Currently a one-man side project:

https://laboratory.love

Last year PlasticList discovered that 86% of food products they tested contain plastic chemicals—including 100% of baby food tested. The EU just lowered their "safe" BPA limit by 20,000x. Meanwhile, the FDA allows levels 100x higher than what Europe considers safe.

This seemed like a solvable problem.

Laboratory.love lets you crowdfund independent testing of specific products you actually buy. Think Consumer Reports meets Kickstarter, but focused on detecting endocrine disruptors in your yogurt, your kid's snacks, whatever you're curious about.

Here's how it works: Find a product (or suggest one), contribute to its testing fund, get detailed lab results when testing completes. If a product doesn't reach its funding goal within 365 days, automatic refund. All results are published openly. Laboratory.love uses the same methodology as PlasticList.org, which found plastic chemicals in everything from prenatal vitamins to ice cream. But instead of researchers choosing what to test, you do.

The bigger picture: Companies respond to market pressure. Transparency creates that pressure. When consumers have data, supply chains get cleaner.

Technical details: Laboratory.love works with ISO 17025-accredited labs, test three samples from different production lots, detect chemicals down to parts per billion. The testing protocol is public.

So far a couple dozen products have received some funding, six products have been fully funded (five product results published, the sixth is at the lab as I write this!)

You can browse products, add your own, or just follow specific items you're curious about: https://laboratory.love

Really cool project. A quick note, I had to dig in your FAQ to find your definition for LOQ:

> "What does 'LOQ' mean in your results? > > Limit of Quantification (LOQ) is the lowest concentration we can reliably measure. Results below LOQ are marked "<LOQ" - this doesn't mean zero, just below our measurement threshold."

IMO this definition should be on every results page, since most of the pages have more LOQs than anything else.

Looking at the tofu reports, I really don't know what to make of them. Is there a way to give more meaning to them for the average person? Also, I'd love to see a sort by "almost funded" option.

I LOVE this idea. Tangentially, a more pimitive case: in trying to recycle or reuse jars or carboard containers food comes in, I wish there was a simple service for ranking brands. For example, some jam jars have labels that can be immediatey removed - others tear and stick to the jar. Similarly, some brands use excessive plastics and packaging, others less so.

I love this idea. I imagine it could be extended to other types of testing - for example, I've always wished there was a way to more readily verify whether the contents of vitamins were as specified on the label.

I love this!

I keep telling my euro-friends that food and health regulation could potentially be enforced by the free market more effectively than by corruptible government, and this is a perfect example of this.

I'd want to see all products I can buy in there, with all possible chemical, ingredients and nutrients, and clear indications of good/bad, a little bit like in Yuka. You should partner with them maybe even!

This is great. I thought about a different model even before plasticlist: make a subscription and test various products, but people will have a number of upvotes based on their sub streak. They vote for food to test, and then you show results to everyone subbed. Kind of like what examined does, but they do deep dives into medical topics for subs. I think this model will work better than the one you currently have. Awesome project anyways!

It is extremely weird to me that countries don't do that on taxpayers money and show the results publicly, this is what they should do.

A couple of suggestions:

The completed entry should include the date of the test results, so currency can be judged,

Ideally the completed entry should contain a scan of the full test report from each of the accredited laboratories.

Wow, great idea, simple website and hopefully a positive impact, not often you see all three in one project :) Good job!

I'm guessing it's limited to US products and US labs? Would love something similar in Europe and/or EU, but it isn't clear if you're limited to US/North America right now, would be nice if it was a bit clearer up front :)

This is great. We definitely need something like this.

Where are the safe levels limits to interpret test results? This would be a small addition that would make any of the results interpretable. I had to open the PlasticList website to get the baseline safe thresholds for each chemical and to do some rough approximations.

I suggest you xpost to Bryan Johnson's Blueprint community. I think might help you get a lot more food tested. That community is probably ICP and also can amplify the message.

What would be a good strategy to prevent companies from cottoning on to this and gaming the system? They could for example change packaging on production runs for a product that’s undergoing laboratory.love funding campaign.

Wow! I'm a food&bev founder and absolutely love what you are doing!

How can I submit my products for testing?

Really nice project. US regulation of food is a joke. Good luck!

This is so incredibly important, well done. The problem of our food being steeped in plastic hits the news here and there, but it should be front and center in my opinion. Testosterone has been plummeting for decades and it scares the heck out of me. The hormone whose job is "form goals, shrug off failure, and try again!" is being destroyed and corporations are given a free pass to pump us full of phthalates and bisphenol. It's infuriating.

Can you talk a bit about the tech stack?

Cool project!

Wow... AI told me that all the tested products far exceed the EU limits!

Love this! But I’m struggling to understand the results