Scott’s Blog

I came across a great resource recently. Skin Deep is a safety guide by Environmental Working Group. They are a small nonprofit formed to test and rate the safety of cosmetics and many items we use for personal care. “Because the FDA doesn’t require companies to test their own products for safety”, “Skin Deep pairs ingredients in nearly 25,000 products against 50 definitive toxicity and regulatory databases, making it the largest integrated data resource of its kind.”

On their site, you may look up the safety of a specific ingredient, product, or brand. You can also view by category, such as “skin care” or “baby care.” You will receive ratings of 0-2 for low hazard, 3-6 for moderate hazard, or 7-10 for high hazard. You may also take a further look at why this product is rated as it is. For example, some concerns may be links to cancer, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption, allergies or immunotoxicity, organ system toxicity, other irritation, violations, restrictions or warnings. There is a lot of information on this site, and I know people can get overwhelmed with this. But with each rating you will also see a box telling what percentage of reviewed products have a better rating. Simply clicking will show you which ones. Results aren’t always as one might expect.

So, yes, us runners wash our hair and brush our teeth, but we also spend hours on end in the sun. If we’re savvy we’re probably concerned about protecting our skin from extreme sun exposure with clothing or sunscreens. Here is a special report on the safety and effective sunscreens. A great deal of to keep us informed here!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Advocacy, Enviro. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.