Myths about shampoos

All shampoos, being currently advertised, are spoken differently. Range of estimates is very wide: from admiration of their miraculous properties to the chilling warnings, after which you have to prepare for the full baldness, even disability.

Cite, for example, an article in the newspaper "Business World" signed by "specialists" of the Minsk Medical Company Avicenna (style and spelling preserved): "... Take the shampoo, which is commonly used as a cleaner with Sodium lauryl sulfate, incidentally, used in industry as degreasing engines and other parts for cleaning floors in the shops. This is a cheap tool, along with shampoo gets into eyes, brain, heart, liver, accumulates there and causes serious injury. One of the manifestations - developmental delay in children and eye cataracts in adults. Standard companies are forced to use unsafe chemicals as ingredients in cosmetics to reduce the cost of goods".

Sodium lauryl sulfate (as it is called in fact) - a surface-active substances (SAS), in other words, a component of the shampoo, which is responsible for its detergent action. From the standpoint of a chemist, SLS is a mixture of alkyl containing from 55 to 85% sodium dodecyl sulfate. Indeed, it is an effective and inexpensive component, as well as laurylsulphates ammonium and amine, already half a century of use in cosmetics. Today, about 50% of all shampoos manufactured in the U.S. contain lauryl sulfate as a main component and approximately 30% - lauryl sulfate in combination with other surfactants. In Europe and Russia, shampoos prefer other stuff close to lauryl sulfate on the properties and cost - lauriletoksisulfat. These and similar substances are stable in hard water, foam and wash well. They are contained not only shampoos but also in the invironments for taking baths and showers, a mouthwash, a toothpaste.

As rightly noted author of the newspaper notes, lauryl sulfate is also used in household chemicals and technical detergents. It presents also in food, pickles, coolant, and protein hydrolysates - a food concentrates, cosmetic creams, shampoos, and a fire-fighting equipment, and that very few people care about.