Saving your skin: App reveals toxins in cosmetics

Toronto – Labels on beauty products often feature a list of unpronounceable names of chemical ingredients, with little to indicate what effects they might have on our health. A new app, Think Dirty, aims to educate people about the ingredients they are applying to their skin.

Think Dirty empowers consumers by letting them scan the label of a product to determine whether the ingredients are harmful. The start-up company grew out of founder Lily Tse’s discovery that the toxins in cosmetics can cause cancer.

‘When my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, my research led me to some alarming information about the cosmetics world,’ says Tse. ‘With Think Dirty, I wanted to create something that provides credible information to change the way people think about personal care products.’

Consumers are demanding more transparency in production processes and in the quality of ingredients. For another example, read our report about the Buycott app.