The Case for All-Natural

We've had a few conversations on Chaptastic about the merits of organic/all-natural vs. petrolatum lip balms. Some people claim that petrolatum (derived from the fuel petroleum; terms used interchangeably) doesn't really work as a moisturizer and that it causes irritation. Others swear by it, praising petrolatum as a great skin protectant and insisting that it's innocuous. Chaptastic has reviewed both kinds of balms, usually expressing a preference all-natural.

Personally, I'm on the fence. I use a dab of Vaseline at night but tend to prefer all-natural lip balms, which may seem contradictory. But I find that most lip balms that use petrolatum as a base ingredient tend to contain multitudes of other unpronounceable and scary-looking ingredients, whereas Vaseline has pretty much just the one scary ingredient.

Today I read the most compelling argument for keep all-natural. It's common sense: "Whatever you use, you will ingest small amounts of the product". So maybe ingesting petroleum and a variety of synthetic ingredients, however little at a time, is not the best decision. In fact, I wonder how much we swallow a year! Anyone want to bust out the math and appalling analogy (ex, a person eats enough lip balm in one year to grease all the axles in the Indy 500)? Or maybe it doesn't make a difference in the long run, considering all the other crap we put into our bodies.

What do you think?