Deformulation of Baby Soap & Shampoo

[Rookie]

Need to determine chemicals used in a hand full of baby soaps and shampoos to help determine what could be causing a rash to see what the baby is allergic to.

Where do I start?
Anyone interested in doing this for us?
Can I buy my own machine and do it? Not a chemist so must be pretty simple machine to operate.

Thanks for any help in advance.

[Peter Apps]

Contract it out - if you think that you just buy a machine to do this kind of analytical work you have been watching too much CSI on the TV.

Peter

[Consumer Products Guy]

Need to determine chemicals used in a hand full of baby soaps and shampoos to help determine what could be causing a rash to see what the baby is allergic to.

Where do I start? Thanks for any help in advance.

Rookie - I have over 4 decades in the consumer products business, and will pass on that 99% of reactions to products are due to the fragrance or a fragrance component. And don't believe if something is listed as fragrance free, most of those have a masking fragrance. If the masking fragrance is purchased/added as a component of another component, believe it does not need to be listed on ingredient statement.

Like a previous post noted: deformulation of a consumer product is lengthy and expensive, and an array of instrumentation and experience is needed. We used GCMS, GC, HPLC with various detectors, wet chemistry, and more...

[Rookie]

Contract it out - if you think that you just buy a machine to do this kind of analytical work you have been watching too much CSI on the TV.

Peter

LOL not much TV watching here Peter. Reason I asked was because a local contract manufacturer said he had a high performance liquid chromatography and replicate a soap. Figured if he could replicate it, he would need to know whats in it.
Guess not but I had to ask.

[Rookie]

Need to determine chemicals used in a hand full of baby soaps and shampoos to help determine what could be causing a rash to see what the baby is allergic to.

Where do I start? Thanks for any help in advance.

Rookie - I have over 4 decades in the consumer products business, and will pass on that 99% of reactions to products are due to the fragrance or a fragrance component. And don't believe if something is listed as fragrance free, most of those have a masking fragrance. If the masking fragrance is purchased/added as a component of another component, believe it does not need to be listed on ingredient statement.

Like a previous post noted: deformulation of a consumer product is lengthy and expensive, and an array of instrumentation and experience is needed. We used GCMS, GC, HPLC with various detectors, wet chemistry, and more...

Yes, it is our understanding it is most likely the fragrance in soaps however even Dr. Bronner's baby unscented is a problem. Which now I see why it could be - thanks.
We can make our own soap for now.
Thanks for all the insight.

[Peter Apps]

Contract it out - if you think that you just buy a machine to do this kind of analytical work you have been watching too much CSI on the TV.

Peter

LOL not much TV watching here Peter. Reason I asked was because a local contract manufacturer said he had a high performance liquid chromatography and replicate a soap. Figured if he could replicate it, he would need to know whats in it.
Guess not but I had to ask.

And where does the allergic baby fit into this ?

When I was in the food troubleshooting business we had a constant stream of people wanting us to deformulate products - one of them even went to all the trouble of stealing concentrate from a factory and bringing it in as a sample. A particular brand of fizzy drink was an especially popular target and my standard response was to point out to the budding entrepeneurs that they could buy half a dozen variants of the product off the shelf at a supermarket, and that all of them would be better products than could be produced by analysing things.

People who make soap already know what is in soap - they don't need expensive analyses to tell them that. Proprietary ingredients are so closely tied to brand image that putting the in a different brand is usually pointless.

Peter

[Rookie]

If I can find out whats in the soap(s) I can hopefully determine what baby is allergic to.
I don't need deformulation per say, I was looking for ingredients that might be causing rashes.
I have couple different scent free soaps that cause different reactions. More rash and quicker appearing for one soap.
I assumed analyzing the two and comparing might tell me what could be causing the rash.

I have emailed the soap manufacturers and hoping for help there.

[Rookie]

Well what do you know, my inbox had a reply from one of the manufacturers.

They claim this is everything in their all natural baby wash/shampoo product.
Purified water
Avena Sativa Oat Bran Extract
Palm Kernel Oils (glyceryl stearate)
Shea butter derivatives (glycol stearate, stearamide AMP)
Pro-Vitamin B5(dl-Panthenol)
Decyl Glucoside, Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate
Lauryl Glucoside
Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate
Green Tea extract <1%(Phenoxyethanol)
Citric Acid - 50% solution

I'll start looking each one up and see what I come up with.

[Consumer Products Guy]

glycol stearate, stearamide AMP, dl-Panthenol, Decyl Glucoside, Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate, Lauryl Glucoside, Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate are not natural. Possibly could have been made STARTING with some natural product.

Only one isomer of panthenol is natural, by stating "dl" admitting that a chemically produced panthenol was made.

The base formulation using these ingredients wouldn't smell so good. Maybe the green tea is their masking fragrance. The phenoxyethanol is a preservative. The citric acid is also likely synthetic and not extracted, and is used to adjust the pH of the formulation.

[Peter Apps]

glycol stearate, stearamide AMP, dl-Panthenol, Decyl Glucoside, Sodium Lauroyl Lactylate, Lauryl Glucoside, Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate are not natural. Possibly could have been made STARTING with some natural product.

Only one isomer of panthenol is natural, by stating "dl" admitting that a chemically produced panthenol was made.

The base formulation using these ingredients wouldn't smell so good. Maybe the green tea is their masking fragrance. The phenoxyethanol is a preservative. The citric acid is also likely synthetic and not extracted, and is used to adjust the pH of the formulation.

No, No, you don't understand. It's not the soap that's natural; it's soap for washing natural babies.

Peter

[Rookie]

It appears being able to label your product all natural legally means as long as it "could be" derived from something natural its ok.

Are there any all natural soaps? Or just all natural based on what the government defines can be labeled all natural?