I think it's fairly clear that I like products. Hair products and cosmetics. I'm only a tad bit of a product junkie. I would be a HUGE product junkie if I wasn't an ingredients snob.
Ingredients I try to avoid in general:
Propylene glycol
PhenoxyethanolParabens
Cyclopentasiloxane
Ingredients I avoid specifically in hair products: Mineral oilSiliconesSulfates
It's absolutely amazing how common those ingredients are, even with records showing that they can be harmful. Pick up a random product near you right now, I'd put money that they are in the ingredient list.
Label checking is annoying. But I research pretty much every ingredient on EWG Cosmetic database and anything that has ever been linked to cancer, I will not buy a product with it in there. I will not. I try to stick with products/ingredients with 0-2 ratings.
I will be the first to admit that I check labels more frequently on cosmetics than I do on food...which I know is BAD, but I'm working on it! I do make most of my meals from scratch, and 95% of our meat comes from Five Star Home Foods and is natural/organic so I'm not doing horrible in that department. I also actively avoid high fructose corn-syrup, and pay attention to the order of ingredients in food to see what it's really filled with.
Are you ingredient conscious? What ingredients do you actively avoid?