Think Dirty is a Canadian app which scans the bar code on beauty products in your bathroom, or when you’re out shopping, and shows you a toxicity score based on Think Dirty’s rating criteria. You can also search by product name or brand.

As well as an overall score, ingredients are listed with their individual ratings and you can drill down to find more information around each ingredient’s usage, potential health impact and even pseudonyms so you can see where companies are trying to sneak in nasties under different guises.

The product’s ‘dirty meter’ gives an indicator of how it fares on carcinogenicity, developmental and reproductive toxicity, and allergies and immunotoxicities. And it also suggests similar, safer products that you might consider as alternatives.

A few caveats around using it:

• It’s aimed at the North American market so don’t expect smaller European brands to be covered
• Read the ratings carefully – ingredients such as geraniol and citral push the rating up as they are potential allergens, even though they naturally occur in essential oils
• I’m not sure it’s 100% accurate: my Aveda Curl Enhancer showed as containing parabens, which surprised me. I checked the packaging and couldn’t find any listed so I double checked online and Aveda firmly state that they do not use parabens in any of their products (I will follow this up with Think Dirty)

It’s a great quick reference resource and fun to use. I’m hoping for a UK version soon and the ability to search by ingredient (currently you can only access data on an ingredient after searching for a product which contains it).

For more info visit their site: http://www.thinkdirtyapp.com/