How to Choose Baby Wipes Without Toxins (But Also Without Mold) ✨Ep. 54
Feb 06, 2024
Wendy Kathryn
Moms are demanding better and companies are starting to listen! I'm honestly pretty happy with a lot of the changes I'm seeing in the world of diapers and baby wipes. Despite the progress, the truth is that no disposable wipe is ever going to be entirely chemical-free. The cleanest option is a non-disposable solution but I know that's not always feasible for parents on the go. So I'm breaking down a concerning trend I'm seeing and how to find baby wipes that you can feel confident will keep your baby safe.
There is a concerning trend I'm noticing when it comes to clean brands introducing preservatives that we don't know a whole lot about.
It's important to make evidence-based decisions for the well-being of our families and that starts here! Thank you for trusting me on this journey to a cleaner, safer home for our little ones.
Moms are demanding better and companies are starting to listen! I'm honestly pretty happy with a lot of the changes I'm seeing in the world of diapers and baby wipes. Despite the progress, the truth is that no disposable wipe is ever going to be entirely chemical-free. The cleanest option is a non-disposable solution but I know that's not always feasible for parents on the go. So I'm breaking down a concerning trend I'm seeing and how to find baby wipes that you can feel confident will keep your baby safe.
There is a concerning trend I'm noticing when it comes to clean brands introducing preservatives that we don't know a whole lot about.
It's important to make evidence-based decisions for the well-being of our families and that starts here! Thank you for trusting me on this journey to a cleaner, safer home for our little ones.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Detoxed Aluminum Podcast, where toxin-free living meets real life. I'm your host, wendy. I'm an environmental toxins lawyer turned clean living coach. Today we're talking about diaper wipes. I just wrapped up my 2024 review of the cleanest diapers and wipes on the market and the last week I went over trends in the low tox diaper space and I gave my list of my favorite. I talked about elemental chlorine free versus total chlorine free and if you want to check that out ahead on over to episode 53, just turn back one and you can start there. Overall, in 2024, we saw brands get cleaner, whether it's diapers or wipes. I'm seeing less toxins, less harsh preservatives and chemicals and more plant-based gentle ingredients and, honestly, I was really happy to see that because moms are demanding better and companies are starting to listen. Well, some companies are starting to listen more in 2024 than, for sure, in 2023. But there is a trend I noticed that has me a little concerned and since I know that moms are out there looking for the very best for their babies, I wanted to talk about that today so you can be armed with this little tidbit of information when you are out shopping for wipes.
Speaker 1:
Let's dig in. I do want to start this episode with an inconvenient truth for all the moms out there. I said this about diapers in the last episode. I'm going to say it again about wipes. There is no such thing as a completely clean, disposable wipe. In order to have the convenience of having something that's disposable, that's in the container that you can throw in your baby bag, you have to have chemicals, you have to have ingredients in it that are in the wipe, that actually preserve it, because if it was just water, if it's just a water and a wipe, mold's going to grow, bacteria's going to grow, fungus is going to grow, and that's not going to be good either. If you are like you know what I want the cleanest thing possible then using an organic cotton cloth or an organic bamboo and getting it wet, getting water at home having I did this.
Speaker 1:
I ended up having to cloth diaper my daughter because she had horrific eczema. Organic bamboo diapers were the only thing completely cloth. We were living in Italy at the time, which the laundry situation was not easy to cloth diaper. Yeah, she was a total bougie baby. We couldn't even put waterproof covers on her. Thank God that back then I think it was Etsy or might have even been something else. That was like a pre-Etsy thing.
Speaker 1:
There were moms that were making cashmere like little shorties and long pants, and the cashmere had lanolin in it and so they were water resistant. I literally could not believe I was buying my baby. She probably owned 20 pairs of cashmere shorties, but her skin was just so sensitive she had horrible eczema. We eventually figured it out. She was really sensitive to all synthetic fragrance and she's the reason why I actually started this health journey. We got rid of everything that had toxins and fragrance in all of our products because we were trying to help her and it worked. Her skin cleared up. We clothed, diapered her. I was too scared to try any disposable diaper after that, but she still has sensitive skin, but it definitely is under control.
Speaker 1:
If you want something that's the simplest and the cleanest, especially when you're at home, just go with an organic cotton cloth, put a whole pile of them, put them in a corner wherever you change your baby, and then you can have a bowl with water. Grab a little bit of water or put it under the sink and get it wet before you wipe them off. That's the easiest, cleanest, safest thing. If you just listened to that and you were like I am not doing that, give me all the disposable things. That is fine. You are like most of the mom, the busy moms out there, and here's the thing. Luckily, like I just said, they're getting cleaner. Having said that, there are some basic ingredients that I saw a lot of, especially when we're talking about in-store brands, the big brands, the Huggies and the Pampers and the things that are super easy to grab at a grocery store. And since I just said huggies, we'll just use them as an example to walk through some of the ingredients that I'm still seeing. So I'm still seeing fragrance, synthetic fragrance and fragrance is a problem.
Speaker 1:
If it is not specifically listed out that it is a botanical or an essential oil of some kind, then fragrance is a no-go. Fragrance can be over 3,000 different ingredients and one of the ones that is used often in fragrance are phthalates, and phthalates are endocrine disruptors. We have a lot of data and science on phthalates and it's bad news, especially for your baby. It leads to things like infertility, hormonal dysfunction, thyroid issues, breast cancer. It's a lot. We want to avoid anything that is a synthetic or an undisclosed fragrance.
Speaker 1:
I get asked all the time about what about natural fragrance. Well, natural fragrance to me is like natural flavors. It can start out natural and then they can do whatever they want to it. They can manipulate it, they can manufacture it, they can add solvents to it, they can add synthetics to it. If they're not telling you exactly what it is, then first of all, no. Second of all, what are they hiding? And so then I have a trust issue. So fragrance is a no.
Speaker 1:
I'm seeing a lot of polysorbate, so polysorbate 20 or PEGs. These PEGs are always going to have a PEG and then a number after it, and the thing about those are they're both ethylox. I always say that wrong. They're both ethoxylated ingredients, which means they are created using ethylene oxide. Ethylene oxide creates a 1.4-day-oxane, which is a carcinogen. There's also trace amounts of ethylene oxide. So now you've got two carcinogens and they're not necessary.
Speaker 1:
It's simple to avoid them and so you don't need them. A lot of the wipes themselves are actually made out of polypropylene, and you just don't need plastics on your baby. If you didn't know, polypropylene is what they call a thermoplastic polymer, and yeah, that's what a lot of wipes are made out of. And unfortunately, I'm still seeing benzalconium chloride, which is an ammonium salt. We actually call them quaternary ammonium compounds, even though that's a mouthful, while it's used as a preservative and a surfactant, so it's got also cleaning agents in it. It causes severe skin, eye, respiratory irritation, allergies and it's a huge skin sensitizer so it leads to eczema.
Speaker 1:
The fact that companies put that crap in baby wipes is literally beyond me. I will never understand it, but I found them in a lot of baby wipes and the only thing I can think of is they are antimicrobial so they're used as disinfectants. I really just can't even still imagine why that would even be in there for that. And I'm still seeing phenoxyloethanol, and phenoxyloethanol is a preservative that I avoid. It's another ethoxylated ingredient, so it has that problem but also causes really bad skin irritation and specifically found to have irritation on babies. But I will say this I saw less phenoxyloethanol being used as a preservative.
Speaker 1:
I'm starting to see more companies switch to sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate, which is what I want to see Now those two preservatives. Babies can be sensitive to them. They can have an allergic reaction. They can have irritated skin because of it. Remember what I said at the beginning of this episode you have to have a preservative. Those two are the safest in my opinion Sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate. They're the gentlest. They are not known to cause any health issues whatsoever. The only thing about them is they can be irritating, but since they're the safest, that's the safest option that you have.
Speaker 1:
So that brings me to the one little tidbit, the concern that I have. So I'm seeing this trend where some of the really really clean diaper companies believe which is on my diaper list and EcoBoom and Eco Originals and Terra these are diapers that are fantastic. These are some of the cleanest diapers out there, in fact, and their wipes. When you look at them, they have really great ingredients as well, and if it weren't for this one issue, they would be on my Toxin Free Shopping Guide and some of the best options available.
Speaker 1:
The problem is that they're using a quote unquote preservative that I've never seen used and I actually don't even know what the ingredient is, because they're not using anything that I know what it is. They're not saying what it actually is. They're using soybean amino acid or Japanese soybean amino acid, or they're just calling it a hydrolyzed soy protein. And here's the thing. Sometimes you go through these testing when companies use preservatives. They take them, they put them into a product and then they wait and then they test them. They test them at three months, six months, 12 months to make sure and figure out how long just this preservative lasts before things like mold and bacteria and fungus start to appear, so that they know. I've never seen these used. I'm very uncomfortable with this idea that they don't actually release and tell you what the actual ingredient is, or any support or any proof or any published data whatsoever to prove that these preservatives actually work. Now the brand believe is different. They use a bamboo cloth and they claim that because it's a bamboo cloth, it's antibacterial and so they don't need a preservative. And that's not a thing. And this isn't just kind of like me being silly or me being overboard on this issue.
Speaker 1:
Mold and bacteria contamination can cause really serious infections, especially for babies. I'm going to attach in the show notes basically a comprehensive review that takes a look at a lot of the usage and the infections that have been found in hospitals, usually outbreaks of infections like staff or other kinds of bacteria. They don't really make the news and you don't really hear about them unless it's in a neonatal intensive care unit or it's in a maternity ward, and there's a long list of those, and a lot of those infections start in places like shampoo bottles or lotions or things like that that are around that grow mold and bacteria. Some of the things that exacerbate specifically diaper wipes mold or bacteria growing is a lot of times you throw them in the car. You know, I grew up in Arizona. I always had a diaper bag in the car sometimes and sometimes it would be there. It's hot or people are using those warming wipe things where you take the wipes and you put them in the warmers. That is another way. Storing them that way, with heat, also accelerates the bacteria or mold growth, Sunlight being in direct sunlight. So if you're putting them in a room and it's got direct sunlight from a window, maybe move it to a darker spot.
Speaker 1:
That's not to say there's not an opportunity for more natural preservatives, right? Like I said, there is a trade-off. When you're talking about disposable diapers, the preservatives that are being used can be irritating to the skin, even the safe ones. But on the flip side, you need them. You absolutely need them. In the cosmetics industry, in the personal products industry. We're seeing some really cool data come out about. Fermented radish root has become a really good and really popular preservative, it's not enough for it to be the only thing in the product. You see also sodium benzoate, or you see some kind of citric acid which helps with oxidation. You see a grouping of these ingredients that are tested that they know will stop bacteria from growing.
Speaker 1:
Without that, without the information, without the data, this weird soybean thing that I have really never seen before until a couple of these diaper brands came out with it. I'm going to watch it and I'm going to watch it closely. Right now, those brands aren't going to show up on my guide. If you hop over to my Toxin Free Shopping Guide, I have a list of all of my favorite top clean wipes the cleanest ones you can find and you're not going to find those brands. The ones that are on my list have legitimate preservatives, clean preservatives, but they do have preservatives.
Speaker 1:
My goal here isn't to bash these companies. These companies show up on my diaper guide. They're pushing the envelope. They are doing really great things. I hope with time we're going to see that data and we're going to see that maybe there are some really great natural alternatives using soybean oil. I can only hope. I will say the whole bamboo cloth thing. We have a lot of data that shows that, in fact, that that's not true. It doesn't work. It's not naturally antibacterial, that's not a thing. Some of these other natural preservatives. I'll let you know what I find out. That's a wrap. Thank you for being here, as always. I hope your life is getting just a little bit less toxic.