How to Find Hidden Toxins in Everyday Products

Finding your way here it comes as no surprise the havoc that things like store-bought cleaning products, laundry detergent and softener, and even our personal hygiene products are having on our health. How to Find Toxic Products Hidden in Your Home can be quick and easy with the downloadable checklist and tools I share with you.

Let me walk you through how to find toxic products that can be hidden around your home.

Why they should be eliminated and the overall long-term health effects from something as simple and common as a burning candle, or spraying a room freshener.

My first discovering into this topic was when I set off on the journey to healing my hormones (thyroid) I discovered that the fluoride in my toothpaste, is also found in tap water so if you drink tap water please invest in filtering your water, was causing some pretty major side effects on our hormones.

This was the string that unraveled it all. Thinking if something like my toothpaste is hurting my health, what else around my house is?

Honestly, I thought I was healthy. At least “healthier” than most. We took a lot of supplements. Cooked at home for the most part. Didn’t drink sodas or eat a ton of candy or desserts. I had no idea at this point how many environmental toxins were all around me.

I never considered the toxic ingredients in common household products touching my skin & in what ways breathing them affected my health. Personal hygiene and makeup products were a tuff one for me I won’t lie.

Growing up in my mom’s salon, working my way through college as a make-up and skincare specialist I had an ungodly amount of things to trash….. it was hard watching my favorite makeup foundation and 500 lipsticks go into the trash.

Transitioning from salon shampoos and conditioners and natural deodorant for a LONG time and required even more research to find products that were safe but actually still worked.

Luckily you found me so I will share with you all the products I use and love to give you a quick easy starting place.

At the time I journeyed out tools like Think Dirty had not yet entered the scene making research a lot more tricky than it is today.

Not to worry though, I will be sharing with you a free downloadable checklist so you can grab a trash bag and start hunting down some of these hidden toxic products around your home.

Also, knowing why we are doing something is key to sticking with it.

Without getting too scientific we will be covering why these products are causing so much damage to people’s overall health. I will give tips and tools we can use daily to stay in the know about ingredients without having a Ph.D. in chemistry.

Hidden Toxins in everyday products

According to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) report, it is said that eight million people die globally every year because of air pollution. Among those 4.3 million were reported to have died from household-related air pollutants.

Please also remember that it is near impossible to come to the root causes of things like cancer and heart disease to pinpoint the main cause(s).

I would say that number would be ten times that amount if our medical research could dig that deep.

In doing my own digging one research study I found said that less than 10% of volatile ingredients are listed on the labels. How is this legal? Below is a list of toxic chemicals in everyday products.

Something as seemly harmless as your favorite fall candle can have things such as:

Terpenes

VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds)

Carbon Monoxide

Formaldehyde

Benzene

Aldehydes

Ethylene

And many other volatile compounds are found in air fresheners, candles, household cleaners, and even our personal hygiene products.

But what the heck are all of those? And why does it matter to me?

Great question! I am glad you asked. The side effects from ingredients like these are vast, but here are a few of the top ones:

Impact on sensory systems, respiratory system, dysfunction of the lungs, damage to the central nervous system, alteration on hormone levels.

The studies also noted the adverse effects on diverse organs, including the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems from the use of indoor air fresheners reported having a slow but gradual increase in the adverse effect on the subject’s overall health in these areas.

What products around your house that could be causing you or your family major health issues

The scariest thing about household pollutants is that they have become so normalized in our lives we never consider them to be a threat. Many of the health effects caused by these toxic products have a very slow process of affecting our health, again making pinpointing them as the culprits almost impossible to the untrained eye.

A couple of items to look around the house for are, and let me save you some time friend grab a trash bag as you go on the hunt; air fresheners, candles, scented wax, liquid wick, car air fresheners, perfumes/colognes, laundry detergents, fabric softeners (those are two of the worst because our skin is our largest organ and these VOCs are setting on them and sinking into them 24/7).

The respiratory system bears most of the brunt as many of the product’s worst health effects come from VOCs or Volatile Organic Compounds. Aka Artificial fragrances. A close second is our cardiovascular system, endocrine system (our hormone factory), and our nervous system.

Hmm, well that pretty much covers all our major systems right?

Household pollutants have also now been linked to causing many cancers.

Here is a great article to geek out on if you want to go deeper (click here).

There is nothing more important than a good, safe, and sucure home.

How to Find Toxic Products Hidden in Your Home I have a free checklist printable below (or click here) that will help you cover some of the most common household items to trash or at least investigate more using tools like the Think Dirty App (which is free) or click the Think Dirty image below to go to the website.

Think Dirty is a tool I have personally loved and used for years! I still do as a matter of fact.

There are many companies who have realized that we consumers have wised up over the years so the companies started “greenwashing” their products to seem more – well green.

I know I know it is infuriating isn’t it. That instead of changing the products to be safer for us they simply change the labels to “appear” safer for us. That is why it pays for us to be paying attention.

Many of the household products we use daily are DIYs, many of which I share the recipes for right here on the blog. It is my goal to compile them all into an eBook free for you to download and print so that you always know what it is that you are using around your house.

Tools like Think Dirty are making it easier and easier for us to stay in the know. Simply type in any household item and we are able to see within seconds that product’s ingredients rating on a scale of 1-10. There is also a color associated with each number.

A rating of1-3 ratings are green – meaning its good to go.

A rating of 4-6 ratings are yellow – meaning its got some sectchy stuff in it.

A rating of 7-10 would be red – meaning that the product should be trashed ASAP!

A cool feature is we can click the ratings to see why. The app shows an itemized list starting with the dirtiest ingredient, this specific ingredient rating, and why it is rated this way. Now unless one loves chemistry this may sound like another language, but I still appreciate that it is there should we decide to want to know why.

In conclustion

That was a lot of deep and scientific research, but my hope is that you found it helpful. Knowing why we do what we do is the strongest key to keeping us focused and faithful to a new direction.

Be sure to download the free checklist and share this article with those you love in your life. If you click here you will also find some great ways to replace all these items that you’ve been running around your house tossing in the trash can.

Leave me a comment below with a couple of the items around your home that after looking products up on the Think Dirty app were in the red that was trashed right away.

Some of the most shocking toxic products I discovered were baby products. Marketed as “safe” and “gentle” and many of them are an 8 or above. Absolutely unacceptable and even more reason for us to be paying attention.

I would also love to hear any non-toxic products or DIYs you have tried and love!