A Beauty App

Each day women are exposed to about 168 chemicals in beauty products, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington-based health research and advocacy group that looks into toxic chemicals. Think Dirty, a free iPhone app, gives a product a score after scanning the barcode for ingredients and chemicals. With so many chemical ingredients used in beauty products this new apps is certainly a boon for the beauty and health conscious people .It scans barcodes and reviews the items for safety.

The score indicates whether a product has any harmful ingredients and allergens. The app also lists each ingredient and its potential effect on health using sources such as The National Library of Medicine's Hazardous Substances Data Bank, the EWG and the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental group. Warnings from regulatory agencies in other countries show up as well. Since many people are becoming aware of toxins in cosmetics, companies are responding by phasing out harmful ingredients. "We all use so many products, and even when we look at the back of the label, we don't understand what's in them because we're not chemists," said Lily Tse, the founder of Think Dirty, which is based in Toronto.