GoodGuide: The New Way To Shop Smart
partner
As consumers become ever
more aware that what they put onto their body goes into their body,
the issue of difficult-to-decipher ingredient labels on personal
care products has been drawing increasing concern. Because federal
law doesn’t require makers of household products to list all
ingredients used (or what they do), there are a lot of unknowns as
to what you’re actually slathering or spritzing on your skin—which
is precisely what compelled Dara O’Rourke, a professor of
environmental and labor policy at the University of California,
Berkeley, to get pro-active. According to a recent article in
The New York Times, Mr. O’Rourke was applying sunscreen to his
daughter’s face, realized he didn’t know what was in the lotion,
and decided to analyze a few of the ingredients at his office, only
to discover that the product contained a carcinogen activated by
sunlight as well as an endocrine disruptor and two skin irritants.
So, he did what any devoted parent with a science background and an
altruistic mind might: He started GoodGuide, a Web site like the
Environmental Working Group’s Skin
Deep, that has compiled data on over 75,000 products, providing
each with a score of 1 to10 based on its health, environmental, and
social impacts. Information behind the scores, like whether an
ingredient produces toxic waste or whether the company in question
has women and racial minorities in executive positions, is also
available through successive clicks. The site launched in September
and has an iPhone application as
well, so if you should ever find yourself at the drugstore
perplexed by something listed on the side of your favorite shampoo,
you can simply enter the product name into your phone and get the
insider info. The next version of the iPhone will apparently make
getting scores as simple as scanning bar codes. Savvy consumers, 1;
shady pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, 0.
Photo: Courtesy of
Goodguide.com
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