Hazard Is Not Risk: Why 'Potentially Harmful' Is Doing So Much Work in Your Scanner App

At a glance

• A hazard is what a substance can do. A risk is how likely it is to do it at the amount you actually consume.
• Yuka's own methodology for cosmetics says it does not take the quantity of an ingredient into account.
• Run one product through several scanner apps and you can get different answers, because each uses its own undisclosed algorithm.
• EatSure explains each ingredient and lets you decide what it flags.

The issue

Scanner apps flag an ingredient as "potentially harmful" and stop. What they rarely say is how much is in the product, how much you would need to consume, and how sure the science is. Yuka's own methodology for cosmetics states that it does not take the quantity of an ingredient into account. Cosmetic chemist Jane Tsui, who has told her more than 200,000 followers not to download it, puts it plainly: "it doesn't take into consideration percentage within a formula."

How big the problem is

Jennifer McPartland, a chemical-safety specialist who was then vice president of mission at Beautycounter, notes that you can run one product through a handful of these apps and get different results, because each has its own opaque algorithm. Dietitian Kacie Barnes adds a structural problem: the apps import Europe's hazard-based regulatory approach and apply it to a US system that is risk-based, so an additive restricted in the EU as a precaution is presented as dangerous at any dose here. The result is fear without context for tens of millions of shoppers.

What it means for you

"Contains a preservative that may be harmful" is true of table salt. A useful flag says what the ingredient is, what the evidence shows, and what you decided about it.

What EatSure does instead

EatSure's rule is explain, don't judge. Every ingredient in the knowledge base is reviewed by a person, with a plain explanation of what it does, what the evidence says, and whether regulators restrict it. You set the level for each category and each ingredient: Avoid counts against fit and shows in amber, Note is one quiet line, OK is silent. A flag in EatSure means "this is here and you asked to know", never "this will hurt you". The same principle runs through How EatSure grades food.