Who runs it
Is That Natural? is run by Paul Crichton, a cosmetic chemist and formulator based in Canada.
The site exists because “natural” is not a regulated word. A product can be called natural whether nine tenths of it grew or nine tenths of it came out of a cracker, and a shopper has no way to tell the two apart. There is, however, a published method for measuring the difference — so this site measures it, ingredient by ingredient, and puts the working next to the answer.
What the NOI is
The Natural Origin Index is the fraction of an ingredient’s mass that can be traced back to a natural feedstock rather than to petrochemistry, calculated with the mass-fraction method described in ISO 16128-2. It runs from 0 to 1, and it describes origin only — it says nothing about whether an ingredient is safe, effective, gentle or well made.
The method page works through the calculation in full, including molecules that split awkwardly down the middle.
How an entry is made
Every entry starts from published facts. Molecular formula, mass and structure come from PubChem; identity, INCI naming and cosmetic function come from the EU CosIng register. From there the score is computed with a documented method — the same rules applied the same way to every molecule, so that two ingredients built from the same fragments cannot end up with different answers for no stated reason.
Each value is then reviewed before it is published. Entries that have been checked by hand, fragment by fragment, say so on the ingredient’s own page; where the arithmetic can be shown, it is shown, so you can disagree with the result on the evidence rather than on trust.
Scores are not permanent. When a better source, a clearer synthesis route or a plain mistake comes to light, the number changes and the change is recorded. Corrections and changelog lists what has changed and the conventions the reviews follow.
Using the data
The ingredient data is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Copy it, republish it, build on it, check it — just credit it. Browse the database to see what is covered.
Working with brands
Alongside the public database, we assess whole formulas for brands and formulators. Formulas are received in confidence; the final product score is published only if the brand chooses to publish it. See the services page for what that involves.
If something here is wrong
Tell us and it gets fixed. The most useful reports name the ingredient, say which part of the entry looks wrong, and point at a source. Get in touch, and see corrections for how changes are handled once they are made.