The Environmental Working Group‘s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database is a great place to start before buying any new beauty products. With 7,145 ingredients and 27,528 products (and counting) documented, you can find what is often shocking information about the toxicity of almost any beauty product on the market. My favorite feature of their site is that you can manually enter product data that has not yet been added and instantly get the EWG calculation of its potential hazard on a scale of 1 to 10. I entered the ingredient list from my fancy, imported, $40 shampoo, Louise Galvin Sacred Locks Hair Cleanser. Boasting “free from SLS, synthetic perfume, propylene glycol, phthalates, silicones & parabens”, I figured my “Sacred Locks” should spit out a squeaky clean “low hazard” report card but was suspicious enough of the less pronounceable ingredients to run it through. My shampoo scored a disappointing 4(moderate hazard). By comparison, Pantene Pro-V shampoo comes up 7 (high), while Burt’s Bees Grapefruit & Sugar Beet Shampoo scored a harmless 1! Check out the site and be sure to sign their petition asking Congress to get cosmetics companies to disclose all ingredients and to prohibit the use of the most toxic ingredients in products intended specifically for children.