10/26/2026
Eleven Octobers ago, my wife Chen was 38. Then breast cancer. Surgery, chemo, radiation. Cancer changes things. Here’s one: we started reading ingredient lists. We didn’t know why cancer had hit, but we wanted to do everything within our reach to reduce the risk of it returning.
I remember Chen at our kids’ bathroom sink, holding a bar of soap and asking a question neither of us could answer: “Is this safe?”
That ingredient list looked like it was written not to be read. Making sense of it took days of research. So I put my background in computational biology and software to work. We created Clearya, a free app that reads ingredient lists and flags chemicals you may want to reconsider based on scientific findings and regulatory restrictions. We built it for our family and gave it to everyone.
In 2020 I wrote a post for Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP) asking what would happen if a million people verified every ingredient. Our app has now been used millions of times. Messages from cancer survivors, parents, and other users tell us how much that sense of agency matters. But millions of scans and better-informed purchases alone haven’t fixed the market.
Last month Silent Spring Institute published a study mapping where more than 900 breast cancer-relevant chemicals show up in the economy (Kay et al., 2026). Five hundred of them are used in consumer products: cosmetics, detergents, plastics. None of them got there by chance. The ingredient was chosen years earlier by a chemist, approved by a buyer, sold by a retailer, funded by an investor.
We built Clearya to help people make informed choices. But we also want better choices on the shelf to begin with.
That is why our work now goes beyond the app, supporting researchers, agencies, and advocates working toward safer products. It is also why I joined the board of Production Action, a nonprofit organization whose methodology guides companies in assessing chemical hazards, finding safer alternatives, and measuring their progress.
Chen still reads labels. The app makes it simple. The goal of our collective work is for her not to have to.
