Marcie Mom from EczemaBlues.com interviews Laura, CEO of VMV Hypoallergenics, to find out more about product claims and why they’re important when choosing your skin care…particularly if you or your child has eczema.
What are some of the most common irritants and allergens to avoid?
Marcie: Can you list for us some common irritants? It’ll also be great if you can let us know if there are other common names for these irritants.
Laura: As you can imagine, there are a lot and, importantly, they change depending on how common the exposure to a substance is.
Perfumes, Fragrances, Aromatherapy, and Flavors
This is anything that says cologne or perfum but also flower and fruit extracts (even organic ones), many herbs, and many flavors. Check out our posts on Fragrance Mix for more.
Preservatives
Parabens are actually pretty wonderful preservatives but they are top allergens (still, if you or your child haven’t patch tested positive to them, you don’t need to avoid them!). Other top preservatives to avoid include formaldehyde and formaldehyde releasers, quaternium 15, and methylchloroisothiazolinone / methylisothiazolinone (MCI/MI Eukyl K100, Kathon CG).
Nickel
This has been the top contact allergen for decades and can be found in most metals. There are ways to stay safer, however, which you can read about in our Allergen-Not An Allergen post about nickel.
Some substances in arts & crafts
Arts and crafts are wonderful for kids but if your child has atopic dermatitis, be guided by their patch test results. Some things to look out for include: dyes, paints, turpentine, glue, ink, wet clay or wet ceramics.
“Amido-Amines”
Some ingredients (like parabens) get a lot of bad publicity and many products marketed to babies and kids emphasize safety by claiming their absence. The thing is, their replacements can be worse. Sulfates, for example, are not top contact allergens (which is pretty impressive considering that they’re in so many things and have been for decades). They can be irritants but this normally means that skin reactions can be generally prevented with lower concentrations. Many “Sulfate-Free” products, however, use “amino-amines” like cocamide DEA, cocamidopropyl betaine and similar instead, which are published as top contact allergens.
If you or your child have had a patch test, search up your allergens to learn more about them and how to avoid them.
This article was originally published in eczemablues.com as one of a multi-part series focused on understanding and using products for sensitive skin. Inspired by her daughter Marcie who had eczema from two weeks old, Mei (aka MarcieMom) started EczemaBlues.com with the mission to turn eczema blues to bliss. In this series of interviews, MarcieMom interviews Laura, CEO of VMV Hypoallergenics, to learn more about product claims when choosing products to care for skin with eczema.
