As a child, one of my least favorite activities was getting my hair styled. It required a lot of time and patience -- two things I had in short supply. 

In a dramatic illustration of why it is essential that makers of cleaning products fully disclose their ingredients on product labels, the release of Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning has resulted in the revelation that more than half of a line of cleaners marketed to parents of babies contain an ingredient that releases formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen.

Less than a year after the state of California banned baby bottles and sippy cups made with the toxic plastics chemical bisphenol-A, BPA, the federal government has followed suit.

Last month, the New York Times published a story about my efforts when I was pregnant to rid my home of toxic chemicals. The story featured a photo of my 18-month-old daughter and recounted how I threw out a large pile of cosmetics, cleaners and other products that my research, using EWG's online Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, found to contain dangerous substances. While at the time I thought I was doing the right thing for my family, when I read readers' comments, I felt as if I were on Nickelodeon, in one of those scenes when an unsuspecting person has an entire bucket of green slime dumped on her head.

Thirty-four years ago, Saturday Night Live’s ad parody, Little Chocolate Donuts, seemed like absurdist comedy. But the iconic John Belushi bit – co-written by current Minnesota Senator Al Franken – is now a sad reality. Parents have good reason to worry about the sugar content of children’s breakfast cereals, according to an Environmental Working Group review of 84 popular brands.

Of course you don't serve your kids Twinkies or Chips Ahoy! cookies for breakfast. But many of us are serving our kids just as much - or more - sugar every day in the good ol' American cereal bowl. 

Amid an epidemic of childhood obesity, food companies are taking lessons from the tobacco industry on how to target children with advertisements for unhealthy products. The Sensible Food Policy Coalition is the latest industry attempt to undermine public health by lobbying Congress, federal agencies, the White House and the general public with misinformation and bad science.

EWG strongly supports the proposed nutrition principles of the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children.

Maine just became the ninth state to ban the use of bisphenol A in baby products.