Test Your Products' Safety at Healthy Stuff

Keeping up with every toy recall, dangerous chemical and safety hazard for our children can be an exhausting task—nearly a job on its own! It seems like every day new products are being blacklisted, their destructive powers discovered and denounced! So with villains like these constantly multiplying, what’s a Supermom or Superdad to do?

The solution might just be Healthy Stuff. It’s a website that includes a listing of 5,000 common household products—from purses to car seats to toys and more—and their chemical compositions. A shopping tool designed to help moms, dads and consumers in general make healthy purchases, it’s usable through its own website, a downloadable widget with search capabilities, and even your own phone. You can send a text message while you’re out shopping to get instant results on the item you’re thinking about spending money on.

One of the most interesting things I found out from Healthy Stuff was that some of the brands listed make both the best and worst products. You would think that one brand would be safer or “greener” than another, but that’s not always the case. In fact, when it comes to infant car seats, Graco was the manufacturer of both the best and worst choices; the same applies for transitional car seats, of which Cosco supplies the best and the worst picks.

If these companies are already equipped to create something that’s listed as the best choice, shouldn’t they use that product’s composition as a guide for other products to, I don’t know, make sure they’re all safe? It makes sense to me, even though I’m sure that the price of the product is the company’s bottom line when it comes to the “best.”

The site also presents an issue with purses; over 75% of the ones they tested have lead in them. If you’re worried about lead in your kids’ toys, you may want to skip giving them purses to play dress-up with, too. And while car seats are supposed to save lives, more than half of the ones Healthy Stuff tested have harmful chemicals that can harm lives instead—such as heavy metals, PVC and BFRs.

Healthy Stuff is really an invaluable resource, especially if you are concerned about the products you bring into your home. Be sure to bookmark it or jot down the texting information if you’d like to use it as your new shopping aid.