Welcome all, in this blog post, we'll be going over different soap making ingredients and how they affect our skin.
So let's just jump right into it. Your skin might be itchy, it might burn, be red, and dry. These are all reactions that our skin has to surroundings. What your skin reacts with matters, and so does what you put on it. It matters because you don't want your skin to be uncomfortable, because then you become uncomfortable. So how do we make sure that what we put on our skin is safe to do so and it will not make use uncomfortable. Well, in order to help with this, we've created this blog post in order to help your understand and make better choices at the time of purchase.
The first factor you should keep in mind when purchasing a new bar of soap is that you need to keep in mind that "some soaps contain chemicals, including fragrances that may harm health or cause skin irritation". It might sound obvious, but let's get real, how many of you do actually take the time to read what's on these anyways? Most of us just pick what we consider cost effective off the shelve in the supermarket. In the article I just linked above, we also learn that there are "potentially harmful chemicals" that these soaps we purchase contain. Let's learn a little about these.
Which soaps contain harmful ingredients?
Ideally, according to the same article I just linked, you want to keep an eye in the following harmful ingredients: "preservatives, parabens, and binders." You also want to stay away from "fragrances, preservatives, skin irritants, and chemicals that may affect your health."
Also, if you're having a hard time deciding what soap to buy because you're not sure about the health hazards they may cause, you can look at the Environmental Working Group Skin Deep database. This database will give you an understanding on how to rate soaps better and determine if they contain harmful ingredients.
For example, Medical News Today, also states a list of fragrances that may be harmful to the skin, such as: "linalool, limonene hydropeeroxides, hydroxyisohexyl 3-cyclohexene carboxaldehyde, treemoss absolute, oakmoss absolute, isoeugenol, cinnamyl alcohol, and cinnamal".
Then, we also have chemicals which will cause a great amount of complications if your soap bars contain these. These include:
Formaldehyde: the chemical is usually found in the form of paraformaldehyde, metyhlene glycol, and quaternium 15.
Triclosan, Sodium Lauryl sulfate (sls), dioxane, diethanolamine (dea), phthalates." Again, I got these from the article I read on Medical News Today which also links to multiple important web articles from the Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Working Group, and the National Library of Medicine.
What can harmful ingredients do to the skin?
Now that we have a better understanding of which chemicals to look out for when purchasing new soap bars, let's go ahead and talk about what these ingredients can do to the human skin in terms of conditions.
To start with formaldehyde, the chemical is a carcinogen. This means that the chemical is known to cause cancer. Then we have triclosan which is suggested to harm hormonal health according to studies conducted on animals.
Moving on in the list, we next have Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (sls), "which is used to join ingredients together" which may cause irritation to the skin. Also, according to the same article I just cited and the to the American Chemistry Council, the chemical is not a cause of "hair loss [neither is it a] carcinogen".
Dioxane is another chemical you should be looking out for. Dioxane is a carcinogen.
Finally, we have Phthalates to look out for. This "chemical can cause damage to the male reproductive system during development.", as you can read also in the Medical News Today article.
What other kind of problems can soap ingredients cause?
It's really worth noting what kind of problems and concerns harmful soap ingredients can cause you. The list is broad; cancer, Developmental and reproductive toxicity, allergies and immunotoxicity, endocrine disruption, neurotoxicity, organ system toxicity, biochemical or cellular level changes, persistence and bioaccumulation, ecotoxicity, irritation, and contamination concerns. You can read more about the list here in the EWG's "Understanding Skin Deep Ratings" article.
Next time you buy a soap bar, I hope you will have in consideration all the dangers of soap bar ingredients I have listed.
Remember if you are looking to buy soap bars online or in the Miami, FL area, simply give our soap bar collection a look. You will see listed every ingredient as well.
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