5 Ways to Check if Your Skincare Is Toxic

Your skin is your body's largest organ — and it's selectively permeable. Many ingredients in cosmetic products can penetrate the skin barrier and enter systemic circulation.^[1] Most people have no idea what they're actually putting on their skin.

According to the Environmental Working Group, the average person uses 9 personal care products per day, exposing themselves to over 120 unique chemicals before breakfast.^[2] Many of these ingredients have never been tested for long-term safety. Some are banned in the EU but still perfectly legal in the U.S.

Here are five practical ways to audit your skincare routine — and take back control of what goes into your body.

1. Read the Ingredient List (Every Single Time)

This sounds obvious, but most people never flip the bottle. Historically, the FDA did not require pre-market safety testing for cosmetic ingredients. The 2022 Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) introduced new safety substantiation requirements, but enforcement is still in its early stages.^[4] Many products on shelves today were formulated under the old, more permissive rules.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: the word "natural" on a label means nothing legally. Neither does "clean" or "gentle." These are marketing terms with no regulatory definition.

What actually matters is what's listed on the back of the bottle.

The rule of thumb: if you can't pronounce it and don't know what it does, your skin shouldn't be absorbing it.

2. Use a Product Safety App

If reading a list of 30+ ingredients feels overwhelming, let technology do the work. Free tools like EWG's Skin Deep database and the Yuka app let you scan a barcode or search a product name to get an instant safety rating based on scientific research.

These tools evaluate ingredients against known health risks — hormone disruption, allergic reactions, carcinogenicity — and give you a clear score. No chemistry degree required.

"The EU has banned or restricted over 1,600 chemicals in cosmetics. The U.S. has historically restricted far fewer — though recent legislation is beginning to close the gap.^[4] Using a product checker helps you hold your skincare to a higher standard than U.S. regulations have traditionally required."

3. Choose Ingredients Your Body Recognizes

For thousands of years, humans used animal fats, plant oils, and botanical extracts for skincare. These ingredients aren't just "natural" in a marketing sense — they're biocompatible, meaning your body knows how to process and use them.

Synthetic ingredients, on the other hand, are often molecules your body has never encountered in its evolutionary history. When your skin absorbs these compounds, your liver and kidneys have to work to break them down and flush them out.

The simplest test: could this ingredient have existed 200 years ago? If yes, your body probably knows what to do with it. If not, it's worth questioning.

4. Prioritize Organic Ingredients

Choosing natural ingredients is a great start — but not all natural ingredients are created equal. Conventionally grown botanicals and plant oils can carry pesticide residues, and those residues end up on your skin.

Glyphosate — the world's most widely used herbicide — has been detected in over 80% of urine samples tested in a CDC/NHANES study.^[5] It's classified as a "probable carcinogen" (Group 2A) by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.^[6] When your skincare ingredients are sourced from conventionally farmed plants, you're potentially adding another vector of exposure.

Certified organic ingredients are grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or GMOs. It's one more layer of protection between your skin and chemicals it shouldn't have to process.

5. Go for Fewer Ingredients

This might be the most important rule of all.

The average moisturizer contains 20 to 40 ingredients. Most skincare companies don't test how all those ingredients interact with each other — they test them individually. But your skin isn't absorbing them individually. It's absorbing the whole cocktail at once.

Every additional ingredient is another variable. Another potential irritant. Another compound your body has to identify and process. The math is simple: fewer ingredients means fewer unknowns.

When a product has only 3 ingredients, there's nowhere to hide. Every ingredient is there because it serves a purpose. No fillers. No bulking agents. No fragrance cocktails labeled as a single "ingredient."

What Clean Skincare Actually Looks Like

We built ANML around a simple belief: your moisturizer should contain only ingredients your skin recognizes and can use. Here's what's inside — and nothing else:

That's it. No water to dilute it. No emulsifiers to hold water and oil together. No preservatives to prevent bacterial growth in water. When you remove the water, you remove the need for 90% of a typical ingredient list.