marketing to deceptively promote that a product or a policy is environmentally-friendly is called greenwashing. Some products go claim that ALL the ingredients in their products are derived naturally, but then they are silent on how the whole process impacts the environment. This irksome phenomena is all too common in the cosmetics industry, and combine that with the multitude of scare tactics employed by some unscrupulous companies just so they can earn more money (when in fact they might be making the same or worse impact to the environment), many consumers are victimized.

tl,dr; Think critically - natural is not always safer.