I Feel Pretty

1. All personal care products should be safe.

Environment

Help us help you: Donate $10 towards adding new product information to Skin Deep, our searchable personal care products safety database, where you can investigate the ingredients of the products you use. Right now we've got 27,069 products in the database, and our goal is 1,000 donations -- and 1,000 new products -- to kick off the new year. Donate through Facebook by January 31st and your $10 donation could win us a bonus $50,000 grant through this Facebook competition.

And there's an added bonus: The person who recruits the most people to our cause will win a Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce canvas shopping bag stuffed with our favorite products culled from our "safest" list on Skin Deep.


How to feel pretty and witty and green:

STEP ONE: Join the cause and build the Skin Deep database!
We want to keep expanding our personal care product database at cosmeticsdatabase.com, but it takes time and money and we're a small nonprofit. A $10 donation goes towards adding 1 more product to the database. Donate before January 31st to help us win--help us meet our goal of 1,000 new products and give $10 today!

STEP TWO: Toss out any products that contain the nastiest ingredients.
It goes without saying that you don't want to put anything on your body that contains mercury, lead, or placenta. Check Skin Deep to find out what's on your bathroom shelf.

STEP THREE: Avoid using products with "fragrance" on the label.
Cosmetics companies can label any chemical "fragrance" so you don't know what you're getting--and you're probably getting an allergen, so if you've got asthma, do yourself a favor and stay away from perfumes and fragranced products. This includes air fresheners and scented candles!

STEP FOUR: Next time you go shopping, scrutinize the ingredient label.
Here's a quick list of ingredients you don't want in your products: phthalates, nanoparticles, petroleum byproducts, hydroquinone, ethylene dioxide, 1,4-dioxane, formaldehyde, nitrosamines, PAHs, acrylamide, and nanoparticles.

STEP FIVE: Don't believe the claims.
Just because it says "natural" and "hypoallergenic" doesn't mean that it is. Those are simply marketing claims and the FDA doesn't regulate them, so read the ingredient list instead.

STEP SIX: If you really want to feel pretty, cut it down to 5 products a day.
The average person uses about 10 products a day--if you manage to halve that, you can dramatically cut down on your daily chemical tally. Remember, those 5 products would include everyday essentials like toothpaste, shampoo, soap, and moisturizer.

STEP SEVEN: Tell the government to make personal care products safer.
Due to gaping loopholes in federal law, companies can put virtually any ingredient into personal care products. Sign our petition to Congress to turn this around and make personal care products safe at cosmeticsdatabase.com.