Formaldehyde In Baby Shampoo Isn’t As Scary As It Sounds

Recently, Johnson & Johnson reformulated their classic yellow baby shampoo after a consumer outcry over a scary-sounding formaldehyde-based preservative in the product. If it’s not absolutely necessary, there’s no good reason to go slathering a product that contains unnecessary substances on infants. The important question is: should we be worried about formaldehyde in personal-care products at all?

Science writer Tara Haelle examined this question for Slate.

You can’t keep your child safe from formaldehyde as long as it’s on this planet. “Unless people calling for removal of quaternium-15 are also keeping their children from eating apples and french fries,” an American University chemist tells Slate, “I think their activism might be misplaced.”

Factory workers and embalmers come in contact with more formaldehyde than most of us, and they have a higher corresponding risk of certain cancers. The amount of formaldehyde in baby shampoo and the amount of time that a baby ever spends in the bath don’t really add up. One researcher calculated that it would take 40 million baby shampoo baths every day for one person to reach a level where super-stringent California law Proposition 65 would need to put a “may cause cancer” warning label on it. No baby likes to play with floaty toys that much.

No More Formaldehyde Baby Shampoo [Slate]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist