FACT FILES ON HANDMADE, PURE ORGANIC SOAP

 “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
   Catch a tiger by the toe.
   If he hollers, let him go,
   Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

Hmm…the current politically correct version of the counting rhyme game played in childhood, to select the “it” person for exclusion somehow has lost the flow it had in my youth. I find it somewhat confronting that even children’s books are being edited to remove any of the unacceptable stigmas associated with our chequered history as a developing society…to arrive at destination point Z, but remove the travel diary seems somewhat of a pointless account of the journey. Perhaps the reference to a tiger and its stripes holds more relevance to the topic of eczema though.

I caught the passing conversation of two young women at the markets on Sunday: “I can’t use pump body washes anymore…they’ve given me eczema.” The conversation was obviously stimulated by our soap stall…yet they continued walking by, much to my frustration.

I’ve touched on the cheap, chemical cocktails that represent the ingredients of most commercial body washes many times on our Facebook page over the years. Body washes flooded the market in recent years as a cheaper option to manufacturers- accompanied by marketing campaigns to convince the consumer that they were a better option than soap. They are however just a more profitable production option for manufacturers, and the consumer the gullible target.

I cannot repeat enough the importance of learning to read ingredient labels to grasp the product on offer…beyond the enticing marketing words. That commercial product brandishing words of ‘natural’ etc need only contain one drop of that ‘natural’ ingredient to allow them to trade off those claims. Product ingredients in Australia are required to be listed in descending order of content percentages- so if you read the ingredients list and find that natural ingredient towards the end, it will offer very little benefit to the product or you.

Know what you are buying, and don’t be mislead by marketing. Those body washes are largely just petrochemical detergents with synthetic fragrance and appealing colouring agents added. No wonder people are experiencing eczema.

‘Eczema’ is a term applied to a large list of largely unqualified skin irritations…from the mild to the extreme- when the term changes to ‘dermatitis’. It is usually identified by collective symptoms of redness, bumps, swelling, itching, dryness, crusting, flaking, blistering, cracking, oozing or bleeding of the skin. That’s a broad range of symptoms to acquire the applied label.

There are generally no cures…just management strategies offered. The skin irritations are commonly termed as being either ‘atopic eczema’ or ‘allergic eczema’, and the causes can range from food allergies through to product exposure and material contact exposure. Most sources remain undiagnosed.

It is now common amongst our youth, with 1 in 5 children under the age of 2 experiencing ‘eczema’- the term usually applied to those having a weakened skin barrier of unknown reasons…making them more prone to the effects of chemical exposure. I’ve touched on our basic skin structure in the past- refer blog “Where’s my suit of armour?”, 09/07/14.

I think it’s very easy to explain away a problem by labelling someone’s weakened skin barrier as the cause, and then offering various ‘barrier creams’ to prevent further irritation, rather than stating that there are so many untested chemicals in products that there is no way to even begin testing for reactions to them. Hmm…there’s obviously something wrong with your skin or immune system, rather than there’s something obviously wrong with our chemically saturated world!

Perhaps those chemicals are stripping our children’s immune systems from developing properly these days. My daughter reacted to every commercial personal care product. She was tested for common food allergens- one of which was yellow colouring…which is used in just about every commercial product on the market to improve visual appeal- from shampoo to butter. In desperation, I began making our organic soap products to ensure as pure a product as possible for her safe use. Use of school soap or public toilet hand washes brought on instant red, itching and painful irritation to her hands that took up to a week to settle down again. My daughter, now 21, continues to have these responses to commercial products. As a mother, it has always been equally distressing for me to watch her suffer…she has the whitest, finest skin- exaggerating her skin reactions to the visually alarming!

However, she has never reacted to any of our organic soaps. My recommendation to anyone suffering ‘eczema’ would be to have a competent doctor specialising in bio and environmental medicine investigate the possible cause. Any treatment offered will only manage the condition until the cause is identified and removed from the equation. Medical intervention is required, but I believe the use of chemical free personal care products, without fragrance and colouring, will help to support the skin by not stripping the skin of its natural barrier.

The mildest soap that can be produced is an olive oil soap. It’s a good starting point to provide gentle care for the skin. I unfortunately purchased a handmade olive oil soap for my daughter many years ago- assuming I was buying a chemical free product…but she reacted badly. The makers failed to list the colouring agents added to the ingredients. It took my own experiences of making organic olive oil soap to identify that factor. After using oils with various depths of colour, it became obvious that every soap resulted in an ever so slight variation of off-white or cream as an outcome. There were definitely no shades of green ever evident…like the colour exuded by the handmade soap I’d purchased. Even using the dark green organic hemp oil that goes into our ‘hemi’ soap results only in the slightest hint of green to that general cream colour outcome. To not list colouring agents is in fact in breach of consumer labelling laws. Ignorant people put others health at risk, and should be reported. I have had some customers whose lives have been put on the line by labelling oversights of products.

Identifying the cause of eczema- it’s a bit like playing the rhyme game for identification…allergic contact, atopic, discoid, irritant contact, nummular, seborrhoeic, stasis, venous or xerotic- eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis or rosacea- it’s all a game of ingredient elimination at the end of the day…even for doctors. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”

FACT FILES ON HANDMADE, PURE ORGANIC SOAP

There goes my brain again searching for relevant facts in the memory bank. Up popped the old nursery rhyme chanted endlessly during childhood play:

“Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
 A pocket full of posies,
 A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
 We all fall down.”

It wasn’t until adult years that I read that the rhyme is referenced to the Bubonic Plague in England during the 17thC…who would have ever thought! The “Ring-a-ring o’ roses” refers to the rosy red, round rash symptomatic of the plague, and the “posies” refers to the belief that filling one’s pockets and pouches with fragrant herbs would prevent the spread of the disease…believed to be transmitted by bad smells. So began our pre-occupation with fragrances thereafter.

Fragrance compounds are generally added to products to conceal the unpleasant odours of the ingredients, or to tantalise our olfactory senses to encourage sales. Regulations do not require fragrance compounds to be identified in detail- but rather appear as a generalised listing as an ingredient, such as fragrance, fragrances, parfum or parfumes in Australia. Requirements vary with the country of origin for imported products.

Approximately 4,000 fragrance chemicals are commonly used in perfumed commercial items- from cosmetics through to household cleaning products. Only about 800 of those chemicals have actually been tested for toxicity- either alone, or in combination with others. They can be derived from natural sources or chemical synthesis. However, 95% of chemicals used in fragrances are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum. ‘Fragrance’ has become a catch-all term applied to an assortment of ingredients that can be added by manufacturers without redress- under the banner of protected ‘secret ingredients/formulas’.

Some fragrance chemicals alter the skin’s surface tension- then impacting on the permeability of other chemicals into the skin. None of these associated interactions have been studied to any extent. Fragrances contain large amounts of phthalates, which are a group of toxic chemicals known to be hormone disruptors. Phthalates are used to suitably blend and fix other ingredients. They have been linked to allergic responses (both skin and respiratory responses), damaging DNA structure, infertility, birth defects, cancer and thyroid disorders. Of the people tested for the presence of phthalates in their urine, all tested positive.

As fragrance compounds can be absorbed, ingested or inhaled during exposure, their effect on the body is difficult to quantify…possibly affecting any part of the body. Here is a list of the most commonly used fragrance compounds that have been proven to be problematic in physical responses, and are required to be identified in ingredients listings: Acetone, Benzaldehyde, Benzyl Acetate, Benzyl Alcohol, Camphor, 1,8-Cineole, b-Citronellol, Cocoamide DEA, Ethanol, Ethyl Acetate, Eugenol, Geraniol, Hexyl Cinnamal, Limonene, Linalool, Methyllene Chloride, b-Myrcene, Nerol, Ocimene, a-Pinene, b-Phenethyl Alcohol, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, g-Terpinene, a-Terpineol. Whew…only another 4,000 odd to go to make the list!

A skin contact fragrance allergy will usually manifest itself in the form of red bumps, blisters, itchiness and blotchiness of the skin. Continued exposure to the allergen can lead to chronic dermatitis. Allergic contact dermatitis is now quite common amongst children. Eczema has increased as a skin condition worldwide in the last decade. Allergic and non-allergic asthma, and reactive airway dysfunction syndrome have increased dramatically, and attacks are often induced by exposure to fragrances…72% of asthmatics citing fragrance as a trigger to an attack. Asthma is now the leading serious chronic illness amongst our youth.

Unfortunately, fragrance compounds are rarely investigated as the cause of a skin irritation…because it is too vast an area to open the lid on. The simplest way to identify fragrance compounds as a cause of irritation is to eliminate it from products being used, by buying fragrance free products. We have a voice as consumers to send a loud and clear message to manufacturers by boycotting synthetically fragranced products. If we don’t, the practice will continue, and continue to grow at an alarming rate of untested use- with approximately 1,000 new chemicals being introduced into industry every year.

We consciously chose not to add fragrance compounds to our organic soaps. We endeavour to produce as irritant free a skin care product as possible- to be used with confidence by those suffering various skin sensitivities.

We do not know enough about the effect of fragrance chemicals on our bodies…yet their use is sanctioned in products by regulatory bodies/Government. We assume that commercially available products are deemed safe for our use…yet this is not so. Let’s look at some of those statistics again- only 800 fragrance chemicals out of 4,000 currently being used in products have actually been tested.

Back to the significance of the nursery rhyme. Through ignorance at the time, it was assumed that enamouring oneself with fragrant herbs would act as a defence mechanism against the Bubonic Plague. Unpleasant smells became unacceptable, and later, the trend to fragrance oneself became fashionable. Some versions of the rhyme substitute “A-tishoo! A-tishoo!” with “Ashes! Ashes!” This variation is believed to refer to the mass cremations of the dead body toll of the Bubonic Plague.

Hmm…can I dare to compare the carnage from the Bubonic Plague to the growing impact of our commercially fragrance saturated lives…an unnecessary epidemic from progressive chemical exposure? Might we just “…all fall down.” before some control is manifested over the fragrance industry? Reduce the chemical burden on your body from personal care products…say “No!” to fragrance whenever possible.

FACT FILES ON HANDMADE, PURE ORGANIC SOAP

Blokes love our organic soap! It never ceases to astound us that men are the biggest users of our organic soap range. It certainly wasn’t something that we were expecting…not by any stretch of our imagination- but there it is!

Most men wander up to us at the markets- a little embarrassed to begin with- but the conversation generally runs like this:

Us: Hi! Have you used our soaps before? Would you like us to explain the soaps to you?

Bloke: Yeah, that’d be good. My skin gets really dry. My wife buys those damn body-washes. I hate them! I hate pumping the bottle- I hate the flowery smell…I just hate them! I just want to grab a cake of soap & have a shower…but she insists body-washes are better…yet my skin never used to be dry.

We explain our organic soap range- that we don’t use chemicals or fragrances, and that our organic soaps are naturally moisturising.

Most men usually choose our ‘coci’ soap on the basis that they can use it for shaving and as a shampoo as well. They walk away with their purchase in our brown paper bag- hidden under their armpit. The whole scene is vaguely reminiscent of the embarrassed purchase of condoms from a female shop assistant. Ah- but then they come back saying that they loved our soap- their skin has been great- and the next purchase is completed with confidence.

Then we have females who are shopping for soap for their husband or son…either with dry skin or eczema. The conversation generally goes like this:

Woman: I’m looking for soap for my husband. He drives me nuts…he’s hung up on the past and wants to use soap. He reckons that the body-wash makes his skin dry and irritated.

Us: I take it that you don’t have dry skin yourself then?

Woman: No…well I do…everyone does, particularly in winter- but I use moisturiser after I’ve showered. He can’t be bothered! Anyway, I think he just doesn’t like the smell of the body-wash…and he’s stubborn- says he hates fiddling with it all.

So we explain our organic soap range, and that body-washes can be harsh on the skin because of the petrochemicals, and preservatives used to provide a shelf life, and that we don’t add fragrance to our soaps because they are common irritants to the skin. We explain that our soaps are highly moisturising because of the naturally achieved glycerine content…the most moisturising ingredient used in the cosmetic industry- and because of the organic plant oils that we select…which gently nurture the skin without stripping it.

The woman begrudgingly usually buys a ‘coci’ soap then utters a complaint about the extra cleaning she’ll have to do…because soaps are so messy. We comment that in fact there won’t be any difference…that it’s the chemicals used in commercial soaps that cause the residual scum.

We usually wonder afterwards…has the woman in fact ‘heard’ anything that we’ve said? We think blokes are pretty damn switched on to soap with good reason.