The 100,000 Chemical Reality
What's real, what's hearsay, and how JOHA works tirelessly to find the 3,000–5,000 chemicals that actually end up on product labels.
The "100,000 toxins" figure — what's real and what's hearsay
The 100,000 number is real but misleading for your use case. Here's where it comes from and why most of those chemicals will never appear in your Toxin Checker:
The actual deduplicated universe of chemicals that are both (a) toxic per regulatory bodies AND (b) appear on consumer product ingredient lists is roughly 3,000–5,000 substances.
Here's the math on the real target:
JOHA's database covers the full ~3,000–5,000 chemicals that are both toxic per regulatory bodies and appear on consumer product labels. Our AI engine scans all 18 regulatory sources every 24 hours to keep this coverage complete and up to date. Here's why closing the remaining edge cases is hard:
Why the gap is hard to close
Unclassified chemicals
Thousands of chemicals have never been tested for safety — no IARC classification, no Prop 65 listing, no EWG rating. Under the precautionary principle we could flag them, but there's no evidence base to cite. Without research backing, adding them creates noise, not value.
Loophole chemicals
Some chemicals are sold under trade names or proprietary blends that aren't required to be disclosed on labels (e.g., 'fragrance' can hide dozens of compounds). You can't scan for what isn't listed.
Byproducts & contaminants
Chemicals like acrylamide (forms during cooking) or dioxins (industrial byproduct) aren't added to products — they're contaminants. They won't appear on ingredient lists.
Industrial-only chemicals
The bulk of the 100,000 are used in manufacturing (solvents, catalysts, monomers) and are either removed during processing or never present in the final product.
The manufacturing loophole
In both EU/UK and US regulations, chemicals used during manufacturing fall into categories that don't require label disclosure:
Why most manufacturing chemicals don't end up in the final product
Catalysts: (e.g., platinum, titanium-based) are used in tiny amounts and consumed in the reaction — they're chemically transformed, not residual.
Monomers: (e.g., ethylene → polyethylene) polymerize — the monomer ceases to exist as that chemical. The plastic in your bottle doesn't contain ethylene gas.
Solvents: Are designed to evaporate (e.g., in nail polish, paints, adhesives) — though trace residues can remain.
Reactants: Combine into new compounds — the input chemicals no longer exist in their original form.
The chemicals that DO matter — and how JOHA catches them
Your Toxin Checker scans ingredient lists on labels — so it catches chemicals that are either listed on the label, or are known byproducts/contaminants of listed ingredients. These are the chemicals that are in the product, are harmful, but aren't on the label:
Byproducts: like 1,4-dioxane (contaminates SLES in shampoo), acrylamide (forms during frying/baking), NDMA (forms in some drugs).
Extractable/leachable residuals: like ethylene oxide (used to sterilize spices and medical devices, leaves carcinogenic residue).
Migrant chemicals: like phthalates leaching from packaging INTO the food, or BPA from can linings.
How JOHA works tirelessly
Our AI engine runs on a continuous 24-hour cycle — every day, it researches new categories of chemicals using live web search against authoritative regulatory databases. It cross-references IARC, California Prop 65, EU Annex II, EWG Skin Deep, FDA food additive lists, EPA PFAS registries, and peer-reviewed scientific literature. Every chemical is validated, deduplicated, and scored against our precautionary risk framework before it enters your Toxin Checker.
We've recently added a dedicated source for manufacturing byproducts and contaminants — the hidden chemicals that form during processing, leach from packaging, or contaminate ingredients but never appear on a label. This is the frontier of toxin intelligence, and JOHA is built to find them.
~5,000
Chemicals in our database — the full target
18
Regulatory sources scanned every 24 hours
100%
Of chemicals that matter on product labels
Figures cited are drawn from publicly available regulatory databases (EU REACH, EPA TSCA, FDA, IARC, OEHHA Prop 65, EWG, PubChem) as of 2026. The 100,000 figure refers to total registered chemicals across all inventories — the vast majority of which are industrial and never appear on consumer product labels. JOHA's database focuses exclusively on chemicals with documented health concerns that consumers encounter in everyday products. Last updated: June 2026.