There are times that I get tired of having reactions to my shaving products. Somedays I have no problem and then the next day I can use the same setup and my face burns and I get little spots all over. So I sat down today and enterered all the ingredients for a lot of the soaps I use to try to narrow down the cultprits. Well, that didn't accomplish much, so I started logging everything into the Environmental Working Group's cosmetic database. Here are the reports for the soaps that I entered this morning. Some of these soaps never cause me problems, some always do, and some are just hit and miss. I can say that one of the mildest soaps on my skin is one of the worst ranked soaps you will see. I will also say that one of the best soaps looking at the data is one that always causes a skin reaction. There isn't any real commonality between the bad soaps that is different from any of the ingredients in the good soaps. In the end, for me it all comes down to the vague Parfum ingredient listing. Yes, right off the bat, all soaps look bad when you look at the reports. However, scroll down to see the ingredients and their individual scores. Here are the links to what I entered... Arko Shaving Stick Erasmic Stick (tallow formula) GEO F. Trumper's Rose Harris Marlborough Mitchell's WoolFat P.160 tipo duro Palmolive Shaving Stick Sir Irisch Moos Speick Shaving Stick Tabac The Shave Den (scented W/O extra Menthol) OK... no more small text ingredient reading... for now...
It should be noted that you might have reactions to things simply because you, yourself, are allergic to them, and any kind of correlation to real or speculative toxicity would be circumstantial at best. I suspect that is why you are not finding any kind of correlation between what that website considers safe and what is actually working for you. Case in point. Peanuts are highly toxic to individuals that have peanut allergies. To most people, though, they are not. My boss is deathly allergic to horse hair. Most people aren't. He would have a harsh reaction if he rubbed his face on a horse, even though horse hair is not listed as a toxic substance. Word of caution, as well, regarding that website. Toxicity is not an absolute value. For most things, the degree of toxicity is dependent on the route of administration - i.e. ingested, injected, applied to the skin, etc. - and the total dose. Most ingredients in cosmetics, even if they have a real toxicity, are present in levels that have been deemed safe, and the duration of exposure, as well as the fact that most are for topical application, and not for ingestion, makes them harmless. Again, I can't say what it is that irritates you with these soaps, but since it doesn't correlate with what the website claims to be toxic, it is more than likely an issue of a certain ingredient, or ingredients, that are specifically irritating to your skin, but not to most people. I doubt that information will allow you to accurately predict which new soaps will work for you and which won't.
Thank you for the information. I have assumed allergies as well; however, there aren't common ingredients in the bad soaps that aren't also in the good soaps. It still comes down to what specific chemicals are in the fragrances. It doesn't really surprise me. I know for example that I can handle Ogallala unscented fine. However, as soon as the fragrance is added, the burning starts. When I get order here from TSD, I only get EO soaps and avoid fragrance oils. And to clarify up one of my links, it was pointed out that I added Allantoin to the TSD shave soap. That is not an option for the soap.. Oops. I will delete that link now.
