Your Toxic Life

An independent lab has made a business of exposing what’s really inside everyday products

- By Jamie Ducharme

If you are newly suspicious about the safety of the products in your medicine cabinet, there’s a good chance you have Valisure, a tiny laboratory in New Haven, Conn., to thank. Or blame.

Over the past five years, Valisure’s team of about a dozen scientists has detected potentially cancer-causing chemicals in widely used medications, hand sanitizers, sunscreens, antiperspirant body sprays, dry shampoos, and—most recently— acne treatments. When Valisure sounds the alarm about a new scary-sounding finding, a flood of headlines, lawsuits, and product recalls often follows. The company is shattering the illusion that some 80% of Americans still believe: that the products they buy have been through enough safety testing to be proved not harmful.

“Most consumers assume that because it’s for sale, it must be safe,” says Teresa Murray, who directs the consumer watchdog office at the nonprofit U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). “Oftentimes, that’s very much not true.”

Despite its nearly $7 billion annual operating budget, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) isn’t analyzing every shampoo or supplement on sale at your local drugstore. In fact, the FDA does not approve most cosmetics before they hit shelves—let alone assess how they’ll affect human health after years of regular use. This information vacuum has given rise to a network of nonprofits, consumer- protection groups, and independent scientists dedicated to informing the public about potential hazards lurking in their products.