How we write this

Most ingredient content on the internet is written to make you anxious, because anxious people click, and anxious people buy. We are trying to do something different, and the only way to make that claim mean anything is to write down the rules and let you hold us to them.

The rules

The answer goes first

Every page leads with what we actually think, in one or two sentences. The reasoning follows for anyone who wants to check the working. If you have to read nine paragraphs to find out whether something matters, the page was written for a search engine rather than for you.

We separate hazard from exposure

Almost every ingredient scare confuses two different things. Hazard is what a substance can do in principle. Exposure is how much of it actually reaches you, by what route, and how often. Salt is hazardous at the right dose. So is water. A page that says an ingredient is "linked to" something, without saying at what dose or by what route, has told you nothing, and we treat that kind of writing as a failure rather than a style.

We say plainly when something is fine

This is the rule that most distinguishes us, and the one that costs the most traffic. "This is not something to worry about" is a legitimate finding. When that is what the evidence supports, that is what the page says, even though a reassuring headline will always travel less far than a frightening one.

We publish no hazard scores

No number out of a hundred, no letter grade, no colour. A single score has to mean the same thing for everybody, and the question people are actually asking is whether a specific product is a problem for them specifically. Nut oil is a fine ingredient and a serious matter for a small number of people. One number cannot carry both facts, and a number is much easier to screenshot out of context than a sentence is.

Sources are primary where possible, and always linked

We prefer regulators and the peer-reviewed literature to secondary coverage: EFSA, the FDA, EU regulations, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, clinical guidance from bodies like ACOG. Every ingredient page carries its sources at the bottom, with the publisher named, so you can go and disagree with us at the source. Where the evidence is thin, contested, or based on doses no human encounters, the page says so rather than rounding it up into a clean answer.

Other languages are written, not translated

A page in Turkish or Hebrew is not the English page with the words swapped. It starts from that market's own labelling rules and its own reader, it decides its own sections, and it cites that country's regulator and that country's clinicians rather than ours. An English page is a reference for facts and never a template for structure. Where a market's rules make a page meaningless, and a guide to a US supplement panel means nothing in Istanbul, we do not publish it there at all. A translation that reads like a translation tells you the writer was not thinking about you, and that is a reasonable thing to hold against us.

We name the limits

Pura reads what is printed on a label. It cannot detect cross-contamination, it cannot detect adulteration, and it cannot tell you how much of an ingredient is in a product when the label does not say. Pages that touch those limits state them, because the most dangerous thing a tool like ours can do is feel more complete than it is.

Comparison pages have to concede ground

Every page comparing Pura to another app must name where that app is genuinely better, and the requirement is enforced in the code: a comparison page without at least one competitor strength will not build. A comparison that only flatters the company writing it is an advertisement, and you would be right to discount it entirely.

No affiliate money, no sponsored ingredients

We take no commission on anything we mention, no brand pays to appear or to be left out, and no ingredient page is influenced by anyone selling that ingredient. The only thing we are selling is the app, and the link to it sits at the bottom of the page where you can ignore it.

This is not medical advice

When the evidence moves

It does, and pretending otherwise is its own kind of dishonesty. Our page on potassium sorbate is the worked example, and it is there deliberately.

The acceptable daily intake for sorbates was set at 25 mg per kilogram of body weight in 1996. In 2015 EFSA re-evaluated it and cut it to a temporary 3 mg/kg, which is a large reduction. In 2019, after a new reproductive toxicity study, EFSA raised it again to 11 mg/kg. Quote only the 2015 step and you have a scandal about a preservative whose safety limit was slashed. Quote only 2019 and you have regulators going soft. Neither is what happened. Better data arrived and the number was revised, twice, which is the system working.

We write that history into the page instead of quietly publishing whichever figure is current, because how a number moved is usually more informative than the number.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. When we do, we fix the page and say what changed rather than editing quietly. Every page carries the date it was last updated, and comparison pages carry the date we last checked the other product, because features change and a stale comparison is a misleading one.

If you find an error, tell us at hello@pura.to. A source we missed or misread is the most useful thing you can send us, and we would rather be corrected by you than keep being wrong in public.

Who writes this

We are not doctors, dermatologists or toxicologists, and this page exists partly so that you know that. What we do is read the primary sources carefully, link them, describe what they say without inflating it, and defer to clinicians on anything clinical. Where a page is beyond what we can responsibly say, it says that too.