Knowing that the primary action of a deodorant is to either kill the bacteria in your armpits or turn the armpits into a hostile environment for bacteria, you can focus your efforts on finding or making a natural deodorant with ingredients that will do the job without posing the risk of harm.

The good news is there are plant-based and natural ingredients that can produce both deodorizing and (to a limited extent) antiperspirant effects. Some of these include:

• Tea Tree or Manuka essential oil (antibacterial)
• Sage essential oil, sage tea or other form of sage extract
  (astringent –helps inhibit sweat production)
• Cypress, Lemongrass, Petitgrain and Pine Essential Oils (assist in regulating over-production and over-stimulation of sweat glands
• Witch Hazel extract (astringent and antibacterial)
• Goldenseal extract, tincture, or powder (astringent and antibacterial)
• Myrrh or Benzoin powder (antibacterial)
• Baking Soda (adsorbent and antibacterial)
• Cornstarch (adsorbent)
• Arrowroot powder (adsorbent)
• Kaolin or Bentonite Clay powder (adsorbent)
• Apple Cider Vinegar (antibacterial -lowers pH of the skin)

Other ingredients that are safe to use as fillers or binders include aloe vera and vegetable glycerin (for roll-ons), coconut oil, shea butter, and beeswax (for solids), and additional essential oils for fragrance. If you’re making your own deodorant powder you can grind fragrant herbs like lavender buds, lemon verbena, or rose petals in a coffee grinder and mix them in with your other powders. Stay away from any form of Talc or Talcum Powder as this can be toxic to your lungs when inhaled. In fact, a 1972 FDA study showed that 39 out of 40 talc samples tested contained up to 1% asbestos! Talcum powder and talc fibers have been linked to ovarian cancer and respiratory illnesses.

Last but not least are natural deodorants made from potassium alum or ammonium alum. Not to be confused with metal aluminum this alum is a compound found in alum salts and used to make solid crystal deodorants -a popular natural alternative. Crystal deodorants leave a layer of natural crystal salts on the surface of the skin producing a hostile environment for bacteria, and have been used as a deodorant throughout history in Thailand, the Far East, Mexico and several other countries.

Using mass-market antiperspirants and deodorants may seem like a simple and innocuous thing to do to assuage your fears about the way you smell. But knowing the facts will help you identify the safest and most effective options to meet your needs. Now you have some more information that can help you make wiser choices. Do you use a “natural” deodorant? If so, which is your favorite and why?

With all the potential hazards associated with using antiperspirants and deodorants, and even some of the so-called “natural” versions, you may be wondering how you can possibly stay dry and fresh without them. Well you’re not alone!
If you prefer not to use either, or to minimize the need for potentially harmful underarm products then here are 3 things you can to do to stay dry and fresh:

1. Find ways to stay cool. This could mean avoiding over-exertion, staying in the shade or in air-conditioned environments when it’s hot out, cutting down on hot spicy foods which can increase the likelihood of sweating and carrying the pungent odors from food (garlic especially) to the surface of your skin. It also means finding ways to cope with stress so that you remain cool and calm when your nerves start to act up. All of these should help cut down on the amount of sweat you produce, keeping you dry and minimizing opportunities for producing unpleasant odors.
2. Maintain a proper pH balance. Remember, bacteria thrive in high pH or base (alkaline) environments.[7] Creating such an environment in the armpit makes it more susceptible to bacterial colonization.[7]Wash your armpits with a low pH soap or cleanser to help maintain the “acid mantle” (pH 4.5 to 6) that protects your skin from damage and infection. High pH (or alkaline) soaps and cleansers strip away the acid mantle (a very thin layer of sweat and sebum) increasing the pH of your skin, which in turn creates an alkaline environment that bacteria flourish in.
3. Use plant-based ingredients like essential oils, which are safe and effective, to target and eliminate bacteria while simultaneously making you smell (and feel) good! If you read my recent post Essential Oils: Meet the New “Antibiotics”, you know that there are a number of oils with antibacterial properties (Tea Tree oil is always the first that comes to mind and probably the most familiar for a lot of folks). Any one of these oils could be a key ingredient in an under arm preparation (powder or spray) that would help address the bacteria and the odor problem. Stay tuned for some natural ingredients and recipe ideas I’ll share for making your own -or that you should be looking for in the products you buy.

Keep in mind that persistent body odor may be a sign of a more serious health problem –like a problem with your digestive system which results in poor elimination. If your body odor persists in spite of your efforts to address it, you should consult a health care practitioner to determine what else may be at the root of the problem.

The basic difference between antiperspirants and deodorants is that the former keep you from sweating, while the latter cut down on what makes you stink when you sweat. Understanding the difference between the two, and the pros and cons of each is the key to identifying the safest and most effective options out there.

Deodorants target the bacteria that hang around your armpits by making the skin there too salty or acidic (low pH) for bacteria to live in. No bacteria, means no smell. Most deodorants use alcohol to accomplish this and many use synthetic fragrances (which have their own inherent safety issues) to mask whatever smell is not fully eliminated by the other active ingredients.

Antiperspirants do the job using the exact opposite principle: they actually keep you from sweating by plugging the ducts that carry sweat from the glands to the skin’s surface. Without any sweat, the bacteria in your underarms don’t have anything to feast upon. Most antiperspirants have some of the same ingredients found in deodorants that kill bacteria as a failsafe. Their main function, however, is to keep you from perspiring, and alas, this only works for a short time before you have to re-apply it.

Antiperspirants are designed to decrease the production of eccrine sweat, which, ironically, has no odor and therefore no substances for bacteria to thrive on. And neither antiperspirants nor deodorants can decrease apocrine sweat, which is the type of sweat that is responsible for creating odors when the fats and proteins in it interact with the bacteria in your armpits. This begs the question of which product is better or necessary? While both types of products can be seen as interfering with our body’s naturally occurring processes, antiperspirants are clearly more disruptive as they are intended to stop you from sweating altogether and sweating is necessary for regulating body temperature. If body odor is your main concern (as opposed to staying dry), then deodorants are a more appropriate choice. Some people have a problem of excessive sweating which may push them in the direction of using an antiperspirant but if you’ve got this type of problem then you may need to consult a health care practitioner because using an antiperspirant may not be enough to tackle the problem.

I’m a big picture type of person. I like to start with a wider or broader view of something to establish a greater context within which to look at a more specific subject. In the case of using antiperspirants or deodorants and our obsession with body odor, I think it helps to first understand why and how we sweat before tackling the bigger decision of which type of product to use or if you should use any product at all.

Sweating is your body’s natural way of cooling itself off –whether that extra heat comes from hardworking muscles (the result of exercise or over-exertion), from over stimulated nerves (being nervous), or from the burning of food via the body’s metabolic processes. When sweat evaporates from the surface of your skin, it removes excess heat and cools you. So even though sweating can sometimes be embarrassing, it’s a natural bodily function that regulates and maintains the body’s normal temperature, which is crucial to our survival.

The average person has 2.6 million sweat glands in their skin. There are two different types of sweat glands in our underarms, apocrine and eccrine. The eccrine glands are by far the most numerous and produce most of the sweat in our underarms, as well as other areas, including the forehead, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet.

For the most part, human perspiration has no smell until fermented by bacteria, which thrive in hot, humid and acid pH environments like your armpits. The apocrine glands are responsible for making you stink. That’s because the sweat they produce contains fats and proteins from within your body that are carried to the exterior surface of your skin where they react with bacteria that live under your arms –creating odors. The fats and proteins in this sweat make it a little thicker and milkier than eccrine sweat and sometimes yellowish in color. This is what typically causes those yellow stains in the armpit area of your shirts.

Ironically, the under arm hair that most women tend to remove, either by waxing or shaving, can actually help minimize odors because it wicks moisture away from the skin and helps keep the skin dry enough to prevent or diminish bacterial colonization in the first place. This hair is less susceptible to bacterial growth and so it’s ideal for preventing bacterial odor. While antiperspirants and deodorants aim to achieve the same objective: eliminating the source of odor-causing sweat, they work in fundamentally different ways and I’ll talk about that a little more in my next post.

Not to sound like an alarmist (after all the ranting I did about the EWG in recent posts), but this week I want to talk about a sticky and somewhat personal subject that for me certainly invokes the precautionary principle: antiperspirants and deodorants. As part of our daily routine, most of us reach for some form of antiperspirant or deodorant in an attempt to either control or eliminate the unpleasant body odors that can arise when we sweat. This need, like so many of the ones that dictate our personal hygiene habits, probably stems from early advertising campaigns designed to influence perception and ultimately behavior in order to sell a lot of related product.

So effective were these campaigns in establishing our cultural distaste for body odor, that every day 95% of Americans over the age of 12 reach for a deodorant or antiperspirant to help address their insecurities about the way they smell. In 2006, U.S. sales for this category of product reached a staggering $2.5 billion!

But just when you thought you had this problem sewn up tight, comes the speculation and growing concern as to whether deodorants and antiperspirants are harmful or even a possible cause of cancer. These concerns arise mainly from the use of antiperspirants which all contain an aluminum-based compound as their main ingredient. The most commonly used of these active ingredients are aluminum chloride, aluminum zirconium tricholorohydrex glycine, aluminum chlorohydrate and aluminum hydroxybromide –collectively referred to as aluminum salts.

The link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s Disease aside, the aluminum found in antiperspirants has been shown to cause DNA mutation –a pre-cursor for uncontrolled growth of cells, and hence cancer. It has also been found to have estrogen-like effects when frequently placed on and absorbed into the skin. The latter finding has led some scientists to believe that using antiperspirants may be linked to breast cancer.

Equally alarming is the finding that aluminum can be fatal in large enough doses to people with impaired kidney function, causing some antiperspirant manufacturers to place warnings on their product labels.

Up until now none of these research findings have been conclusive, but questions still remain about the safety of underarm products. This has given rise to new, healthier alternatives, but its not clear if these products are entirely safe either. So how do you know what product is the best product for your needs? Stay tuned for more on this …

In my last post I questioned whether the Environmental Working Group is starting to cross the line from being an independent research and activist organization agitating for meaningful and desirable change to a slightly overzealous mouth-piece that is relying on its growing visibility and clout to use fear-mongering to achieve its goals. This observation is not based solely on the information and recommendations in its 2010 Sunscreen Guide.

I recently noticed the Skin Deep ratings on some of our products slip a little (from the lowest safety concern rankings of 1 to 3 to a 4). If it were not for the essential oils used in the products, all of our products would originally have had rankings of 1 and 2. Now I’m told that some products have been flagged due to the use of certain ingredients they are beginning to scrutinize like Sodium Borate (the botanical or INCI name for Borax) and now Emulsifying Wax. Both of these ingredients (certainly the latter) are widely used in the manufacturing of creams and lotions (including natural products) to bind the water and the oils together to form stable products that don’t separate after they’ve been made.

Sodium Borate or Sodium Tetraborate as its sometimes called is a naturally occurring mineral that’s marketed under the common name Borax and used as a common water softener. When used in a cream or lotion, its purpose is to soften the water making it easier to bind with beeswax. Usually it is used in very small quantities (i.e. a 1/2 teaspoon per gallon). Emulsifying Wax is usually used in place of beeswax, partly because it’s less expensive and also because it makes a superior and very stable emulsion. You would be hard-pressed to find a good lotion or cream that doesn’t use it (by good I mean one that goes on smoothly and doesn’t separate over time or use other funky ingredients as a replacement). We use a combination of beeswax and vegetable emulsifying wax in our lotions and a pinch of sodium borate to facilitate the emulsion.

The EWG is beginning to scrutinize and question it because there’s not a lot of disclosure as to what is in this ingredient, which can vary somewhat from one supplier to the next. I am guessing that they are concerned that it will eventually be revealed that this ingredient (or some versions of it) contains potentially harmful ingredients, in much the same way that many “fragrances” contain phthalates, which most people weren’t aware of until recently because there is no requirement to disclose the components of a fragrance by the fragrance manufacturer.

As I’ve said before, I don’t question or take issue with EWG’s intentions. I think they are honorable. But I have to wonder, given the thousands of chemicals and ingredients used in beauty and personal care products at present, are they biting off more than they can chew by going after all of them at once? Certainly there are far worse offenders when it comes to products and ingredients. While taking an approach of ‘better safe than sorry’ is admirable, when it ends up being a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ situation does this really serve everyone’s best interests?

What irks me about this is that now the burden of proof is being placed on all the companies using these ingredients (big and small) to demonstrate that it’s not harmful. As a small manufacturer, my hands are tied because the ingredient manufacturers are the ones who refuse to provide complete disclosure. What I want to know is why EWG is not putting more pressure on the ingredient manufacturers? All their efforts at the moment are focused on product manufacturers. This is not a balanced approach and threatens to harm the little guys who don’t always have the information they need to make better choices or whose choices are limited by what’s available in the ingredients marketplace.

Sometimes I think the EWG is going a little too far and the end result as I mentioned in my last post is more confusion and fear for the consumer with no reliable way to make their own truly informed decisions. At the same time, small product manufacturers who are trying to do right by their customers are hurt in the process because of the false perception created by exaggerated or inadequately qualified safety concern ratings. If you scrutinize their ratings you will frequently find what they themselves have identified as a Data Gap –meaning incomplete information about an ingredient that gives it a more questionable ranking which can ultimately raise the overall ranking of a product that contains it.

They need to pick their battles wisely instead of trying to cover all their bases at the same time and diluting their efforts in the process. Certainly there are bigger fish to fry right now … Start with the worst of the worst. And work step-wise from there.
What are your thoughts on this? I’d really like to know. Should the EWG (and the FDA for that matter) focus all their energy and limited funds on scrutinizing every ingredient out there because they believe it may pose potential harm? Or should they focus on eliminating ingredients that are already known toxins?

As a member of the Safe Cosmetics Campaign and a participant in the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetics database, I support and applaud these organizations efforts to bring some reform to the way cosmetics and personal care products are formulated -especially in the case where products are still being made with known toxins. With the recent introduction of the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, they are clearly making some significant strides in moving their agenda forward.

This is important work because of the potential benefits and protection it could provide consumers who are at present like experimental subjects in the giant petri dish that comprises the $35 billion a year beauty and personal care industry (often ironically referred to as HABA or HBA which is shorthand for Health and Beauty).

However as a small manufacturer who is working hard and diligently to make safe and effective products I sometimes wonder if, in spite of their best intentions, they are on a course that will soon run amok. What I mean is as they continue to gain credibility as an independent authority on the subject (and right now they are pretty much the ONLY independent authority on the subject) they will begin to wield real power or market clout that can have an impact on consumers perceptions of what’s safe and what’s not. And that is not something to be taken lightly.

While these are the “good guys” looking out for your health and safety, at the end of the day they are NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that have neither the scientific backing nor the funding to legitimately substantiate all the red flags they are continually raising. They are walking a fine line now between fear-mongering and agitating for meaningful change.

The latest red flag is the finding from a 2009 FDA study that the ingredient Retinyl Palmitate, which is a synthetic form of Vitamin A found in many skin care products and apparently widely used in sunscreens as well, may actually speed the development of cancer, even when present in low doses. The industry puts Vitamin A in its formulations because it is an anti-oxidant that slows skin aging. It seems that if you use these products at night or indoors you’re ok but if you go out into the sun after applying them you may be in big trouble.

This is not an insignificant finding, however I have to wonder what must be going on in the average consumer’s head when they hear this. In its 2010 Sunscreen Guide, the EWG recommends that consumers avoid all sunscreen products with this ingredient. If more than 40% of sun products contain it then that doesn’t leave a lot of options to choose from. Basically, out of 1400 products with sunscreen that were assessed, the EWG identified only 39 products that were worthy of their coveted “green” rating and all of those products used zinc or titanium oxide (sun blocks) as their primary ingredients.

It reminds me of the story of the boy who cried wolf. If day in and day out, all we hear is more bad news about cancer-causing ingredients and products and little or no useful or better alternatives we can trust, then we might as well all slit our wrists and jump off a cliff now and get it over with! I’m being facetious of course. But my point is if this is all that’s presented to us, eventually fatigue will set in and we will stop listening and that’s not good for anyone. This is one of my fears about what might happen if the EWG continues to lead us down this rabbit hole.

As I mentioned in my last post, about the only thing that seems to have changed with respect to the state of sunscreens and sun safety products is that the mainstream media is starting to pay more attention to this issue and take a frank look at what needs to be done.

The New York Times appears to have taken the lead here with its recent Room for Debate blog: What We Still Don’t Know About Sunscreens. In Room for Debate, The Times invites knowledgeable outside contributors to discuss news events and other timely issues. For this conversation, the Times convened the following contributors:

• Darrell S. Rigel, Clinical Professor of Dermatology
• Sonya Lunder, Environmental Working Group
• Michael K. Hansen, Consumers Union
• Kerry Hanson, Chemist, University of California, Riverside
• Lenora Felderman, Dermatologist

Darrell Rigel tackles the subject of better labeling and better ingredients. Apparently in the U.S. there are only 17 approved sunscreen agents, while Europe has 28, and Japan has more than 40. He blames the FDA for lagging in formally approving regulations and feels that rather than wait until they can come up with their own standards for testing UVA that we simply adopt the same standards as Europe has.

Sonya Lunder looks at an alarming new finding: the use of Vitamin A (in the synthetic form of Retinyl Palmitate) in sun care products may be accelerating the development of skin lesions and tumors when applied in the presence of sunlight! According to Lunder, this ingredient can be found in a whopping 40% (almost half!) of sunscreens used in the U.S.

Michael Hansen takes the FDA to task for not being more aggressive in demanding and enforcing the use of warnings on product labels that would clarify which products provide actual protect against UVA. A product may have a high SPF which means it protects against UVB radiation but that doesn’t mean it protects against UVA. He also feels that the FDA should more thoroughly investigate the health concerns that have been raised about various sunscreen ingredients.

Kerry Hanson questions whether our current concept of sun care protection needs to be redefined given what we’ve learned about the difference between UVB and UVA exposures and their respective roles in causing or promoting skin cancer. Since companies don’t have the substantial resources needed to fund the research (or the proper impartiality), there’s an opportunity for government agencies like the FDA, National Science Foundation, and the NIH to jump in and take the lead.

Lenora Felderman laments the false sense of security that sunscreens provide and echoes the other contributors’ call for better and more responsible action by the FDA.

Since it was posted on July 5th, this has generated over 200 comments. You can read the full discussions here and add your comments as well.

What do you think the FDA’s top priorities in this area should be?

Every year around this time of the year, I scan industry trade rags and do some searching on the Internet in an attempt to find out what’s new in the market for sunscreens. And every year I marvel at how some things never seem to change! In fact they appear to be getting worse!

In spite of a growing body of increasingly credible evidence that turns everything we’ve been led to believe about sunscreens over the years on its head, companies are still producing essentially the same products, and packaging and marketing them in increasingly deceptive ways. Caveat emptor (buyer beware!) …

The FDA still hasn’t formally issued its new rules and guidelines for sunscreens with respect to UVA testing and labeling, which were informally adopted back in 2007 after an exhaustive 9-year review. This was supposed to happen in May and now the word is that it will happen later this year, probably in October. And in spite of the fact that there’s no consensus on whether sunscreens prevent skin cancer, and the discovery that some sunscreen ingredients might actually increase our risk of getting melanoma (the deadliest form of skin cancer), women’s magazines, sun product manufacturers, and dermatologists still relentlessly and religiously repeat the mantra to wear sunscreen whenever we go outside, or avoid any exposure to the sun. Are they really that blind to their hypocrisy or are they waiting for a larger force (i.e. the FDA) to force them to sit up and fly straight?

Most experts agree that people should use sunscreens to protect their skin from the sun, but they disagree widely on how well they actually work. There’s so much conflicting information and outright disinformation on the subject how can anyone make a reasonable decision about what products to use? The simple fact is that sunscreens were never developed to prevent skin cancer. They were (and continue to be) designed primarily to prevent sunburn. And even though SPF ratings are notoriously unreliable people continue to mistakenly believe that using higher SPFs buys them a lot more time in the sun without risk, so sun care companies keep coming out with higher and higher SPFs. We’ve hit a new high (or new low depending on how you look at it) with SPF 100!

Almost in defiance of the FDA’s proposed regulation, these companies substantially increased their high-SPF offerings this year. According to the Environmental Working Group’s analysis of nearly 500 beach and sport sunscreens, nearly one in six products now lists SPF values higher than 50, compared to only one in the prior eight years. Neutrogena has six products labeled “SPF 100,” and Banana Boat has four.

About the only thing I can see that has changed is that more mainstream media are finally starting to question the safety of sun care products.

A came across an article I’d clipped out of Mother Jones magazine about a year and a half ago that was loaded with interesting facts and tidbits regarding our obsession with cleanliness. Here are some of the more interesting items that stood out for me:

• In 2007 Americans spent $7.3 billion on cleaning products and $2.4 billion on soap. Antibacterial chemical sales alone were expected to reach $930 million by end of 2009.
• The U.S. market for hand sanitizers has grown 200% since 2002. Purell controls more than half of the $164 milion industry.
• In 1993 there were only a few dozen antibacterial consumer products. Today there are more than 9000, with 2,753 introduced in 2007!
• In 2005, an FDA advisory panel concluded that antibacterial soap is no better than regular soap for preventing infection.
• Triclosan, [a derivative of Agent Orange] and the active ingredient in many antimicrobial soaps, has been detected in women’s breast milk and 58% of U.S. waterways [scary ...]
• A 2007 study found that adults who regularly use household cleaning sprays are 30-50% more likely to develop asthma.
• Double-dipping a chip transfers 10,000 bacteria to the dip!
• A dermatologist told the New York Times that dirty exercise mats may have caused an uptick in skin infections among women who do yoga and Pilates.
• Pediatricians prescribe antibiotics to more than 50% of kids who complain of sore throats.
• The Lancet reports that American doctors order antibiotics for 80% of patients with sinus infections – usually caused by the cold virus.
• In 1974, 2% of staph infections were resistant to antibiotics; today, more than 60% are.
• A sampling of New York doctors’ ties found staph on 1/3 of them.

And last but not least, my favorite tidbit of them all (ah, the irony of it):

• Australian doctors have treated kids’ eczema by giving them “dirt pills” containing good
  bacteria.

So much for Germ Warfare!