I appreciate people like you who care about the effects of the products we buy on ourselves and the environment. I do too. But while the EWG does some OK work, they also do a lot of fearmongering, and you can plainly see it in this link. Look at the three big scary red "F" items.

The first scary red "F" is sodium hypochlorite. This is ordinary bleach. EWG cites two reasons for the big scary "F". The first is aquatic toxicity. This is a badly misplaced fear. Consider the fact that chlorine is the most widely used disinfectant in municipal water systems, in the form of hypochlorite and chloramine. Chlorine is dumped by the ton into the water that comes out of your taps and goes down your drains. The extra chlorine from dish detergents is insignificant compared to this and other sources such as laundry bleach.

Also under the chlorine entry, EWG lists a few organic chlorine compounds. This is very misleading. Detergents don't contain any of these chemicals. Rather, they can possibly be generated when free chlorine is added to water containing a lot of organics. Many organohalogens are indeed toxic, but by far most of them that you'll encounter are generated by municipal water treatment systems. You drink and bathe in water that contains random organohalogens every day, by virtue of the chlorine used in municipal treatment. The small extra quantities generated in your dishwasher aren't a threat to you unless you make it a habit to drink the exhaust water.

The second scary red "F" on their list is zinc carbonate. This is absurd. They say it's primarily because of its potential effects on aquatic life, which I suppose might be a consideration if someone tries to use dishwasher detergent to clean a fish tank. The second reason is "general systemic/organ effects". This is the really absurd part. Zinc is an essential mineral in the human diet in large quantities. In very high doses over time, excess zinc can cause problems, but such large doses have nothing to do with dishwasher detergent residues. You'd have to actually eat large quantities of detergent daily for a long period of time, and even that would be unlikely to cause zinc overdose because the carbonate form has low bioavailability.

The third scary red "F" is "colors". They don't say what the colors are, or why they would be more of a concern than in any other cosmetic or cleaning product.

The fourth scary red "F" is "stabilizer". They don't say what the chemical is, so there's no way to know whether it's any less bullshit than the first three, or even if it exists in the product.

The scary orange "D" items continue the absurdity:

- Nitric acid: I think EWG is confused here. Nitric acid would be used only in minute quantities to adjust pH. Dishwasher detergents are very alkaline, so it's not possible for nitric acid to remain in a liquid product.

- Fragrance: Welcome to life. Everything is scented. I hate it, but putting a scary orange "D" next to it should make you roll your eyes in light of the other fragrances that saturate thousands of other products that don't get rinsed away, and thus stay in the air around you.

- Polyacrylates: you know where else you'll find polyacrylates? Fucking everywhere. Nearly every liquid cosmetic product you'll find uses polyacrylates. Shampoos, hand soap, dish soap, etc. All baby diapers are now filled with polyacrylates. They're added to potting soil to increase moisture retention. Don't eat too much of the solid form because it can expand in your stomach and cause bloating and possibly blockage, but tiny amounts of them are not the least bit threatening in your dishwasher.

In summary, don't blindly trust the EWG. None of these ingredients is the least bit dangerous even if they remained in significant quantities on your dishes, which they don't.