Useful Green Stuff: Wired Magazine's Monthly "What's Inside"

My husband subscribes to Wired  and a couple of month's ago they had a controversial article on what it will really take to fix the carbon problem. I usually don't read Wired because it's mostly a techie magazine (or so I thought), but I read this article and then I proceeded to read the magazine from cover to cover. It's a really great magazine and written in a way that even someone like me can enjoy and understand.

They have a monthly feature called "What's Inside" where they break down the ingredients of common household products. Last month, the product was Easy Off. This month, the product is Just For Men Shampoo-In Hair Color.

"What's Inside" explains what the individual ingredients in the product do in that particular product and what they are used for in other things, too. I'm sorry I can't find last months copy because the Easy Off stuff was really scary. But here are some of Just For Men's ingredients.

Trisodium EDTA - in this product it's used to "suck up copper in tap water, which might otherwise react with the product to create damaging radicals." What else is it used for? According to the article it's used to clean up after radioactive spills.

Ethanolamine - in this product it swells the hair's out layer so it can absorb the dye. But, it was also an ingredient in Easy Off that worked as a solvent.

You can see how information like this might be helpful in choosing whether or not to use a product. Reading an ingredients list on products is often like reading something in a foreign language. Now when my husband's Wired magazine shows up each month, I'm going to be reading it, too, hoping to get some useful information.