Never mind ingredients, just give me a packet that’s not empty!

A little while back I wrote a post about shampoo ingredients, and in passing I mentioned baby wipes. Now, these are one of those products which you’ve probably never bought if you’re not a parent, but as soon as you are you find yourself increasingly interested in them. Yes, I know, reusable ‘wipes’ are a thing. But after dealing with a nappy explosion at 2am in the morning, I’m willing to bet that more than one parent’s environmental conscience has gone in the rubbish bin along with a bag of horror they never want to see again, at least for a little while.

But which wipes to buy? The cheapest ones? The nicest-smelling ones? The fragrance-free ones? The ones with the plastic dispenser on the top that allow you to easily grab one wipe at a time? Or not, because those bulky dispensers produce yet more plastic waste? Or just whichever brand you grabbed first at the all-night supermarket at some unpleasant hour that’s too late to be night yet too early to be morning?

All of the above at one time or another, probably. However, I’m going to suggest that one thing you can stop worrying about right now is whether or not your wipes are labelled ‘chemical-free’.

As I’ve explained before, everything is made up of chemicals. By any sensible definition, water is a chemical, and thus the claim that Water Wipes® (“the world’s purest baby wipe”) are “chemical free” is simply incorrect.

These wipes are not, actually, chemical-free.

In fact, Water Wipes® aren’t even, as you might imagine, made of some sort of non-woven fabric impregnated with plain water. No, they contain something else: grapefruit seed extract.

Well, that sounds natural, I hear you say. It does, doesn’t it? Grapefruit, that sounds fresh. Seed, well seeds are healthy, aren’t they? And the word ‘extract’ is very natural-sounding. What’s the problem?

Let’s start with what grapefruit seed extract, also called GSE, actually is. It’s made from the seeds, pulp and white membranes of grapefruit. These ingredients are ground up and a drop of glycerin is added. Glycerin, by the way, is otherwise known as glycerol, or propane-1,2,3-triol. It’s naturally-occurring – it’s one of the molecules you get when you break up fats – and it’s usually made from plants such as soybeans or palm (uh oh…), or sometimes from tallow (oh dear…) or as a byproduct of the petroleum industry (yikes! – I wonder if the manufacturers of Water Wipes® enquired about the nature of the glycerin being added to their product…?)

But anyway, back to GSE. Like all plant extracts, grapefruit seed extract is stuffed full of other chemicals that occur naturally. In particular, flavonoids, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), tocopherols, citric acid, limonoids and sterols.

Can you tell the difference?

So… in short, not chemical-free at all. Not even a bit. The problem here is that, in marketing, the term ‘chemical-free’ is used to mean something that only contains ingredients from ‘natural’ sources. But this is meaningless. Take citric acid, for example. (E330 by the way – E numbers don’t mean something’s deadly, either. In fact, quite the opposite.) There’s no difference between citric acid extracted from a grapefruit and citric acid prepared in a laboratory. They both have exactly the same atoms and the same molecular formula and structure. They both react in the same way.

They’d both be classified as corrosive in high concentrations, and irritant in low concentrations. This isn’t even “might” cause irritation. This is absolutely, definitely, positively WILL cause irritation.

Wait, hang on a minute! There’s a potentially corrosive chemical in the ‘chemical-free’ baby wipes, and unsuspecting parents are putting it on their baby’s skin?!

Yep.

But before anyone runs off to write the next Daily Mail headline, let’s be clear. It’s really not going to burn, alien acid-style, through a new baby’s skin. It’s not even going to slightly redden a baby’s skin, because the quantity is so miniscule that it quite literally has no corrosive properties at all. It’s the same logic as in the old adage that “the dose makes the poison“.

This is where we, as consumers, ought to stop and think. If a fraction of a drop of citric acid is harmless then…. perhaps that small quantity of PEG 40 hydrogenated castor oil or sodium benzoate in most (considerably less expensive, I’m just saying) other brands of baby wipes isn’t as awful as we thought, either…

Indeed, it’s not. But what sodium benzoate in particular IS, is a very effective preservative.

Grapefruit seed extract is allegedly a natural preservative, but studies haven’t backed up this claim.

Why does this matter? Well, without some sort of preservative baby wipes, which sit in a moist environment for weeks or months or even years, might start to grow mould and other nasties. You simply can’t risk selling packets of water-soaked fabric, at a premium price, without any preservative at all, because one day someone might open one of those packets and find it full of mould. At which point they would, naturally, take a photo and post it all over social media. Dis-as-ter.

This is why Water Wipes® include grapefruit seed extract, because it’s a natural preservative. Except…

When researchers studied GSE and its antimicrobial properties they found that most of their samples were contaminated with benzethonium chloride, a synthetic preservative, and some were contaminated with other preservatives, some of which really weren’t very safe at all. And here’s the kicker, the samples that weren’t contaminated had no antimicrobial properties.

In other words, either your ‘natural’ grapefruit seed extract is a preservative because it’s contaminated with synthetic preservatives, or it’s not a preservative at all.

You can always use cotton wool pads and water.

If you’re worried that baby wipes may be irritating your baby’s skin – I’m not claiming this never happens – then the best, and cheapest, thing to do would be to simply follow the NHS guidelines and use cotton wool and water. It’s actually easier and less messy than you might imagine – packets of flat, cosmetic cotton wool pads are readily available (and pretty cheap). Simply dip one in some clean water, wipe and throw it away. It’s really no more difficult or messy than wipes.

But if you’re choosing a particular brand of wipes on the basis that they’re “chemical-free”, despite the fact that other types have never actually caused irritation, you can stop. Really. Buy the cheap ones. Or the nicest-smelling ones, or the ones that come out of the packet most easily. Because NONE of them are chemical-free, and it’s really not a problem.

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