Personal care products disrupt the human oxidation field
121 comments
·June 29, 2025muhdeeb
hackernewds
Just posting to not just upvote, but also say that you have a very calm thought process and write with clarity
mannycalavera42
posting to upvote the upvote
photochemsyn
"A commercial lotion composed of aqua, glycerin, Brassica campestris seed oil, Butyrospermum parkii butter, ceteareth-12, ceteareth-20, cetearyl alcohol, ethylhexyl stearate, Simmondsia chinensis seed oil, tocopherol, caprylyl glycol, citric acid, sodium hydroxide, acrylates/C10-30 alkyl acrylate crosspolymer, sodium gluconate, and phenoxyethanol was chosen for this experiment."
Personal health recommendation: You'd be better off rubbing down with olive oil or sunflower oil than with that concoction, most likely. The ancient Greeks got some things right.
dylan604
The opening paragraph is precisely why so many people have moved to natural ingredient products and fragrance free. Some fragrance makers have new for formulas with “clean” ingredients, but they are still proprietary and come with a “trust us” promise. It’s interesting to see the specifics of what these products can do other than what’s advertised on the tin.
kstrauser
[flagged]
riffraff
You jest, but there's a ton of people convinced they can use rock alum which is natural and so is better than industrial deodorants which contain aluminium.
kajecounterhack
I'm similarly puzzled by "uncured bacon" which afaik still uses naturally occurring nitrites. How they're allowed to call it uncured when it's clearly still cured is beyond me.
PaulHoule
I can't use those aluminum containing antiperspirants at all -- they violently irritate my eyes if I put them on my skin.
kstrauser
My inner chemistry geek weeps.
hackyhacky
I only use naturally-ocurring radium and free-range poison ivy.
CoastalCoder
But is the poison ivy ethically sourced?
I'm wondering if you have its informed consent.
null
xyst
I see you are a man of culture.
anal_reactor
My skin care routine is "I showered in some not-so-distant past" and sunscreen. You hit diminishing returns very quickly. Showering more than once a week has no health benefits, it's just so that other citizens of your overcrowded city wouldn't complain about your natural smell.
roughly
> it's just so that other citizens of your overcrowded city wouldn't complain about your natural smell.
Yes, that’s correct. You’ve cracked the code. People don’t want to smell you, that’s why we shower regularly.
I’d suspect there are other parts of your life where you could combine that keen perceptive wit with these revelations to perhaps elucidate other social mysteries and dilemmas you’ve faced.
dghlsakjg
Your returns are nowhere close to diminishing, even for people with close to no physical activity or sweating, people can tell if you haven't showered for a week.
iinnPP
Not showering for a week means I have a headache all day. So evidently not everyone is doing it for someone else.
cko
But what about dating? The nether regions should be washed in anticipation for certain activities. There are no diminishing returns for that.
lurking_swe
some of us exercise, and have oily skin, and break out with acne if we don’t shower right away.
some of us live in hot climates where a cold shower genuinely feels amazing and cools the body down.
some of us enjoy showering daily, because the bed sheets get less dirty that way, which means less laundry to do, and reduces my stress.
some of us are married to a lady and want a happy home life (lol).
a sample size of 1 (you) does not mean it’s true for everyone. Just saying. :)
9283409232
I worked with someone with your mindset and he smelled horrible in the office to the point where HR had to step in and talk to him about hygiene.
xyst
Somebody needs to touch grass
mirekrusin
You're not using mixture of amygdalin from organic apricot kernels, coca leaves mixed with unripe seed pods of opium poppy? Does wonders.
8bitsrule
"the human health impacts of many such chemicals remain poorly understood"
The effects of ritual bathing (soap, scrubbing with washcloths, etc.) on the skin may also be "poorly understood". Many people also wear regularly-washed clothing.
When I look at the laundry-list of chemicals in personal-care products (soaps, shampoos) (and in foods ... sometimes, wow!) I often wonder how much effort goes into testing all of this gunk.
dvh
Occasionally when I shower I get this vivid vision: a man comes home from hard days work and takes a shower. Grabs his shampoo but only squirts out half of his usual amount because shampoo bottle is empty, he thinks it will be enough but after applying it instantly feels it's not enough, so he grabs his wife's shampoo, squirts the second half and rubs it onto his hair. Few seconds later his hair bursts into fire because different chemicals in two completely different shampoos reacted together. How plausible is this scenario?
jemmyw
I don't think it's very plausible for shampoo but it's relevant for toothpaste for sensitive teeth. There's are two mechanisms for sensitive teeth, one is to flood the nerve with potassium ions using potassium nitrate, i.e. saltpetre. The other method is to block access to the nerve endings with other chemicals. You could potentially mix toothpaste and get your mouth to warm up slightly.
PaulHoule
Didn't the Joker contaminate personal care products so they did in a Batman movie?
davrosthedalek
No worries, the stuff in the wife's bottle is the same, just more expensive.
bdangubic
I am not bald because of hereditary reason but this! :)
droopyEyelids
This happened to me and the water itself caught on fire somehow
amarcheschi
>When I look at the laundry-list of chemicals in personal-care products I often wonder how much effort goes into testing all of this gunk.
A lot of effort
12_throw_away
>> how much effort goes into testing all of this gunk.
> A lot of effort
Into testing the long-term biochemical and environmental consequences? lol no absolutely not. Source: I work in this field.
amarcheschi
At least in eu, regulation is present to at least try to ensure that products are quite safe for the customers and for the environment
hiddencost
Good news (sarcasm), they laid off all the people responsible for that.
12_throw_away
Heh, is this bad ... who knows? Chemistry, environmental chemistry, and biochemistry are absurdly complex and full of interlocking Chesterton's Fences. But the profit motive means we don't really spend much time looking into them before tearing them down.
EugeneOZ
Actually it sounds kinda good.
fwip
Not sure why you got downvoted. The researchers state:
“If we buy a sofa from major furniture company, it’s tested for harmful emissions before being put on sale. However, when we sit on the sofa, we naturally transform some of these emissions because of the oxidation field we generate,” said lead author Jonathan Williams, who heads the study of organic reactive species at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. “This can create many additional compounds in our breathing zone whose properties are not well known or studied. Interestingly, body lotion and perfume both seem to dampen down this effect.”
Which, if you're worried about the effects of unstudied compounds, lotion will help protect you against.
ricardobeat
That’s like saying diarrhea will protect you against ingesting unknown poisons. Disrupting natural processes rarely comes without unintended side effects.
indus
Is soap included? I seldom use body soap during a shower. Probably once a quarter, when my SO threatens me with consequences.
I am not a researcher, but I have a simple evolutionary theory that soap was invented in the last few thousand years and became a mass-market product after the beginning of industrialization.
If we survived and evolved without the use of something in the last few million years, then why is that thing needed?
sjducb
Lots of plants can be used as soap with minimal processing (crush the plant in your hand while rubbing it on something). It’s likely that most of our ancestors used soap and we evolved to expect it. Just like we evolved to eat cooked or ground up food.
pandarus
jesus
userbinator
This sounds like a good thing, in contrast to the doom-and-gloom "scary chemicals!!!11" articles that seem to have flooded journals and news in the recent years. I believe it's basically saying there is an antioxidant effect from lotions and perfumes.
Globally, PCP usage is widespread
Skimmed the article at first, and this made me chuckle. I wonder if that was deliberate.
rsync
"I believe it's basically saying there is an antioxidant effect from lotions and perfumes."
Which would be of no value.
There is no mechanism - no pathway - for ingested or applied "antioxidant" delivery into the cell where we believe we see oxidation or damage due to free radicals, etc.
... and even if there were it would probably have a terrible impact because it appears that the oxidation and free-radicals are an essential cell signaling mechanism which triggers apoptosis.
Which is a fancy way of saying: cells use these tools to kill themselves when they are performing badly. You would not want to interrupt this process.[1]
parpfish
This won’t lead to people using less lotion, but it will lead to fancy lotions adding “OH precursors” as the new science buzzmarketing term
AnotherGoodName
Which is funny since the exact opposite, anti-oxidants, have been a fad to add for the past 20years.
woleium
Antioxidant supplements provide no benefit, may even be harmful. See 2007 meta-analysis by Goran Bjelakovic, Dimitrinka Nikolova, Lars Gluud, Rosa G. Simonetti, and Christian Gluud, published in JAMA: “Mortality in Randomized Trials of Antioxidant Supplements for Primary and Secondary Prevention: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis”.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/20579...
robocat
A meta-analysis is just a dilution of facts, in the exact proportion to have homeopathic efficacy.
thinkingtoilet
You eat anti-oxidants. So unless you're eating your lotions this isn't related and can't be the opposite.
fredfish
If an actual nutritionist says you can eat it every monkey in a lab coat knows they can sell it as a lotion with substantially less work than testing something else.
iinnPP
Skin absorbs. So it's at least partially related.
giantg2
With how bad for us the common fragrances are in regards to things like cancer risk, endocrine disruption, etc, its surprising that nothing has changed. Most products have fragrance free alternatives.
FredPret
I once worked for a large consumer goods company. We had a conference about scents.
We saw a clear correlation between richer consumers and a preference for subtler scents or even no scent.
This even applied across countries: third-world consumers liked aggressive floral scents, but in Northern Europe and North America, the scents are way less concentrated and tend to be more toward subtle alpine or linen.
All this was 15-20 years ago; today I notice that no soap in my house smells like anything at all.
tyre
Personally, I prefer neutral lotions and detergents because I wear my own cologne. It could be because
It could also be because we’re using more products. If my face moisturizer and sunscreen had different scents, that would be unfortunate. It would limit my options to those that went together.
I don’t normally want my face to smell like anything (again, cologne) but if I did I would choose only one product that’s scented. Probably beard oil.
jopsen
> today I notice that no soap in my house smells like anything at all.
Same here, and all ja e store branded products certified allergy friendly.
amarcheschi
I'm a perfume fan (hobbyist? I don't know how to name it), and I wonder if this still holds. Nowadays, the "luxury" brands such as the Arab ones, and even the "western" European niche catering to the biggest spenders are making a lot of oud fragrances, gourmands, incense perfumes... Basically anything thick, dense, almost syrupy. They don't limit to this, of course, but ouds became much more common in the last years
an_aparallel
In Sydney. It has destroyed the olfactory field imo. I cant stand the ambroxan(?)...it smells like IPA on PCP :/
omnimus
Can you recommend some fragrances or a brand that does some contemporary subtle forresty mossy but also is not crazy expensive posh branding endeavour?
alwa
In fact, it was specifically one of those alternatives which was under test here:
“a fragrance-free body lotion containing linoleic acid (Neutral, Unilever body lotion for sensitive skin; 0% colorants and 0% perfume)”
Sounds like they blame the phenoxyethanol? Which serves a preservative kind of role?
giantg2
Yeah, my comment was just to add that scents have so many other issues than just what's in the article.
null
rowanG077
This is the first time I'm hearing they are bad. Could you share some research about this?
amarcheschi
At least in the eu there are quite strict rules regulating cosmetics. Hell, lilial in perfumes was banned just to stay safe because they couldn't determine an "average exposure" and went on by banning it in perfumes to reduce what would have been the real exposure, even if it wouldn't have caused issues by being used in perfumes standalone (so not how it's used in cleaning products)
They might not be perfect, of course, and they're always improving
rowanG077
Yes of course, there are a ton of bad substances. But I as not aware of something that is. Ubiquitously used, known bad and not banned in the EU.
giantg2
There's tons more than this, but here's some high level stuff. The most concerning part is that some of the 4000+ fragrances in use are known and suspected carcinogens.
https://health.osu.edu/health/general-health/how-fragrances-...
cma
> Most products have fragrance free alternatives.
That itself is a big change that took a while.
giantg2
They've been around for a while, but they were harder to find. Even as a kid there was stuff like arm and hammer washing detergent that was scent free. Although now there are at least 5 free and clear choices at the Walmart.
flint
This is why I get outside and sweat every day.
peanut_merchant
Not well versed in the field, what are the basic implications of this for health?
PaulHoule
In the 1970s there was a lot of talk about ‘healthful negative ions’ and a fad for negative ion generators even though many of those also generated hazardous ozone.
Hydroxyl ions are a significant kind of negative ion in the atmosphere and they’re known to be good because they react with and clean out pollutants like methane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyl_radical
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144358/detergent-li...
ryukoposting
Here's some more research, since I have a tiny ozone generator in my fridge and I got worried:
Ozone concentrations as low as 70ppb are hazardous when you're exposed to it for several hours [1]. Estimates for Ozone's olfactory threshold aren't trustworthy, since you go nose-blind to it pretty quickly [2], but it seems like it's probably around 20-40ppb before olfactory fatigue sets in [3,4].
My takeaway is that Ozone generators for rooms/basements/etc are definitely a bad idea. The best-cited olfactory thresholds are all in the same order of magnitude as that 8-hour hazard threshold, and with nose-blindness being a significant factor, you just don't want to mess around with that.
Inside a fridge, though? As long as you don't actually smell any ozone when you open the fridge, and you don't just shove your head in the fridge for hours on end, I'd think you're probably fine.
[1]: https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/SH.html [2]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-H... [3]: https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/full/10.5555/19602703... [4]: https://spartanwatertreatment.com/ozone-safety/
thaumasiotes
How can something be a negative ion generator without simultaneously being a positive ion generator?
westurner
FWIU hydrogen plasma in water for hydrolysis would produce OH Hydroxl radicals. (and H2O2, O3 (Ozone), and NO_x).
TIL that Hydroxyl ions bind to methane and thereby clean the air?
Air ioniser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser :
> A 2018 review found that negative air ions are highly effective in removing particulate matter from air. [6]
But the Ozone. Ozone sanitizes and freshens, but is bad for the lungs at high concentrations.
whitexn--g28h
The article does not come to any health conclusions, just studies the impact on indoor air chemistry.
GeoAtreides
if only there was a 'Discussion' section in the article, that goes over the basic implication of the study results... if only.
braaileb
Yeesh, who taught you to debase others.
maipen
Unrelated: This is why reading comments is becoming useless. People react to the news without opening the article. Its so annoying.
Related: This article shows an interesting study but it’s hard for me to interpret what does this translate to? I think we should minimize very complex and synthetic products to our bodies. Although sometimes it’s necessary when we harm our body (e.g. long sun bathing sessions)
heavyset_go
> Although sometimes it’s necessary when we harm our body (e.g. long sun bathing sessions)
Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are basically crushed rocks that absorb UV and are used in sunscreens.
neuroelectron
You get what you pay for
superkuh
Cloudflare products disrupt the human ability to read science.org articles. The article text available to me:
>Enable JavaScript and cookies to continue
Turning on JS and doing the captchas just results in more captchas, forever, with no end. I have emailed science.org about this in the past but they only fixed it on the blogs, not the main site.
userbinator
Hint: TLS fingerprinting.
(No problems with accessing this site without JS. You just need to make your client look like one of the officially-sanctioned browsers.)
mfro
I have this problem when using the JShelter addon if I enable the privacy switches. Your browser is probably resisting fingerprinting.
perching_aix
That is very curious, because I have both JS and all manners of clientside storage disabled, yet can access the site fine.
I guess maybe my CGNAT IP is reasonably well trusted and that's the difference?
benibela
the internet is being ruined everywhere.
This week I wanted to download some old HN front pages on the command lines and only got "403 sorry"
although I do not get that now
867-5309
limonene, linalool, "parfum" are the scourge of this age
This article has a headline engineered with shock value connotations, but when you read it carefully, it takes pains to rein the suggestions of the title in as much as possible while still stirring the pot. It’s a kind of artistry you need to get papers published these days.
All that aside, it’s an interesting thing to think about but it’s not a basis for any kind of personal health recommendation and the authors state that. I have relevant expertise and this is a very complicated area that people routinely want to be boiled down into black and white simple advice. What this article seems to say is that lotion can affect the oxidation chemistry nearby it, but it’s not yet known if that is an effect with consequences that are on the whole negative or positive.
I would criticize the authors for their use of the word disrupt, because of the negative connotation carried by that word when talking about human biological systems. They use a softer, more neutral word, perturb, to express the same idea later in the article, which I think better expresses the idea without an emotional tinge to it.