Is That Product Healthy?

Many products claim to be healthy and safe. And no wonder since consumers care about their family’s safety and have become ever more educated about potential hazardous chemicals in everyday products.

The Women’s Facial Skincare Consumer Report 2017 by the NPD Group demonstrates this increased interest in and knowledge about consumer product safety. The study found that 40 percent of U.S. women surveyed often buy products free of parabens, phthalates, sulfates and/or gluten (up from 33 percent in 2015). Some parabens and phthalates can pose health risks, according to the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS).

With UL‘s free GoodGuide® app, which rates more than 75,000 consumer products for each product’s health impacts, helps make the research much easier. Categories include personal care, food, household, and babies and kids. Based on the expertise of UL and GoodGuide scientists, the app makes it easy to see a list of the product’s ingredients, as well as understand whether any of them pose health risks. For instance, GoodGuide rates products with five specific parabens with low scores, based on scientific studies on toxicity and exposure levels, while not penalizing products using parabens determined to be safe by the SCCS.

GoodGuide’s product ratings allow you to quickly see the highest-rated products on a scale of 0-10. With the app, you can also:

Scan, search or browse by products, brands, companies or product categories.
Check a product’s rating by scanning its barcode.
Easily see if a product contains ingredients that pose health concerns.
Research the health impacts of common ingredients in the Ingredient Index.
Find out the nutritional value of food products.
Find safer alternatives to low-scoring products.
See if products earned the Good Housekeeping Seal or the Green Good Housekeeping Seal.
Read product reviews from GoodGuide users and write your own.
Suggest products to include in GoodGuide.
Get information immediately while on the go.