Here’s Your Answer

Concerned about the ingredients in personal care products you and your family members use?  Have you wished for a reliable resource with which you could check the known risks associated with some products?   The cosmetics database Skin Deep produced by the Environmental Working Group EWG) may be the resource you’ve been looking for; or not, because once you find out what’s really in the products you apply to your skin you may have second thoughts about continuing their use.  EWG’s data gives you practical solutions to protect yourself and your family from the health risks we all face from everyday exposures to myriad industrial chemicals.

EWG  designed and maintains the database “…to use the power of information to protect human health and the environment.”  From their website:

In 2004 we launched Skin Deep, an online safety guide for cosmetics and personal care products. Our aim was to fill in where companies and the government leave off: companies are allowed to use almost any ingredient they wish, and our government doesn’t require companies to test products for safety before they’re sold. EWG’s scientists built Skin Deep to be a one-of-a-kind resource, integrating our in-house collection of personal care product ingredient listings with more than 50 toxicity and regulatory databases.

Now in its fourth year and third major update, our Skin Deep database provides you with easy-to-navigate safety ratings for nearly a quarter of all products on the market — 52,055 products with 8,798 ingredients. At about one million page views per month, Skin Deep is the world’s largest and most popular product safety guide. 

Also from EWG, the Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides which addresses food safety.