There are other places you can look for information.

Green cleaner guidelines offered by the Environmental Working Group: This non-profit group tag decoder It explains potentially confusing terms such as surfactant, enzymes, non-toxic, organic, fragrance, odor, and free/clear. The Healthy Cleaning Guide highlights worrying ingredients in detergents and other products and scores them for safety.

Smart Label: Created by the Consumer Brands Association, which has 75 members representing approximately 2,000 brands. Smart Tag The digital app offers more ingredient and product information than you’ll see on your laundry detergent label, including potential allergens. Consumers can scan product barcodes with their smartphones to receive information including ingredient lists, third-party certifications and proper use instructions, safety data sheets, features and benefits, and recycling information. Although some consumers complain that the app is buggy, the app is more useful than searching through individual websites, says CR chemist Eric Boring, PhD, who led our recent testing of laundry detergents.

SmartLabel information comes directly from manufacturers including Procter & Gamble, makers of Tide, Gain, Dreft, Era, Downy and Bounce.

“In North America, we list the ingredients of our formulated products on the SmartLabel, including sharing up to 0.01 percent of the ingredients in our fragrances, so that consumers with sensitivities and diagnosed allergies have a well-informed understanding,” says P&G’s Jennifer Ahoni. We help them decide.” Director of Scientific Communications.

Manufacturers’ websites: You can also research company websites for more detailed information about the ingredients in a company’s products. For example, Seventh Generation provides: detailed product safety forms (PDF) lists potential allergens and other chemicals.

American Cleaning Institute’s glossary of cleaning product terms: This organization, which represents cleaning product manufacturers, online source This explains how some detergent ingredients work.