The Tool
Check a label
Paste an ingredient list from any product, food or cosmetic. We check it against our database of 422 substances the EU bans or restricts, including aliases, E-numbers, and CAS numbers, and cite the regulation for every flag.
Private by design: the check runs entirely in your browser against a dataset downloaded with this page. There is no backend. Nothing you paste leaves your device, and we couldn't see it if we wanted to.
Tip: ⌘+Enter / Ctrl+Enter to check
A worked example
Take the box above. The US label lists, among other things: sugar, corn flour blend, wheat flour, Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Yellow 6, and BHT for freshness. Paste that line into the checker and four entries come back flagged, each with the regulation that flags it: the three Southampton dyes return Restricted in EU with the children's-activity warning rule, and BHT returns Restricted in EU with its category caps. Nothing returns "toxic," because that is not a thing a regulation says.
How to read a result
- Banned in EU Not authorized for this use anywhere in the EU. We cite the regulation.
- Restricted in EU Legal only under conditions: concentration caps, specific product types, or warning labels.
- Legal in both Permitted in the EU and the US. Most ingredients you paste will be this, and that's the honest result.
- Banned in US only The rare reverse case: the FDA moved and Brussels didn't.
A flag is a regulatory fact, not a safety verdict. A clean result is not a guarantee of safety. Read how we assign statuses.