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Until I folded the first load of clothes—and my hands broke out with itchy red welts. Meanwhile, the sneezing hadn’t subsided.

I mean, my poor mom. I called her immediately and started ranting: “Are you crazy? I can’t believe you wanted me to use this stuff—there’s no way it’s safe for babies!” She thought
I
was the crazy one. “We used to use that stuff all the time,” she said. “If you don’t want my advice, then don’t ask for it. But don’t call me and get mad at me when I’m just trying to help you.”

I took a moment, realized she was right, and resolved to Google it.

I figured that would be the end of the story.

Except, as it turns out, that was just the beginning.

M
AYBE SOMEONE A LITTLE LESS
 . . . curious (my husband, Cash, might say obsessive!) would have just shelved the fancy baby detergent and called it a day. But that’s not me. I know you probably know me from
Fantastic Four
or
Sin City
, and you might already be thinking, “Why is this chick so worked up about a laundry detergent?”

But being an actress hasn’t always been my life. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money. My parents were young and just starting out when I was born. Things were definitely tight. We moved around a lot while my dad was in the military, and then after he got out, we moved into one of my grandparents’ homes so we could live in a better house than my parents could afford at the time. My mom and dad each worked about three jobs during certain periods, and we had to do a lot of coupon cutting and sometimes thrift-store shopping to get by. On top of all that, I was constantly sick. I had kidney surgery, tonsils taken out, cysts removed, and was diagnosed with severe asthma and allergies—all before I was eight years old!

Anytime I got a cold, it went straight to pneumonia. I was hospitalized several times for my asthma or related illnesses, which meant missing a lot of school and always being sort of out of sync with my classmates and teachers. The hospital where I stayed most often was a 2-hour drive from home, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with my mom and nurses in the hospital rooms, where reading and playing make-believe were my escape. When I did go back to school, I had usually already finished the assigned reading while the rest of the class was still on
chapter 3
. This meant I would get bored . . . and talk. A lot.

I guess being immersed in a more adult world at such a young age and being aware of my family’s financial struggles caused me to grow up kind of fast. I always thought of adults as my equals, and I wasn’t afraid to voice my opinions. Which isn’t always a good thing as a kid . . . but it is what influenced my questioning of everything around me. I didn’t like seeing social injustice of any kind, especially if it impacted women and children.

Today there are more than 80,000 chemicals on the market that have never been properly studied to see if they’re toxic to our health.

Later, in my teens and twenties, I started working with nonprofits that help families in need, like Step Up Women’s Network, V-Day, the Children’s Defense Fund, ONE, March of Dimes, and Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families. Today, I’m on the board of Baby2Baby, a charity that collects new and gently used baby gear (i.e., diapers, wipes, cribs, car seats, and clothing—basically everything a parent needs) to distribute to 40 nonprofit partners, who then deliver it to families in need in and around Los Angeles. These are people dealing with homelessness, domestic violence, and poverty, making their struggles as parents unimaginable to most of us. We also bring truckloads of supplies to the pregnant and parenting teenagers who attend LA’s McAlister High School. Spending time with those girls reinforces my mission to challenge the status quo and do anything I can to help moms in need, who are just trying to do what’s best for their babies. It brings me back to my core values and, really, to my authentic self—that’s another part of Honest Living.

So back to that expensive box of baby detergent: I couldn’t stop thinking about how I was going to be a mom with a baby to nurture and protect. Yet here I was trying to do something so simple—wash her clothes!—and it didn’t feel safe. That wasn’t right. And when I thought about how that detergent was so successful at marketing itself as the most pure, responsible choice for your baby—so they could charge moms
more
? Well, that made me really mad.

When I get mad, I ask questions, just like I did as a little kid: Why should safer products only be available to those who can afford them? Why would a laundry detergent sold today be different from the same brand of laundry detergent that my mom used 30 years ago? Just what was in this stuff anyway—and why would it make me break out in a rash?

The more I learned, the more questions I had.

I
T TURNS OUT
that my mom wasn’t crazy when she told me to use that special brand of baby detergent. The detergents—and cleaning supplies and baby clothes and toiletries and so on—that we buy today really
are
different from what our moms used to buy. Eventually I learned by listening to experts such as Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, the director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, that there are more than 80,000 chemicals on the market that have never been properly studied to see if they’re toxic to our health—almost 30 percent more than were in our laundry detergent and other consumer goods when President Gerald Ford signed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1976. That special baby detergent? It may have been okay when my mom washed our baby clothes in the early 1980s, but today it contains synthetic fragrances and a chemical called propylene glycol, both of which can cause the skin rashes and other allergic reactions I experienced. It’s also made with diethylene glycol, which is a known neurotoxin—that means it can mess with your neurological system and cause learning delays and even brain damage. (See
this page
for a super-easy-to-understand guide to the unpronounceable words in this book!)

And here’s where things get bananas: The whole point of the Toxic Substances Control Act was to regulate the chemicals used in everyday products and
make things safer
—but instead, it’s done almost the exact opposite. The government doesn’t require any of these chemicals to be tested for safety before new products hit store shelves. The Food and Drug Administration can’t require a recall even if a product does start making people sick (although they can request one), while the Environmental Protection Agency has no recall power—and those are the government agencies in charge of making sure our consumer goods are safe.

Why is this situation so ridiculously messed up? The chemical industries have powerful lobbyists in Washington, DC, and their whole job is to find gaping loopholes in the TSCA and make sure those holes stay there. Plus the chemical corporations have huge marketing budgets and can afford to put together ad campaigns that will make you think their products are safe and even environmentally friendly, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. That’s called “greenwashing,” and it Makes. Me. Crazy. It’s so dishonest! These companies don’t care about people, let alone babies, who are the most vulnerable of all to these toxic chemical exposures—they care about protecting their profit margins. And that has to change. In 2011, I partnered with the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition to visit Washington, DC, and advocate for TSCA reform, because I don’t think a parent should need a chemistry degree to have a safe home. This is a totally nonpartisan issue, and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime—all it will do is put responsibility on the chemical companies to test their products for safety before we buy them. We’re still facing an uphill battle to close all those loopholes in the TSCA and put a regulatory system in place that truly protects American families—but every day, more moms and dads are joining the fight.

In the past 35 years, the EPA has restricted only 5 toxic substances and the FDA has banned 11. Meanwhile, the European Union has banned more than 1,100 chemicals that it considers unsafe in personal care products alone!

S
OON AFTER
my itchy brush with the baby detergent, I went to a launch party for a book called
Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home
by Christopher Gavigan. The timing couldn’t have been better—I was 7½ months pregnant and freaking out about the laundry and everything in our house. Christopher’s book gave me a thorough education on what, exactly, I needed to worry about and why.

I pretty much cornered Christopher at his party and said, “I’m losing my mind here. Please tell me that there’s a company I can trust, that makes products that really work and are safe for me to use around my baby!” But while he could point me to some very credible brands making safe, environmentally friendly products, all too often they were expensive, didn’t work so well, or were still toxic despite the eco-packaging. Plus I was still overwhelmed by the amount of research I had to do on every brand to figure out if they were the real deal or just greenwashing me with a lot of eco-promises that didn’t pan out.

That’s when I decided that if this company didn’t exist, I had to make it happen. After Christopher and I got to know each other, we thought: “Let’s create a family brand that offers products that work tremendously well and are affordable, beautiful—
and
don’t contain any of these chemicals.”

I knew it was a big dream. Plenty of people told me that I should launch with just
one
product, like a perfume or a body lotion. Or that I’d be better off licensing my name and putting it on a line of clothing or home goods, like a lot of celebrities do. But that wasn’t my passion. What I believe is that we need to make a safer environment for families, starting with the most vulnerable.

I also knew that parents today are way too busy to do tons of research and shop around. So the idea of one trusted company that met all of these needs and saved us a trip to the store was incredibly appealing.

It took us more than three years and a ton of hard work to go from that original aha! moment to the official launch of
Honest.com
in 2012. After all, I’m just a mom and an actress—not a toxicologist, a tech guru, or a businessperson. I had to surround myself with people who had the expertise I lacked. So with my cofounder and chief product officer Christopher Gavigan, who brings a ton of environmental health knowledge and branding experience from his time as the CEO of the national nonprofit Healthy Child Healthy World, we pitched Brian Lee, an e-commerce guru who cofounded
ShoeDazzle.com
and
LegalZoom.com
, to be our partner and CEO. Once Brian was on board, we got lucky and found Sean Kane, a master of managing and oversight, to be our COO. We decided that The Honest Company should offer customizable “bundles” of products so you get exactly what you need, delivered straight from us every month. This lowers our carbon footprint (since we don’t need to ship through wasteful distribution systems) and keeps our prices lower because we don’t have retail markups.