How we vet non-toxic products
Nontoxic Nook is an independent, free directory of non-toxic home and baby products. Every one of its 1,673 listed products from 684 brands passed the same published checklist: full material disclosure first, then 15 universal exclusions (no PFAS, no plastics or polyester where they touch food, skin or sleep, no chemical flame retardants, no phthalates, no bisphenols) plus category rules. Every product judged is recorded, not only the ones that pass: 5,344 judged so far, 3,911 passed, 1,209 failed. Brands cannot pay to be listed. The site earns an affiliate commission on some purchases, which never changes a verdict.
The checklist every product clears
Disclosure comes first: every material and ingredient, named. A proprietary blend, an unverifiable certificate or an open recall ends the review before chemistry is even considered. Then the exclusions, any one of which disqualifies:
No PFAS: In any form — no coatings, no stain or water repellent treatments, no PTFE.
No plastics or polyester: As a primary material in anything that contacts food, skin, or a sleep surface.
No chemical flame retardants: No PBDEs, chlorinated tris, antimony trioxide, or boric acid.
No phthalates: DEHP, DBP, BBP and the rest — including as undeclared fragrance carriers.
No BPA or bisphenols: BPA and its substitutes. "BPA-free" is not a pass — the replacement has to be named.
Category rules stack on top: what counts as a food-contact part in a kettle is not what counts in a crib mattress. The full criteria, with what we deliberately do not exclude.
How a product gets listed
- Found, not pitched. Candidates come from certification registries, curated shops, maker directories and marketplaces, one product category at a time, and every brand found in a category is enumerated so the small ones are judged beside the big ones.
- The brand first. Its materials policy is vetted once from its own pages and documentation. A brand-level failure fails every product it makes.
- Then the product. Materials, finishes, food-contact parts, certificate coverage. The verdict is recorded with the evidence URL and the criterion it rests on. Fail and could-not-evaluate verdicts are kept too; a brand that failed is not re-asked for a year.
- Verified before it is live. A listing needs a working merchant link, a current price, a photo we are licensed to show, and a place in the catalog. Links are then re-verified on a rolling basis; 100% of listed products were re-verified in the last 90 days.
What the research has found so far
- Products judged
- 5,344
- Passed
- 3,911
- Failed
- 1,209
- Could not be evaluated
- 224
Recorded verdicts across 72 categories, nothing modelled. The full breakdown by category, and the database in numbers.
How the site makes money, and what it cannot buy
Some merchant links are affiliate links: if you buy, the merchant pays a commission and your price is unchanged. That is the whole business model. Brands cannot pay to be listed, reviewed or ranked, there are no sponsored placements, and a commission never changes a verdict. Editorial policy and affiliate disclosure.
Questions people ask
- Is Nontoxic Nook independent?
- Yes. No brand pays to be listed, reviewed, or ranked, and there are no sponsored placements. Revenue is affiliate commission on some purchases, disclosed on every page; a commission never changes whether a product passes. The editorial policy and affiliate disclosure spell this out.
- What disqualifies a product?
- Any one of 15 universal exclusions published at nontoxicnook.com/our-promise, among them PFAS in any form, plastics or polyester as a primary material where they touch food, skin or a sleep surface, chemical flame retardants, phthalates, bisphenols, PVC, formaldehyde, undisclosed fragrance and heavy metals. Before the exclusions even apply, a product must fully disclose its materials; one that cannot be evaluated is not listed.
- How is a product checked?
- A brand’s materials policy is vetted once from its own pages and documentation, then every product gets its own check: materials, finishes, food-contact parts and certificate coverage. Each verdict is recorded with the evidence URL and the criterion it rests on, whether it passed or failed. Before a product is listed its merchant link and price are verified, and links are re-verified on a rolling basis (currently 100% re-verified within 90 days).
- Do you list products that failed?
- No. Of 5,344 products judged so far, 1,209 failed and 224 could not be evaluated; none of those is listed. The counts are published by category at nontoxicnook.com/our-promise/in-numbers. Failing products are not named there; each guide’s “What we passed on” section names what it rejected and why.
- Who runs it?
- Lucas Gruber, the founder and editor. I'm a designer in San Francisco who spends a lot of time indoors. A couple of years ago I got obsessed with a realization: the synthetic materials and fabrics throughout our homes are constantly shedding into the air we breathe. I've been on a mission to change that in my own home through research, and I made Nontoxic Nook to share that research and list the products I'd actually want to live with.
- Can an AI assistant use the vetted catalog?
- Yes. The catalog is readable by machines as well as people: a read-only MCP server at api.nontoxicnook.com/api/mcp, llms.txt, and a markdown mirror of every guide and product page (append .md to the URL). Details at nontoxicnook.com/connect.
Related: the full criteria, the database in numbers, connect an AI assistant, about the editor. Canonical URL: https://nontoxicnook.com/how-we-vet.