Chemical-free deodorants smell a bit fishy
Posted by Jon on Mon 13 Jul 2009Categories: Uncategorized | [9] Comments
Limonene: natural and organic
An enlightening cutting from Tuesday’s London Lite just hit my desk: a review of “six of the best chemical-free deodorants.” Oh ho ho, I thought to myself. More chemical-free myths to debunk on the blog, trying to explain that, while natural and organic, limonene smells the same whether you get it from a citrus fruit or a separating funnel. For the record its molecular structure is to the left. Looks like a chemical to me, but what do I know?
So in this list there are a few of the standard “all-natural, 100% chemical-free” deodorants – the ones with ingredients lists like this. My favourite of the non-chemicals on this particular list is eugenol, which has the delightful alternative name eugenic acid.
But, even better than the chemical-containing 100%-chemical-free deodorants of a standard body-spray nature, there are two that really made me laugh – and think.
Tawas Crystal Deodorant is “a natural crystal of potassium alum, (nothing to do with aluminium) formed from non toxic minerals in mother earth.”
Umm. ChemSpidey-sense tingling, I performed a quick search on everyone’s favourite free chemical information source that revealed, of course, the chemical formula of potassium alum is KAl(SO4)2. Nothing to do with aluminium? Where did they think the name came from?
Perhaps the winner, though, is the Zielonka Bodystick. This comes closest to the “chemical-free” claim, as it doesn’t use a spray or wipe of chemicals to neutralise odour or act as an astringent (normally aluminium-based, to close pores and reduce sweating).
Instead the product comprises a steel stick in a plastic case. When wetted and rubbed under-arm, the steel “acts as a catalyst to the process of converting odour chain molecules into bland non-odour chains through the introduction of the alloy smell killer in conjunction with air and water.”
Whoa there – that’s swinging dangerously close to actual science. I’m almost convinced! I can believe that a nickel-iron-based alloy could catalyse… well something, anyway. What are these non-odour chains, though? Zielonka explains:
“If you then break the organic string, you are then only left with individual pearls and subsequently the pattern disappears. This, if you break the ‘odour chain’ then the scent disappears as well. Because odours are organic substances, no hazardous waste is created, except what could be regarded as below the measurable level of ‘odour compost’.”
Aha… so because the catalysed products are organic, they’re not hazardous. Off the top of my head I can think of quite a few small organic molecules I’d rather not wipe under my armpits, one being methanol (with which I have some experience, cleaning high-vacuum equipment in the Stavros lab at Warwick).
The helpful and polite lady at the end of the phone for Natural Figure, distributor of the Zielonka Bodystick, didn’t have the exact mechanism of the catalysis to hand. I’ve put in a few requests by email to the supplier and the manufacturer to see if I can find out more.
I’m intrigued, though – is there any way this could work? I don’t want to write it off until I’m shown some really bad pseudo-science as proof. Any nickel/steel catalysis experts out there want to voice an opinion?
Mon 13 Jul 2009 at 14:14
Wikipedia has no information on any toxicity concerns with Alum crystals. So, are there any studies on whether Alum crystals result in the same amount of aluminum exposure to the end user? Is anything absorbed transdermally when the user uses these crystals? That’s the question that these guys selling this stuff do not address.
What needs to be corrected here is the silly misuse of the word Chemicals; This idea which would explode if it were even thought about correctly; that anything that exists is made of anything other than chemicals. All physical matter is made of chemicals. However the lay person with zero science education thinks of “chemicals” as meaning, “additives to natural materials that are gathered without being subjected to a series of reactions in a corporate chemical engineering context”.
As such, the word “Chemical” has a subtext, a back-story, that the established commercial Chemical engineering world is, as a historical fact, 100% responsible for. “Better living through Chemistry.” Remember the 1950s. The thing is that all that bright starry-eyed stuff was partly right. And partly wrong.
Are there negative connotations when someone mentions “Chemicals?” Yes. That negativity, and fear of human “mucking about” with compounds we don’t fully understand, that fear is what non-scientists are always feeling when they talk about Chemicals. They’re talking about “whatever it is you crazy people are doing that is messing up our nice little clean world full of sparkling pure water and waving fields of corn and grain”. That world that would actually be full of pestilence and privation, if it weren’t for pesticides, for instance.
Fear-based individuals don’t factor into their fear, the way that the world would be absent those chemicals they fear; the pesticides, and other chemical-engineering masterpieces, have actually saved hundreds or thousands of times as many lives than they have cost us.
Chlorinated and fluoridated water, iodized salt, pesticides. These are some of the great chemical success stories, but an anti-science laity is undermining these stories, by layering half-truths and ignorant lies on top of the realities.
These same people are anti-inoculation, and all based on a fear-response to technology, science, and reality itself. The most powerful way to contribute to this fear is to continue to make the same mistakes going forward, that the scientific community has often made in the past; triumphalism, arrogance, and claiming of results that go way beyond what the data supports.
I don’t blame either side. Scientists sneering at the unwashed masses does no more good than the unwashed masses sneering at science.
Instead, let’s all take an unvarnished look at all the data there is, and say, “how can we do a little better, next time.”.
Warren
Mon 13 Jul 2009 at 15:19
Wow, Warren, you just kind of went off on a rant there. ;D
I do agree that people don’t stop to think when they say “Chemical-free.” What do they want, a bubble of vacuum?
Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 07:02
Are we implying it is better to let the natural body odours prevail?
Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 18:11
[...] Chemical-free deodorants smell a bit fishy | RSC Blog [...]
Mon 20 Jul 2009 at 03:36
I agree, the alum crystal is merely a astrigent. Not some cancer causing toxin that the left wing world has misconstrued it to be.
You know sometimes these people are just as hypocritical. You’re fighting “Big Chemical” but you’re misinforming the public by masking or reconstructing reality. This world is a solid sphere of elements, molecular compounds, organic and inorganic substances. And we human are nothing but a mixture of chemical compounds. Their definition of chemical is merely used to antagonize and frighten the public.
Thu 13 Aug 2009 at 19:09
I don’t know much about the BodyStick in particular, but I do know that there are several steel “soap bars” on the market to cleanse the hands of odors from cooking. I worked in a lab that studied garlic, we bought one of these “bars”, and it was amazingly effective at eliminating the garlic odors from our hands.
Fri 18 Sep 2009 at 12:21
While I’m loving seeing those chemical free twits get debunked as this stuff annoys me too, let’s not pretend all man made substances are the same as natural ones, nor that the chemical formula is all that matters, i.e.:
Cocaine: C17H21NO4
Scopolamine: C17H21NO4
And synthetic Vitamin E and natural Vitamin E have very different crystalline structures, I really wish they would put natural Vitamin E in supplements until they learn to synthesise it properly :/
Fri 18 Sep 2009 at 12:24
P.S. On the subject of deodorants, can you work out what is in this one:
Exopheryl, it’s in lots of products made by this company:
http://www.sageproducts.com
Fri 18 Sep 2009 at 13:32
Monster Raving Sober Party:
First I’d heard on the Vitamin E structures – very interesting, will have to check that out.
I’m not sure many chemists would use those formulae for cocaine and scopolamine though. As you say, their structures are quite different even though their constituent atoms are in the same quantities per mole.
I’m on the case with Exopheryl. Stay tuned.