If you are anything like me, you probably have a wide variety of body care products claiming space in your bathroom. From facial soaps and lotions to nail polish and makeup, I’ve been guilty of using a variety of brands whose ingredients I did not fully question until now.
Once you begin reading the fine print on your bottles, it is likely that you will locate highly questionable ingredients that could be negatively affecting your health (especially long-term). For example, whatever lotion you apply is being absorbed directly into your skin and most hair products are not rinsed out and stay on your head all day and perhaps night.
If you find questionable ingredients on your products and would like to see what they could mean for your health, check out this Cosmetics Database to search out specific products and view their health ratings. This site has safey ratings on over 40,000 cosmetic products. These thousands of product ratings include makeup, skin care, hair care, eye care, nail care, baby care, oral care, and fragrance. Every product that I’ve searched from my bathroom (other than local and farmers market purchases) has been on the site and provided me with a clear and fact-based health rating.
The Costmetics Database uses the following rating system for the products: 0-2 are “low hazard” products, 3-6 are “moderate hazard” products, and 7-10 are “high hazard” products. It also will tell you if the ingredients in your product are linked to cancer, development and reproductive toxicity, restrictions, warnings, and more. In case you do not own the product you are looking at, it lists all of the ingredients on the product label as well as any directions and warnings. It even breaks down which ingredients are the most hazardous and gives them an individual rating!
Also, if you click on a heading just to see a list of products in a category (for example, in hair care or skin care), the database will give you a list all of the products starting with the lowest hazard ones. This makes it easier to locate safer alternatives if your current products prove to be dangerous to your health.
Overall, I have found this cosmetics database to be a great tool in evaluating the products that I use in my everyday life which could potentially harm my body. I hope you find it useful in evaluating your current products and speculating on new ones. It has been a great help to me in determining what products should be allowed in my bathroom and on my body. And yes- believe it or not, the picture shown above is my post-cleanout picture, with only a few potentially bad bottles left that I just couldn’t bear to get rid of yet.
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