GoodGuide Shampoo Ratings

You put a lot of stuff in your hair—shampoo, conditioner, gel, and maybe some added color. The good news is that hair care products are made mostly of water, about which we have nothing bad to say. The bad news is that the chemical ingredients that actually do the work—chemical detergents, dyes, fragrances, and conditioners—aren’t always safe for you or good for the environment. Dyes and colors often come with ingredient lists that are 60 or 70 chemicals long and can include toxics like P-Phenylenediamine, resorcinol, eugenol, and ethanolamine. (more)

Shampoos and conditioners sometimes contain a preservative called sodium methylparaben, which is controversial for its links to breast cancer and endocrine disruption. You can also find a form of formaldehyde called DMDM hydantoin, a skin and immune system toxicant banned in Japan for health concerns.

A few shampoos and some conditioners use cleaners such as sodium laureth sulfate or octoxynol-40 that, depending on the way they are made, can introduce contamination into the product. These contaminants take the form of irritant, carcinogenic ingredients like ethylene oxide and 1,4-dioxane. Additionally, sodium lauryl sulfate, a close relative of sodium laureth sulfate, is a strong skin irritant, and there is considerable controversy over its other health effects, with critics calling it a possible carcinogen.

That’s not all: Most shampoos and conditioners incorporate a combination of chemicals labeled only as the ingredient “fragrance”. The exact mixture is considered a trade secret, so companies don’t have to say what’s in their fragrances. But, fragrances can often be allergy concerns or contain toxic chemicals like phthalates.

Common cleaning and foaming agents in shampoos are ammonium lauryl sulfate and ammonium laureth sulfate, which are among the most eco-toxic of hair care ingredients. In shampoos, these ammonium derivatives are the most energy-intensive ingredients to make, and since the manufacturing of ingredients has the greatest environmental impact (about 60 percent of the overall impact), it’s more environmentally friendly to look for shampoos without ammonium ingredients.

You can use GoodGuide hair care ratings to find safe, healthy products without toxic ingredients, or browse our reviews for products with high health and environment ratings. You can also look through our social data for no-animal-testing seals of approval from PETA and Leaping Bunny.