#837 Lauryl Lie

Sometimes the promise of something is more attractive than the result. It’s like the legend of Lorelei. She was a siren on the Rhine river who lured sailors to their deaths. The promise of her voice led them to doom.
So it is with the chemical lauryl sulfate. Yesterday, in my morning shower, as I was wiping my stinging eyes after an unfortunate shampoo miscue with my still asleep hands, I chanced to read the ingredients on my shampoo bottle. One of the first was lauryl sulfate.
Hmm, I thought, sounds like someone I dated in college. I wonder what this chemical does.
Answer: Lauryl sulfate is a foaming agent. It makes your shampoo work up into a fine lather. And it’s got some people with health concerns worked up into a lather too.
Seems lauryl sulfate is quite the irritant. They use it in experiments to first irritate an animal’s skin so later they can cure the irritation with something else. It not only causes tissue damage, it has actually been shown to destroy cells on the cornea.
Your cornea is that clear part on the front of your eye that you see through and that Lasik surgeons mess with.
But, you know, lauryl sulfate foams really well, so it’s in about every soap product there is. The shampoo people say it’s safe. Since occasional application and quick and thorough rinsing don’t leave it on your skin long enough to cause trouble.
But they take an interesting approach to the eye-sting issue. Instead of finding a way to make lauryl sulfate less damaging, or finding another foaming agent altogether, they add different chemicals to your shampoo to anesthetize your eye so you don’t feel the pain of the lauryl sulfate eating it away.
That’s like shooting up you hand with Novocain and then holding it over a fire. You may not feel it, but your hand isn’t any less crispy.
Wow. Marketing ingenuity at its best. Numbing your eyes so you don’t feel them being chemically singed.
All for foam.
In sailing, a lot of foam is usually a good sign that right below the surface there are rocks of doom.
America, ya gotta love it.