Together with a recognized and stringent eco-certification, an A rating in EWG's Guide to Healthy Cleaning will show you which cleaning products have little to no health risks for your little one.
If the product is truly eco-friendly and non-toxic, they should want to have it rated and published in EWG's database - unless they have something to hide! BABY-SAFE CLEANING PRODUCTS Therefore, it seems strange that some cleaning product manufacturers, especially of "green" cleaners, don’t have any EWG ratings for their products.
EWG BABY LAUNDRY DETERGENT FREE
However, getting a product rated by the EWG is completely free - the manufacturer does not have to pay in order to get their products reviewed and the rating published in their database.
There are hundreds of brands, thousands of products, and they keep getting re-formulated all the time - how can a database have them all reviewed and rated? So it is not surprising that the EWG doesn't list all brands and products. What does that mean for the product?Īt first glance, nothing much. But while EWG's product database is extensive and growing all the time, it might not include the product you are searching for. And many of those F-rated products include brands that are generally considered to be eco-friendly, and have green certification! BRANDS WITHOUT EWG RATINGĪs a concerned parent, you are probably already checking the rating for the cleaning products you currently have in your home. In fact, only 5.5% of all the bathroom cleaners listed on EWG are rated A, which means that a whopping 94.5% show a potential for hazards to health or environment.Įven worse, 37.3% of all bathroom cleaners in the database have actually been rated F, with highest concerns for health and environmental hazards! The kitchen cleaners are only slightly better, with 6.5% of the products A-rated, and a shocking 29% rated F. However, many supposedly green and non-toxic cleaning products with eco-certification like Safer Choice, Green Seal or EcoLogo have a rating other than A. In EWG's Guide to Healthy Cleaning, there is a mix of green and conventional cleaning products. All fragrances are automatically rated D for high concern with likely hazards to health or the environment. Non-specific ingredients like "non-ionic surfactant" or "coconut-derived surfactant" - which really don't tell us anything, since SLS and SLES as non-ionic surfactants as well - are penalized by being left out of the total score, so that hiding a potentially bad ingredient behind such a non-specific name doesn't give the end product a better rating. While we start struggling when a manufacturer doesn't supply a list of ingredients, the EWG team of scientists, policy experts, lawyers, communication experts and programmers researches the manufacturer's website and publications to determine which ingredients are making up the product. INCOMPLETE LISTS OF INGREDIENTS AND NON-SPECIFIC INGREDIENTS Therefore, their health concerns include ingredients that are allowed in less stringent eco standards, such as ethoxylated alcohols and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES), which are contaminated by carcinogens ethylene oxide and 1,4-dioxane. Even though the EWG is a US organization, the published scientific literature they use includes research not only from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Toxicology Program (NTP), but also from the European Union, which typically has stricter rules on chemicals than North American legislation.Īs such, the EWG points out not only health hazards and published by the US government and its organizations, but also suspected health and environmental dangers. The ingredient ratings are based on published scientific literature and include know and suspected hazards to human health and/or the environment. The EWG rates the products from A (lowest concern - no or few known or suspected hazards to health or the environment) to F (highest concern - potentially significant hazards) based on the weight-percentage of their ingredients' ratings. That product rating indicates the relative level of concern posed by exposure to the ingredients in this product compared to other product formulations. Their research and database includes cosmetics, sunscreen, cleaning products and many more. They research a variety of products for their toxicity in order to allow consumer to make better choices. The EWG was formed in 1983 and is a US non-profit organization that is dedicated to protecting human health and the environment. One of them is the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The good news are, there are tools to help you in your research. However, this means you have to do a lot of work and research to find a non-toxic cleaner.
In the last articles, we're explained why you should look for baby-safe cleaning products for your family, and what to look out for in a product - such as green certifications and ingredients.
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