The bodies Truva reads.
Six named organisations, and they do not all answer the same question. A regulator saying an ingredient is restricted in a bottle and a professional college saying it is inadvisable in pregnancy are two different claims, and knowing which one a flag rests on is most of what makes the flag useful.
- Named bodies
- 6
- Each one publishing a different kind of answer
- Links checked
- 14
- Fetched, followed through redirects, confirmed to return 200
- Assessments
- 7,212
- The set the per body counts below are drawn from
The six, one at a time
- ACOG · United States
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
The professional body for obstetricians and gynaecologists in the United States. It writes clinical practice guidance for its members and maintains a plain language patient library alongside it, and the patient pages are the ones a flag on this site usually rests on.
What it answers. Whether a treatment is acceptable during pregnancy or while breastfeeding, in the terms a clinician would use with a patient rather than in the terms a regulator would use with a manufacturer.
What Truva uses it for. The starting point for any pregnancy or breastfeeding verdict. Where ACOG names an ingredient in either direction, that is the strongest single signal Truva has, and where it names nothing the site says so rather than filling the gap.
Named in 653 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. - FDA · United States
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
The federal regulator for cosmetics, over the counter drugs and sunscreen filters in the United States. It publishes the list of ingredients prohibited or restricted in a cosmetic, and the monographs that govern what an over the counter topical drug may contain.
What it answers. What may legally be in a product sold in the United States, and at what concentration. That is a different question from whether something is advisable for you, and the two are easy to confuse.
What Truva uses it for. Restrictions and prohibitions, and the concentration ceilings on over the counter actives. When a Truva flag says a limit exists, the FDA is usually where the number came from.
Named in 505 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. - AAD · United States
American Academy of Dermatology
The professional body for dermatologists in the United States. Its public library is written by its members and is unusually specific about topical actives, which is why it turns up on this site more often than its size would suggest.
What it answers. What a dermatologist advises for a particular skin condition, including which actives to use sparingly or discuss first during pregnancy.
What Truva uses it for. The second clinical opinion, and frequently the more conservative one. Where ACOG permits an ingredient and sets no limit while the AAD sets one, Truva flags the disagreement rather than quietly picking a side.
Named in 462 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. - SCCS · European Union
Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety
An independent scientific committee that advises the European Commission. Its opinions are what set the concentration limits cosmetics sold in the EU have to stay under, ingredient by ingredient, and they are published in full.
What it answers. At what concentration a specific ingredient is safe in a cosmetic, and in which product types. It is the body most likely to have published an actual number.
What Truva uses it for. Numbers. An SCCS opinion is what turns a vague concern into a caution a reader can act on, because it says how much and in what, rather than saying be careful.
Named in 473 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. - CIR · United States
Cosmetic Ingredient Review
An expert panel that reviews the safety of cosmetic ingredients and publishes its assessments. It was established in 1976 by the industry trade association, now the Personal Care Products Council, and it is funded by that council; CIR states that the panel and the review process are independent of it. Both halves of that are worth carrying when you read one of its reports.
What it answers. Whether an ingredient family is safe as used in cosmetics, at the concentrations the industry actually formulates at.
What Truva uses it for. Family level assessments. CIR is the only body here that publishes by ingredient family rather than by product or by life stage, which makes it the one thing to read when an individual compound has no literature of its own.
Named in 43 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. - NIH · United States
National Institutes of Health
Two parts of it are used here. NICHD, the institute for child health and human development, for pregnancy. And LactMed, the National Library of Medicine's database on drugs and lactation, for breastfeeding.
What it answers. What is known about a substance and breast milk, which is the question the other five answer least well, and what the federal research record holds on a pregnancy topic.
What Truva uses it for. Breastfeeding verdicts. LactMed is the only source on this list written specifically about what passes into milk and at what dose, and an empty LactMed entry is the clearest form of no published rule there is.
Named in 28 of the 7,212 assessments published on this site. nichd.nih.gov answers 403 to a HEAD request and 200 to a GET. A link checker that only sends HEAD reports a dead link that is not dead.
Every link above was fetched with a browser user agent, followed through its redirects, and confirmed to return 200 on . Where a URL redirects, the destination is what is recorded rather than the path that happens to be better known.
What being on this list does not mean
None of these six has reviewed Truva, endorsed it, or has any affiliation with it. They publish; we read what they publish. That is the entire relationship.
The counts above describe how often our own prose refers to each body, not how far that body agrees with what we wrote.
The practical version: when an assessment on this site names a body, follow the link and read the body. That is what the links are for, and it is the only step that makes a citation worth anything.
Two worked examples, if you would rather see it than read about it. The avoid verdict on retinol in pregnancy is ACOG and the AAD advising against retinoids, and nothing else. And the keratosis pilaris post turns on a salicylic acid limit that is the AAD’s rather than ACOG’s, which is a distinction this site got wrong once and corrected.
What is deliberately not on this list
A citation list is as much about what was left out, so here is what was and why.
- Ingredient aggregators. Every row in the ingredient database carries a link to one aggregator site, and this site does not render it. An aggregator is a useful reference and it is not a primary authority, and one weak citation underneath a page that also cites ACOG and the FDA does not average out. It reframes the strong ones.
- Hazard rating sites. Databases that score an ingredient on a scale of their own are a rating rather than a source, and citing one would mean citing somebody else’s opinion as evidence for ours.
- Other blogs, and other apps. Nothing on this site is sourced from a competitor, a listicle or a brand’s own education page. Where the honest answer is that nobody has published a rule, the page says that instead.
- Individual studies, on the ingredient pages. The blog cites primary literature directly, because a post makes an argument and can carry a paper. An ingredient page states a verdict, and a verdict should rest on a body that has weighed the literature rather than on one paper we picked out of it.
Truva summarises published guidance from the bodies named on this page. It has no access to your medical history and it is not a substitute for your doctor, dermatologist or midwife. Nothing here has been reviewed by a clinician, and nothing here is a diagnosis or a prescription. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding or being treated for PCOS, take the ingredient list to the person looking after you.
A flag that names nobody is an opinion.
Which is why every flag in Truva carries the body it came from, on the flag itself, so you can read the original and decide we have read it wrong.
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