Brand Audits

A brand audit answers one question: what does this company actually publish, and what does it keep to itself? We report the disclosure and the gap. We do not tell you a brand is dangerous — that is a verdict no reader should accept from a website.

What an audit covers

• The published standard — the brand’s own restricted-substances list, ingredient pages and safety documentation.
• The gap — what stays proprietary, and whether that is industry-standard or unusual.
• Third-party classification — how EWG, the EPA or the FDA classify the compounds the brand names.
• Regulatory record — recalls, enforcement actions and advertising rulings, cited to the source.
• Claim accuracy — whether the marketing language matches the disclosure behind it.

Why the wording on a label matters

Most disputes in this space are not about chemistry. They are about which claim a brand chose to make.

“PFOA-free” is true of essentially every pan sold legally in the United States — PFOA was phased out from around 2013. It answers a question from a decade ago. “PFAS-free” is a different statement entirely, and a pan coated in PTFE cannot make it, because PTFE is a PFAS compound. That distinction is what produced a $2.5 million settlement in the HexClad case.

The same pattern runs through fragrance. A brand publishing a named restricted-substances list is making a checkable commitment. A brand printing “clean” is making none — as the Pura audit works through in detail.

What we will not do

• No toxicity verdicts on named companies. We report what is disclosed and what recognised bodies say about it. The conclusion is yours.
• No invented lab results. Every figure belongs to whoever produced it and is linked so you can check.
• No paid placement. A brand cannot buy coverage here, or a better assessment.
• No omission by convenience. Where a brand discloses well, we say so — including brands with no affiliate programme.

Brands are welcome to send corrections. If we have misread your published documentation, send the source and we will update the page.

Where to go next

Brand audits answer a question about one company. If you want the category view instead — every product of a given type, compared on the same criteria — start with the product guides. If your question is about a single compound rather than a company, Free From traces one chemical across every product it appears in.

Audits are built from published disclosures, regulatory filings and third-party classifications. Read the full methodology.

Published audits in this section