Avoiding Toxic Ingredients in Children’s Personal Care Products Can be Easy
This post is sponsored by The Honest Company. We have been wanting to write about this important topic.
When it comes to buying products for your baby, obviously no mother would willingly purchase anything harmful for their child. But we might falsely assume the most beloved and well-known brands in baby care sell products we can trust.
I’m a parent. I have a three-year-old, a two month old and a full-time job. My head is swimming with information from pumping schedules to preschool applications to remembering my Thursday morning status meeting at work. FYI? Today, I totally forgot it.
When I google “how to make sure I keep chemicals and toxins out of my children’s toys and care products,” I am met with article after article of studies, facts, figures, all of them too confusing and scary to take in. Plus, a lot of the brands mentioned are brands I would have assumed would be playing by the rules.
It didn’t take long to realize, I don’t know nearly enough about this stuff to keep myself and my babies safe from the dangerous chemicals and toxins pervasive in our world.
To see if I am the only one out there who feels totally overwhelmed by the “watch-outs” and the warnings and the names of chemicals I can neither spell nor pronounce, I created the quiz below to test your baby personal care product safety savvy.
Find out if you know your Sodium Lauryl Sulfate from your Polyethylene…
If you are like me, then you scored pretty poorly on that quiz. I’ve got way too much going on to remember the names of all those chemicals. Plus, it seems like there is new information and warnings coming out all the time and I don’t have the bandwidth to keep on top of it. I prefer someone else to keep on top of it for me.
Thankfully The Honest Company has a team of people, led by Christopher Gavigan, who are happy to play that role for me. Christopher is a dedicated leader and long-time activist in children’s environmental health, having spent many years in charge of Healthy Child, Healthy World, a non-profit lobbying for a safer and less toxic environment for our kids and teaching parents how easy choices can make our world a safer place for our families.
The Honest Company is a family company and its team spends all day, every day making sure their products meet their high standards for safety. As an added benefit, they have a high standard for design too, as evidenced in the photo below which includes their adorable patterned diapers.
They promise each personal care, cleaning and home product they sell is effective, eco-friendly, well-designed, convenient, affordable and unquestionably safe. Just take a look at their website and the detailed ingredient list they provide, which not only lists what goes into their products, it also lists what does not. It’s refreshingly explicit and transparent.
As a working mom of two, I want to think about these things but I don’t have the time. The Honest Company makes me believe I am doing good by my children and family by doing what’s easiest. How often can you say that?
Below is a cheat sheet of the commonly found chemicals in children’s personal care products. Feel free to share it, print it out, keep it in your wallet and use when looking for products for you and your family.
Or, you can just take the easy way out and shop through Honest. Sign up for a free trial (plus nominal shipping).
In the meantime, we all can sign up for a Free Trial (plus nominal shipping).
Answers to Quiz questions:
1: #4, 2: #4, 3: 23%, 4: 60%, 5: All of the above, 6: #4, 7: Phthalates & Parabens, 8: a newborn, 9: Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, 10: All of the incredibly nasty stuff above, 11: Triclosan, 12: There is absolutely no good reason, 13: Phthalates, 14: False
Resources: HCHW, EWG, and Collective-Evolution.
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Thank you to The Honest Company for making this post possible.
