Your already extremely busy day probably doesn’t include reading up on potential concerning ingredients in your shampoo or body wash (or toothpaste or floor cleaner or furniture polish…)—ours certainly didn’t. We have enough on our plate with kids, work, pickups, pets, telephone calls, bills, school forms, lunches, dinners, vacations, PD Days, childcare and all of the other minute decisions we make in between.

BUT. Sometimes, late at night or while we’re commuting to or from one of the various places we have to be in a day, or even when we’re yelling at a child to PLEASE, BRUSH YOUR TEETH…the thoughts creep in. “Are there really toxic chemical filters in my sunscreen?” or, “What makes my toothpaste minty green?” or even, “What will my baby ingest if he licks my just-cleaned floor?” 

Why is it so difficult to find information you can trust?

Where do we get the answers to these questions that nag at us? We don’t dare go down the rabbit hole of misinformation that lives on the web…we’ve done that enough times to know we don’t have the stomach for it.

There’s a lot of conflicting information out there. Before you begin clearing out your cabinets, you need a reliable source of information that lists safe cosmetics and other products. There’s a lot of greenwashing out there: many products claim to be safe or natural, when they’re just not.

What’s more, regulations require manufacturers to list ingredients, but not contaminants, on their product labels. Many products can contain ingredients of concern—residues, impurities and by-products of the manufacturing process. But, because they are not deliberately added, they do not have to be listed as ingredients on the label.

The Environmental Working Group can help you cut through the waste!

Luckily, there’s an organization that carries out ingredient analysis and informs us about what’s really in our products. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting us (and our family) from toxic chemicals in personal care products.

Driven by their mandate to empower people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment, the EWG lobbies the US government to reform policies around ingredients of concern in consumer products. And they seek out and publish information on what’s really in the products you use every day. One of the best things about the EWG is that its information is free and accessible online, searchable and easy to understand—you don’t have to be a scientist to understand it because it’s intended for everyday consumers (like you and me!).

What does the EWG do?

As an organization dedicated to consumer safety, the EWG works in two ways. It puts pressure on the US government to regulate and ban harmful chemicals. And it carries out state-of-the-art research to help consumers know which products are safe, and which products are harmful to our health.

The EWG publishes consumer guides that analyze ingredients in hundreds of thousands of consumer food items, cleaning supplies and care products. Whether you’re looking for a safe shampoo list, the safest sunscreens or a list of non-toxic beauty brands or non-toxic household cleaners, EWG databases and articles analyse and rate almost every product that is commercially available in the US.

Which products should you start greening?

Through the EWG’s Skin Deep cosmetics database, you have the information you need to begin sorting through your body and beauty products. Consider starting with the products identified by the EWG to contain more ingredients of concern:

• Shampoos and conditioners: Often have cancer-causing contaminants such as 1,4-dioxane and pollutants (dimethicone…) or allergens (Polyquaternium-7, zinc…) that can cause irritation to the scalp and weaken hair
• Shower gels: Often have cancer-causing contaminants (ingredients ending with “PEG”, “-eth”) and contain allergens and skin irritants (methylisothiazolinone, methylchloroisothiazolinone…) or non-biodegradable substances (copolymer, polyethylene…)
• Body creams: Often have with cancer-causing contaminants and may contain allergens or endocrine disruptors
• Hand soaps: Often have with cancer-causing contaminants and may contain allergens and skin irritants

Once you have eliminated the most hazardous products from your beauty regimen, start replacing your everyday body care and cleaning products with worry-free alternatives.

EWG VERIFIED™: A Renowned Safety Seal

As a savvy consumer, you’ve noticed that every product on the market carries at least one, and often several, safety seals. Each is meant to make us feel confident in choosing their products. Yet, no one has time to research all these seals: Are they relevant? What do they mean? And how do you know which seal or seals to trust?

Imagine if you could rely on one safety seal to tell you that the product you are buying is 100% safe! The EWG VERIFIED seal identifies products and brands whose ingredients have met EWG’s rigorous health and safety criteria.

For a product to be EWG VERIFIED, the manufacturer must submit a significant amount of information about the ingredients found in that product—including ingredients not listed on the label. Manufacturers must be fully transparent when disclosing that their products are contaminant-free and that all manufacturing processes meet EWG criteria.

Then the EWG verifies each ingredient against its extensive database. In our opinion, any manufacturer who does the work needed to join the list of EWG certified companies shows an exceptional commitment to transparency and product safety.

Thanks to the authority and persistence of EWG’s research, a growing number of brands are choosing to develop worry-free body care and household products for their customers.

Which ATTITUDE products are EWG VERIFIED?

Because ATTITUDE’s mission is deeply aligned with the values that EWG represents, they develop all of their products following EWG criteria. When you choose products that have met these rigorous criteria, you can be confident you have opted for the best green cleaning products and body care brands on the market.

The EWG VERIFIED seal represents cosmetics and body care products. It currently does not extend to household cleaning products. With that in mind, most ATTITUDE body care products are now EWG VERIFIED, while their household products are among the best non-toxic cleaning products rated green in the EWG database.

 Among their body care products, the complete Super Leaves and Sensitive Skin collections both carry the EWG VERIFIED seal. What’s more, ATTITUDE’s Sensitive Skin body care products for adults and babies have the lowest and best rating in EWG’s Skin Deep database.

What about products that aren’t EWG VERIFIED?

You shouldn’t have to worry about the products you use every day. There are many products on the market — toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo, soap, bubble bath and more — that are free from ingredients of concern such as allergens, endocrine disruptors, pollutants and carcinogenic impurities.

It’s ATTITUDE‘s mission to get safe products into everyone’s hands. We encourage consumers to rely on the Skin Deep database to help them make informed decisions about the cosmetics and personal care products they use every day.