A member on our Facebook group asked some tough questions about detergent ingredients and buildup tonight, and we addressed them in…well… a comment so long we had to split it in half for Facebook to let us post it! This information is all presented here on our website, but since this post is done in a conversational and explanatory manner, we thought it would be nice to reproduce it here in its entirety 🙂 Enjoy!!
First, you are completely correct that detergents leave behind fragrances and optical brighteners. That is, in fact, their purpose – if they rinsed away completely it wouldn’t be worth including them in detergent in the first place. However, detergents do NOT leave behind other chemical residues. I think it’s important to look at all the components of a detergent to explain this. Detergents are composed of builders (water softeners, boosting ingredients, and so on), surfactants (the actual cleaning agent that lifts soils from fabric and carries them away – more on these later on), optical brighteners, fragrances, enzymes, and sometimes additives like bleach or oxiclean. Of these things, the only ones that stay in your fabrics after washing are the optical brighteners and fragrances. As I mentioned earlier, this is by design.
The other parts of your detergent wash away completely. Surfactants have a water-loving (hydrophillic) and a water-hating (hydrophobic) end. The water-hating end binds to soil, the water loving end binds to water, and as the water moves the surfactant away from the cloth, it brings the soil with it. This is, of course, why good agitation is so important. You must work the surfactant down deep into layers of cloth, and then move it enough to rinse it away. This is also why the “add more water!” mentality SEEMS to work for a short amount of time – the fast-moving water very effectively pulls surfactants away. However, those surfactants have not been given adequate time or contact with soil, especially soil on deeper levels of our modern-day thick cloth diapers, to effectively pull the soils out.
The surfactants, then, bind with the water on one side, and are completely removed with the wash water. Don’t stick your baby in your washing machine, and you won’t ever make contact with a surfactant.
Detergents are also composed of builders. Many builders are water softeners. Water softeners such as borax, washing soda (sodium carbonate) or baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) are commonly used in detergents. These work through a simple chemical reaction. When the water softener dissolves in your wash water, it reacts with calcium, magnesium, and other minerals that are also dissolved in your water (most of the US is on groundwater, and those minerals dissolve into the water as it percolates through layers of soil. Think like a coffee maker.) When the water softener reacts with the minerals in the water, the minerals go from being dissolved in the water to being solid. These solid minerals can then be effectively rinsed away. What’s left behind is sodium, and sodium does not deposit onto cloth diapers (or any other fabric).
Enzymes are chemical substances that break up protein based soils, such as blood or feces. Enzymes do not interact with cloth, so if they have no protein to attack, they will simply wash away with the water. They do not interact with fabric really at all, with a few exceptions. Cellulase specifically attacks natural fibers, and is occasionally included to stop cotton from pilling. Very few detergents include Cellulase and when they do, it’s in miniscule amounts (they certainly don’t want to eat holes in your clothes) and they are then rinsed away. Cellulase wouldn’t react with skin anyway, so it’s rather a moot point.
That’s everything that’s in detergent. It’s chemically impossible for surfactants, water softeners, and enzymes to remain on fabrics after they’ve been thoroughly rinsed away. It’s NOT impossible for fragrances and optical brighteners to stay behind – that, again, is by design.
All that said, I also want to note that while it is certainly your prerogative to limit your family’s exposure to whatever substances you see fit, it is HIGHLY unlikely that your kids will have any kind of reaction or allergy to the detergent used to wash their clothes. In a study done by the North American Contact Dermatitis Group, only 0.7% of patients showed a reaction to detergent, and upon closer inspection, most of those patients either showed reactions to both the control (water-only washed fabric) and the detergent-washed fabric, or they showed no reaction on a re-test. I’m not saying that detergent allergies are impossible, or undermining the severity of those reactions when they do occur, but I AM saying that it’s very, very unlikely for a reaction to occur.
All that said, again, it is completely your decision of you want to limit exposure to these things.
So, now that I’ve typed a novel to answer your first question, I can answer your second – what are the best detergents to use that do not have optical brighteners and fragrances?
Unfortunately that answer isn’t really straightforward, as there are many things that go into choosing the right detergent for your family. And it’s more complicated than just leaving the fragrances out (optical brighteners can be left out with no ill effects). See, the problem with surfactants is they kind of stink. For lack of a better term, they have a very “chemical” smell to them. Open a bag of unscented Rockin’ Green or BumGenius detergent and take a big whiff. Smell like roses? Not really. That chemically smell comes from the cleaning agents, and when you remove the fragrances, what’s left over kind of stinks. So what’s the solution? Use less of those ingredients in your formulations. This is why we recommend using double or more of the amount of these “weaker” detergents.
We aren’t the only people to notice that free and clear detergents don’t clean as well as their regular counterparts. Consumer Reports recently did a study of many detergent brands and across the board, the free and clear varieties performed much worse than the regular ones. I would link the study here, but unfortunately Consumer Reports makes you pay to see it, so you’ll have to take my word for it :-\
All of that is to say that the best option for a detergent for your family is not at all cut and dry. Some detergents are stronger than others, but you can use more of a weaker detergent to compensate for that. Choosing the best individual detergent for YOU is by no means a “one size fits all” case. That’s why we work so hard with each individual mom or dad that posts here to find what works best for them – in fact, just yesterday Eileen Walker and I spent hours hunting down a sulfate-free detergent for a mama with allergies.
Next on the list, you asked about Allen’s surfactants vs. Tide’s. In this case, it is a matter of concentration. If I can make an adults-only analogy for a second, think of it like alcohol. Beer and whisky both contain alcohol, and both will make you drunk. But you need to drink much more beer (by volume) than you do whisky if you want to get wasted. Even though it’s the same chemical acting on your body, there’s no doubt that 12oz of Jack will get you much more drunk than 12oz of Sam Adams.
Additionally, Tide contains some things that no other detergents do. It is only of very few detergents to contain the specific enzyme cellulase, which keeps cotton fabrics from pilling up, making them look newer longer. It also keeps its particular bend of ingredients (percentages and whatnot) proprietary so that no one can copy their formula.
Next up, what are the things a detergent needs to be effective? Surfactants are needed for a detergent to clean AT ALL. Without surfactants, you might as well wash in water because you’ve got nothing that can bind to soil and lift them away.
Enzymes aren’t strictly necessary but they do help, especially because the primary mess we’re removing from cloth diapers (poo) is protein based.
Water softeners help too, because as I mentioned, most of the US has hard water to some degree. If you don’t have adequate water softeners in your laundry, the surfactants will waste their time binding to the minerals in your water instead of the poop in your diapers.
That’s basically it.
Scented detergents don’t cover up the barnyard or ammonia smell. We can see that from the comments here on our board! We often see mamas who are using a scented detergent, but don’t have great agitation and therefore their diapers aren’t getting completely clean. The fragrance that Tide leaves behind is just not strong enough to cover the smell of leftover poop in a diaper! Think about a bathroom that someone has just used and then sprayed some Febreeze around. NOT FOOLING ANYONE, you know? haha 🙂
Now, science. To the best of my knowledge, no one has swabbed diapers and cultured the swabs to see what grows, so if that’s what you mean by “science testing” then I’m sorry to report that I don’t think there is any. However, we do have a plethora of survey data that shows that the CD safe method simply isn’t working: http://
We also know of a Facebook group of 32,000 people that has been doing some trial and error testing to find out which method works. Over and over again it comes up that the CD safe method falls short when it comes to cleaning diapers. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? 😉
However, even though no one has taken a petri dish to the diapers, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been studies on detergent and detergent buildup. You have probably heard of a famous (in our world) study done by Clemson University on how well detergents rinse away from fabric. This study seemingly proved that Tide builds up over time, while another detergent rinses away completely.
Let’s address that study. First, it’s important to know the conditions under which the study was performed. In the mid-90s, Clemson offered its textile lab for paid testing of many products. The study in question was funded by a company called Atsko, and the detergent compared to Tide was Atsko SportsWash/Sensi-Clean (they’re the same thing, just marketed differently). Atsko paid Clemson to test their product so they could say “independent lab testing proves…” and, you know, not be lying. That certainly doesn’t invalidate the study, but let’s call a spade a spade: when you read that study, you’re reading a commercial.
Second, that study was performed in 1995 – twenty years ago. Since then, Tide’s liquid formula has changed SEVEN times. It is no longer the same detergent that was tested back then. P&G changes and tweaks their formulae frequently to keep up with changes in technology. Sensi-Clean/SportsWash remains the exact same product.
Again, neither of these things invalidate the study. The two components we discussed earlier – fragrance and optical brighteners – really do build up over time. However, they build up to a certain point and then stop after they reach a “saturation point”. According to Atsko’s own website, and confirmed in an email from the company, the detergent buildup shown in their lab testing stopped around the 10th wash. In other words, after 10 washes, the test fabrics no longer gained any weight at all. And by the way, they only gained 2% weight in the first place. Put half a teaspoon of water in your hand. That’s the weight difference between a fabric fully “built up” with all the fragrance and brighteners it will ever hold.
Oh, and just as a side note, this was corroborated in an email from Country Save, the makers of BumGenius detergent, who also confirm that mainstream detergent does not continue to build up over time.
So, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you HAVE to use Tide to get your diapers clean. I AM going to tell you that IF you CHOOSE to use Tide, you are not putting your family in any danger. If you CHOOSE to use another detergent, we can help you find one that fits the specific needs of your family.
No one here is paid to be here. No one has any vested interest in you choosing one detergent over another. We only want you to have clean diapers. That’s a weird passion to have, but it’s a passion that all the admins and members here share.
I know this is a novel, but if I’ve left anything unanswered or raised in additional questions, please let me know and I would be happy to address them!