Our Research & Sourcing Standards
Every ingredient claim on this site is a claim about someone's home — their kids, their pets, their air. Here's exactly how we decide what to say, who reviews it, and what happens when we can't back a claim up.
Short answer: We cite primary sources — US government agencies first, peer-reviewed research second, named authorities like EWG or ASPCA Animal Poison Control third — and we link directly to them so you can read the original, not our summary of it. We write about ingredient classes, not what's in one specific competitor's bottle, because formulas vary by SKU and change over time. If we can't verify a claim against a real source, we take it down. That's the whole policy.
How we choose sources, in order
When we make a factual claim about an ingredient, a chemical, or a health effect, we look for a source in this order and cite the strongest one we can find:
- US government agencies — EPA, CDC/ATSDR, NIH/PubChem, NIOSH, CPSC, FDA. These carry the most weight because they're regulatory or public-health bodies, not advocacy groups or brands.
- Peer-reviewed research — studies with a real, resolving PubMed ID (PMID) or DOI, from an actual journal. We link to the study itself, not a paraphrase of it.
- Named public-health and consumer authorities — organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the American Lung Association, and the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. We treat these as credible but one step below a government agency or a peer-reviewed study, and we say so when it matters.
We link every one of these inline, in the sentence making the claim, and again in a "Sources" list at the bottom of the page — not just buried in a byline or a footnote you'd never click.
We write about ingredient classes, not one bottle
You'll notice we almost never say "Brand X's current formula contains Y." Formulas change — a manufacturer can reformulate a product between one production run and the next, and different scent or size variants in the same product line aren't always identical. So instead we write about the ingredient class people are actually asking about — quats, synthetic fragrance, glycol-ether solvents, added dyes — what the research says about that class, and why it's worth understanding.
If you're standing over a specific bottle right now, the only accurate answer is: check that product's current label or safety data sheet (SDS). We tell readers this directly, every time, rather than let a general statement about an ingredient class read as a claim about one product we haven't tested.
What we're trying to do — and what we're not
We're not here to diminish the work of the people who formulate, manufacture, and sell conventional cleaning products. Making a cleaner that actually works is genuinely hard, and plenty of people go to work every day trying to do it well. Our aim is narrower and more specific: to help readers understand which ingredient classes may affect their health, so they can make an informed choice for their own home — especially if someone in that home is allergic, asthmatic, immunocompromised, pregnant, or caring for a baby or a pet, where the margin for "probably fine" matters more.
That means we try hard to separate two different things that get blurred constantly in this category: an ingredient being a recognized irritant or sensitizer in the research (a real, checkable fact) versus an ingredient being "toxic" in the scary, headline sense (usually not true at label-directed use). We aim for the first kind of claim, cited, every time — and we say plainly when the honest answer is "low-risk when used as directed."
When we can't verify a claim, we remove it
If we can't find a real source that supports a specific sentence — a government page, a study with a resolving PMID, or a named authority's own published guidance — that sentence doesn't get published, and if it's already live, we take it out. We don't dress up an unverifiable claim with a vague "studies show" or an authority's name with no link attached. A missing claim is a fine outcome. A fabricated one is not something we do.
Who reviews this content
Our content is reviewed by Italo Campilii, Ecolosophy's founder. His standing here isn't a scientific credential — it's twenty-three years as a patient managing a chronic inflammatory bowel condition, which is what originally sent him looking at what was actually in the products under his own sink. That lived experience shapes why this site cares about ingredient transparency in the first place, and it's the honest framing for personal-story and brand content on this site.
For chemistry- and ingredient-science claims specifically, our posts are also reviewed against source material by our formulating team, including Elizabeth Uría, our co-founder and lead formulator. We name the right reviewer for the right kind of content rather than attaching one byline to everything.
Found something wrong? Tell us.
If you find a claim on this site that's outdated, misattributed, or doesn't hold up against its cited source, email us at [email protected] with the page URL and what you found. We'll check it against the original source, correct it if it's wrong, and update the page's "last updated" date so the change is visible — not silently edited.
Read the pages this policy governs
Every "Is it toxic?" and ingredient guide on this site follows the standard above.
Or read more in The Detox Journal.