photo credit: style la-mimi.com

If you’re a woman who likes make-up and skin-care products – and if you’re intent on finding products that 1) perform well and 2) don’t have sketchy ingredients — you’ll love the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database.

Skin Deep contains information and online safety assessments for:

  • 63,824 products
  • 7,786 ingredients
  • 2,748 brands

When you consider switching to healthier cosmetics and skin care at Practically Green, you’ll see a frequent recommendation to consult Skin Deep. Savvy and eco glamoristas rely on this resource, which ranks more than 60,000 products from zero (safe) to 10 (please avoid). Log in and search by product type, ingredient, or company. Presto! “It’s a quick tool that gives people an instant solution,” says Leeann Brown of the Environmental Working Group, headquarters for Skin Deep.

Nneka Leiba is on the team of six constantly updating the Skin Deep listings. A native of Jamaica, Nneka got a Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins in 2006.

I really wanted to work at a nonprofit that was trying to move mountains in this arena. EWG was a good fit. We’re toxicologists, chemists, public health professionals, and database managers. We’re always updating it, adding more toxicology profiles. We use more than 50 regulatory or academic databases; we’re an aggregator of all the info. We look at the broad spectrum of health effects ranging from irritation to cancer.

How influential is Skin Deep?

Very.

With the strong voice of the consumers, many companies have reformulated their products. We’ve seen a lot of movement in the market toward safer products. … For example, we have a sunscreen report that we release every year, and we’ve noticed that many companies have moved away from the harmful chemicals as active ingredients.

Nneka’s advice on how to start making sure that your cosmetics bag is healthy:

Don’t get overwhelmed! When you look at the back of a shampoo to read the label, there are a lot of long chemical names. Don’t overhaul everything at once. Go for little things at a time.For instance, you might decide to avoid synthetic fragrances — and that’s a plus! Identify the ten ingredients you want to avoid most, and start there.

Enjoy discovering which of your favorite beauty secrets are also healthy to use. And when you commit to switching to all-natural products, have fun racking up the points at Practically Green!

  • 1,859 companies