The Environmental Working Group (EWG) releases their Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 List of produce each year and this is one of the main things they are known for, but they also do a lot of other work educating people on ingredients—helping us to understand what is safe and what is not.
I recently came across their "Dirty Dozen List of Endocrine Disruptors" and found the info really interesting. For those that don't know, an endocrine or hormone disruptor is a chemical that mimics our own hormones and causes things to happen in our bodies that should not be happening.
This is how the EWG describes what an endocrine disruptor is:
"There is no end to the tricks that endocrine disruptors can play on our bodies: increasing production of certain hormones; decreasing production of others; imitating hormones; turning one hormone into another; interfering with hormone signaling; telling cells to die prematurely; competing with essential nutrients; binding to essential hormones; accumulating in organs that produce hormones."
Not really something you want to mess around with, right? This is why this list can be a great tool in your efforts to educate yourself on these types of chemicals.
Even though I do a lot of reading on product ingredients and chemicals to avoid, there were a few ingredients in this list that I was not too familiar with. There were the usual suspects, such as Bisphenol-A (BPA) and Perfluorinated chemicals, but what is Atrazine? And Organophosphate pesticides? I learned a few things reading through the list and I know you will too.
Find the full list here and download the .pdf booklet for free. You'll learn the full details on the Dirty Dozen List of Endocrine Disruptors, learn what each ingredient is, and how you can avoid each one.
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Triclosan, which did not make the list, is also an ingredient you should be avoiding, read about it here. Another harmful ingredient may be making your cookware toxic. Find out what that chemical is and how you can avoid it.
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