Watch Out For Your Deodorant Ingredients

By: Deon Melchior


A good piece of advice when buying deodorant or other products that go on your skin is to read carefully the ingredients. All the information you need is place on a print label placed on the back of the product. Usually it is written with small fonts, so, if you have trouble reading it, you should carry a magnifying glass with you so you can read the label. It is very important to know the ingredients of your deodorant, as everything that goes to your skin enters your bloodstream with significant effect on your general health.

Seven ingredients that must not be in your deodorant:

First, your deodorant should not be made of aluminum chlorohydrate, aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly or any aluminum compounds. If it enters your blood, aluminum can be absorbed and accumulated in the body. According to some research there may be an association between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease.

If you read any of the following components on your deodorant label, do not buy it: methyl, ethyl, propyl, benzyl and butyl. These are called parabens and they are toluene derivatives, which is a toxic petrochemical compound. If you swallow or you inhale it, you get intoxicated. Even the contact with the skin is dangerous. Research has proven that toluene has a harmful effect on the reproductive system, after repeated exposure of the body to the substance. Plus, parabens are believed to be responsible for the development of cancer, as they act like estrogen in animals and in tissue cultures, according to some researches made from 2000 till now.

The third dangerous ingredient is called triclosan. This is a pesticide, as it is classified by FDA, and if it enters in contact with the skin, it kills all the bacteria, good or bad, that live on the skin. Contact with triclosan may cause dermatitis and it is also believed that it contains some carcinogenic contaminants. Usually, triclosan is stored in the body fat.

Be very careful when it comes to talc. After studies made by the Agency for Research on Cancer, it has been discovered that talc is carginogen, as it has asbestiform fibers in its composition. So, if you read it on the label of the deodorant you want to buy, you better skin that product.

Other potentially dangerous ingredient that can be found in deodorants is propylene glycol. If it is carcinogenic or not, it is not yet known, but NIOSH established that propylene glycol is a neurotoxin and it may cause kidney or liver diseases. Exposure to propylene glycol may lead to allergies.

Your deodorant should not contain an ingredient called silica. It irritates the skin and it can have crystalline quartz in it, which is a carcinogen substance.

Pay attention if one of the ingredients is steareth-n, with n being any number. It can be obtain from vegetal sources, but it reacts with ethylene oxide, which is carcinogen.

It is best to go for deodorants that are made of vegetable glycerin, natural preservatives like bioflavanoids and lichen, herbs or herbal extracts, de-ionized water or distilled water, green tea, aloe vera, baking soda and essential oils.

Even if what you read on the label may not look dangerous and you do not see any of the ingredients listed above, still the product can contain some harmful elements. For instance, the plant extracts may already contain parabens and propylene glycol. If they are not extracted in vegetable glycerine, most vegetable extracts provided by deodorant manufacturers are exposed to parabens and other synthetic preservatives. If you want to make sure that the product you are buying is safe, you may call the manufacturer to ask for all the needed information.


Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit - www.articleclick.com