Better Than Sliced Bread: Good Guide

True story: I once spent 1 hour and 45 minutes at the drug store trying to find the shampoos that do and do not contain Methylisothiazolinone or MIT. It's an ingredient that a National Institute of Health study has shown to cause nervous system damage in rats and yet is still found in shampoos and soaps. And it's one of a pretty long list of toxic chemicals that are still allowed in household products despite being identified as harmful by the EPA and listed in the Center for Disease Control's Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS) database. But where is the common consumer to get this information, much less screen it from the millions of products lining the pharmacy shelf?

Enter Good Guide.

In the modern age of products loaded with harmful ingredients, Good Guide is like a magic 8 ball for what you want to know. Founded in 2007, the online guide has independently tested thousands of products in every category (health and beauty, household cleaning, food, apparel, appliances, etc.) and given them a rating based on how safe or harmful the ingredients are to human health, the product's impact on the environment and the brand's ethical and corporate practices. Ratings are very clearly broken down to show how and why the product has earned each score.

Use it as a reference for your future purchases to save your time and your health.

Update: 

For more information on beauty products, check out the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetics Database. The database assigns detailed ratings to both products as well as individual ingredients. Click on each ingredient to see not only list the level of health risk, but the specific adverse effects and the numerous studies that revealed them.