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.
"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.
We use coconut oil for kids’ diapers and as skin moisturizer. The melting point (above room temperature in winter) and skin absorption makes it less greasy to me. And it seems ok and maybe preferable to get the refined organic expeller pressed stuff because it has lower aromatic smell and scratchy particles as the virgin cold pressed stuff at a 3-4$ jar discount.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I honestly think that this is actually valuable insight. It's important to distinguish things we do just to fit into the society from things we truly want to do. I'm not saying we never should do the former, we obviously should, but I think it's worth it to be aware of the choice. Most people just follow mindlessly the current social trends "because everyone does it".
People don't bathe because everyone does it. People bathe because not bathing leads to personal loss from ostracization due to unpleasant odor. There's a huge difference. Calling it mindlessly following a social trend is weirdly misguided and not well thought through. You might have more to learn from the people you mindlessly call NPCs than you think.
A conversation I’ve had with several people is: do you want to be right or do you want to get shit done? I dabbled in management for a bit, and spending time figuring out how different people communicated, how to hear and speak to them, and what their motivations were meant I could build a team out of anyone. Same here - yes, it’s all an ape dance, but we’re all apes, and if you know the dance moves, it’s a whole lot easier to move through the tribe.
I want to be right, but I need to get shit done. I take part in the social dance to the minimum degree that gives me what I need. Regarding the rest of my time, I spend it looking for people with whom I can be right. That feels way more pleasant than the social dance.
One thing I’d say about this is that other people will have perspectives that you do not that can help you be more right if you can hear it from them. You’ve got one life, one set of experiences, one brain, and the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. Leverage other people - even if they’re not “right”, they can help you be less wrong.
That's true but it's just difficult to find people whose perspectives are valuable. At some point I decided to be more approachable in order to have more friends. While the skills I gained from that are useful, I also discovered that most people are just not worth my time and energy.
Having said that, I absolutely love the moments when I'm talking to someone and the other person tells me something that is indeed valuable. That's why I do put effort into maintaining friendships with people who aren't NPCs.
It’s a mistake to consider other people as something other than autonomous agents in their own lives - it’s popular to conceive of other people as somehow not making decisions; frequently this indicates they’re making decisions by different criteria and using different information than you. This is what I mean about perspectives you don’t have access to - I won’t say there aren’t people who fundamentally are not making real decisions in their lives, but that’s fairly rare, and if someone’s making choices that don’t make sense to you, there’s often a reason you don’t see. Again, you may make different choices than them, but actually truly understanding why they make the choices that they do - to the degree that you can understand and describe to someone else their worldview, constraints, and goals - improves your understanding of the world and your ability to accurately model, predict, and explain it.
> Showering more than once a week has no health benefits
> I want to be right
Ok, well, this is only right if you don't benefit from others not being viscerally disgusted by being near you. This is almost never actually the case for anyone. Social benefit is also a health benefit.
It's not terribly uncommon. My wife also has it. It's also related to the length of my hair, where longer hair is significantly worse. Presumably it's the oil build up as my hair is extremely oily and fine.
edit: I am fully aware that not washing leads to less oil build up over time, but I have tried and doctors have tried and that boat has sailed.
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.
All you need is a modest trauma to the nose in right direction. Bones shifting a bit will cut forever hair-like nerves going from your nose sensors back to brain, effectively making you lose the sense of smell. When asked some doctor friends they confirmed harm is permanent.
When you realize that through most of human history people married because of teenage sex drive or economic necessity rather than emotionally mature relationships, then the whole dating thing loses its appeal really fast.
Also, the smell of sweat of someone attractive turns me on really hard.
> Babe I love it how you naturally smell
> That's great but I just bought a new generic cherry shampoo
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
That’s like saying diarrhea will protect you against ingesting unknown poisons. Disrupting natural processes rarely comes without unintended side effects.
Sure, but it depends on what you consider to be "natural processes," and what you don't. The oxidation of sitting on a plastic^W vegan leather couch is not a "natural" process, but sitting on wood probably is. It's also not "natural" to be closed up with the results of that oxidation for most of the day, as most of our evolution happened with plenty of access to fresh air. We definitely have evidence that people were using oils and lotions for much longer than we've had modern synthetic materials or "air-tight" building methods.
The science is definitely still out, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that inhibiting this reaction might be beneficial.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
There's a particular Middle Eastern market I visit where the cash reeks to high hell of cologne.
It turns out a few of the customers douse their dollars with their personal scents to remind everyone who's spending money with them, and I suppose to see where it might be circulating.
Can you recommend some fragrances or a brand that does some contemporary subtle forresty mossy but also is not crazy expensive posh branding endeavour?
I'm not entirely sure I understood your request, something foresty? Not a lot into those, anyway
Helan vetiver and rum, don't know if it's available in usa. Has a rum note as well as moss, I've definitely heard people around me saying it smells like forest, to me it's more of a mossy scent
Erbolario Periplo, but it's more Mediterranean bushes
Sauvage is a big ambroxan offender, a cold sharp metallic note that pierces the brains around the person wearing it, who clearly has no brain for damage to be suffered (/s)
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
EU is much better than the US for ingredient safety. I'm not sure of the EU stuff specifically, but it looks like there's still some concerns over some perfume ingredients, if not the fragrance itself. You'll probably have to do more research yourself.
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.
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.
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.
"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]
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
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.
You're right but a lot of times the positive ion is far less reactive and/or more massive than the negative ion. Not so much for OH-. Charge is not the only thing that matters.
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?
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.
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)
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.
But really, I wouldn't worry about the result of this study _at all_ in daily life. It's quite surprising to me that this would be the top HN article at the time of this comment.
wow!, we are emiting a potent biocidal gas strait through our skin!.....it explains so much!
and ya, O³ is going to chemicaly break almost anything it touches, which will definitly yield some bad to have on you stuff if the precursor is
just wrong.
also , most definitly there is a wide diference in peoples indidual chemistry, so this phenominon will join many others in waiting for a more nuanced understanding of how human biochemistry works.
Speak for yourself! The best defense against those sneaky Toxins is a good thick armor of crust… if you waste it on the trough, it’ll take months for you to build it back!
Remember personal care startup Mother Dirt, who briefly flirted with live “ammonia-oxidizing bacteria” as an alternative to soap?
This is like the Pollution Hypothesis for why Temperature gains due to Global warming trends lower in India due to higher particulate matter relative to the rest of the planet.
I genuinely havent washed properly in over a decade. I wash my armpits, genitals and asscrack usually daily with some all natural "soap" and thats it. No baths or showers. I get compliments on my skin daily and when I tell people my "skincare routine", followed by that I'm eating healthy, sweating daily through exercise, sleeping good and getting sunlight, they assume the not washing part is a joke because I "would stink if that was true" and I would have dreadlocks in my hair.
Only half-joking: I really do think people habituate quickly to fragrances and scent norms.
I’m hygenic but I (and the people around me) really do avoid scented personal care products. I really notice when I’m in regions or settings where kids schlump around in clouds of Axe Body Spray or Summer Strawberry Juicy Whatever Mist.
Or when an older person has become so habituated to their own perfume that they’ll tell you with a straight face they’re barely wearing any. Ma’am, I literally followed your scent trail to find you.
For sure. I’m among them—very sensitive both to human (and animal) odors and to fragrances. For me at least it tends to be fragrances—usually synthetic ones associated with body or room products—that people are able and willing to concentrate to an overwhelming intensity.
I certainly recognize that others’ sensitivities can go the other way, and I apologize for sounding dismissive toward the distress that can cause.
And perhaps we can share a sigh over people we’ve met who like to combine a pungent personal odor along with a pungent concentration of perfume or cologne…
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.
Just posting to not just upvote, but also say that you have a very calm thought process and write with clarity
posting to upvote the upvote
"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.
> Personal health recommendation: You'd be better off rubbing down with olive oil or sunflower oil than with that concoction, most likely
What evidence can you point to that supports this "most likely" assertion that isn't purely naturalistic fallacy?
> The ancient Greeks got some things right.
The pantheon of capricious gods living on mount olympus? Harvesting the sweat of wrestlers to use as treatment for genital warts?
We use coconut oil for kids’ diapers and as skin moisturizer. The melting point (above room temperature in winter) and skin absorption makes it less greasy to me. And it seems ok and maybe preferable to get the refined organic expeller pressed stuff because it has lower aromatic smell and scratchy particles as the virgin cold pressed stuff at a 3-4$ jar discount.
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.
[flagged]
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.
The rock alum works better, and I don't think you can get it into a different form. The stuff in deodorant is a different aluminium compound.
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.
I can't use those aluminum containing antiperspirants at all -- they violently irritate my eyes if I put them on my skin.
My inner chemistry geek weeps.
I only use naturally-ocurring radium and free-range poison ivy.
But is the poison ivy ethically sourced?
I'm wondering if you have its informed consent.
I see you are a man of culture.
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.
> 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.
I honestly think that this is actually valuable insight. It's important to distinguish things we do just to fit into the society from things we truly want to do. I'm not saying we never should do the former, we obviously should, but I think it's worth it to be aware of the choice. Most people just follow mindlessly the current social trends "because everyone does it".
People don't bathe because everyone does it. People bathe because not bathing leads to personal loss from ostracization due to unpleasant odor. There's a huge difference. Calling it mindlessly following a social trend is weirdly misguided and not well thought through. You might have more to learn from the people you mindlessly call NPCs than you think.
A conversation I’ve had with several people is: do you want to be right or do you want to get shit done? I dabbled in management for a bit, and spending time figuring out how different people communicated, how to hear and speak to them, and what their motivations were meant I could build a team out of anyone. Same here - yes, it’s all an ape dance, but we’re all apes, and if you know the dance moves, it’s a whole lot easier to move through the tribe.
I want to be right, but I need to get shit done. I take part in the social dance to the minimum degree that gives me what I need. Regarding the rest of my time, I spend it looking for people with whom I can be right. That feels way more pleasant than the social dance.
One thing I’d say about this is that other people will have perspectives that you do not that can help you be more right if you can hear it from them. You’ve got one life, one set of experiences, one brain, and the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else. Leverage other people - even if they’re not “right”, they can help you be less wrong.
That's true but it's just difficult to find people whose perspectives are valuable. At some point I decided to be more approachable in order to have more friends. While the skills I gained from that are useful, I also discovered that most people are just not worth my time and energy.
Having said that, I absolutely love the moments when I'm talking to someone and the other person tells me something that is indeed valuable. That's why I do put effort into maintaining friendships with people who aren't NPCs.
It’s a mistake to consider other people as something other than autonomous agents in their own lives - it’s popular to conceive of other people as somehow not making decisions; frequently this indicates they’re making decisions by different criteria and using different information than you. This is what I mean about perspectives you don’t have access to - I won’t say there aren’t people who fundamentally are not making real decisions in their lives, but that’s fairly rare, and if someone’s making choices that don’t make sense to you, there’s often a reason you don’t see. Again, you may make different choices than them, but actually truly understanding why they make the choices that they do - to the degree that you can understand and describe to someone else their worldview, constraints, and goals - improves your understanding of the world and your ability to accurately model, predict, and explain it.
> Showering more than once a week has no health benefits
> I want to be right
Ok, well, this is only right if you don't benefit from others not being viscerally disgusted by being near you. This is almost never actually the case for anyone. Social benefit is also a health benefit.
Not showering for a week means I have a headache all day. So evidently not everyone is doing it for someone else.
That doesn't sound normal? Why would you get headaches from not showering? Never heard of such a thing.
It's not terribly uncommon. My wife also has it. It's also related to the length of my hair, where longer hair is significantly worse. Presumably it's the oil build up as my hair is extremely oily and fine.
edit: I am fully aware that not washing leads to less oil build up over time, but I have tried and doctors have tried and that boat has sailed.
I'd imagine a hair wash in the sink also does the job when in a hurry then? Do dry shampoos work too, or does it need a wet wash?
Yes, washing the hair in any capacity works. Unsure about dry shampoo.
Could be muscle tension or something helped by the warm water
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.
But what about dating? The nether regions should be washed in anticipation for certain activities. There are no diminishing returns for that.
Just date people who’ve had a bad case of COVID. Problem solved!
All you need is a modest trauma to the nose in right direction. Bones shifting a bit will cut forever hair-like nerves going from your nose sensors back to brain, effectively making you lose the sense of smell. When asked some doctor friends they confirmed harm is permanent.
Ok, so dont shower, and punch my date in the nose. Got it!
Sir this is HN. Nobody is dating.
Also sex is a different thing from dating.
When you realize that through most of human history people married because of teenage sex drive or economic necessity rather than emotionally mature relationships, then the whole dating thing loses its appeal really fast.
Also, the smell of sweat of someone attractive turns me on really hard.
> Babe I love it how you naturally smell
> That's great but I just bought a new generic cherry shampoo
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. :)
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.
Somebody needs to touch grass
You're not using mixture of amygdalin from organic apricot kernels, coca leaves mixed with unripe seed pods of opium poppy? Does wonders.
"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.
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?
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.
I love this website
yeah bro, we besties
I am not bald because of hereditary reason but this! :)
Didn't the Joker contaminate personal care products so they did in a Batman movie?
No worries, the stuff in the wife's bottle is the same, just more expensive.
Could very well happen if his wife's into Monat.
This happened to me and the water itself caught on fire somehow
I agree. We should go back to the Roman days when clothes were washed in urine.
>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
>> 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.
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
I think there are no long terms and that’s the case for food as well
Good news (sarcasm), they laid off all the people responsible for that.
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.
Actually it sounds kinda good.
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.
That’s like saying diarrhea will protect you against ingesting unknown poisons. Disrupting natural processes rarely comes without unintended side effects.
Sure, but it depends on what you consider to be "natural processes," and what you don't. The oxidation of sitting on a plastic^W vegan leather couch is not a "natural" process, but sitting on wood probably is. It's also not "natural" to be closed up with the results of that oxidation for most of the day, as most of our evolution happened with plenty of access to fresh air. We definitely have evidence that people were using oils and lotions for much longer than we've had modern synthetic materials or "air-tight" building methods.
The science is definitely still out, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that inhibiting this reaction might be beneficial.
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
Which is funny since the exact opposite, anti-oxidants, have been a fad to add for the past 20years.
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...
A meta-analysis is just a dilution of facts, in the exact proportion to have homeopathic efficacy.
You eat anti-oxidants. So unless you're eating your lotions this isn't related and can't be the opposite.
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.
Skin absorbs. So it's at least partially related.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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
There's a particular Middle Eastern market I visit where the cash reeks to high hell of cologne.
It turns out a few of the customers douse their dollars with their personal scents to remind everyone who's spending money with them, and I suppose to see where it might be circulating.
Can you recommend some fragrances or a brand that does some contemporary subtle forresty mossy but also is not crazy expensive posh branding endeavour?
I'm not entirely sure I understood your request, something foresty? Not a lot into those, anyway
Helan vetiver and rum, don't know if it's available in usa. Has a rum note as well as moss, I've definitely heard people around me saying it smells like forest, to me it's more of a mossy scent
Erbolario Periplo, but it's more Mediterranean bushes
Dsquared original wood
Maybe lalique encre Noire or encre Noire sport
I'd suggest to try them before buying them
In Sydney. It has destroyed the olfactory field imo. I cant stand the ambroxan(?)...it smells like IPA on PCP :/
Sauvage is a big ambroxan offender, a cold sharp metallic note that pierces the brains around the person wearing it, who clearly has no brain for damage to be suffered (/s)
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?
Yeah, my comment was just to add that scents have so many other issues than just what's in the article.
This is the first time I'm hearing they are bad. Could you share some research about this?
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
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.
EU is much better than the US for ingredient safety. I'm not sure of the EU stuff specifically, but it looks like there's still some concerns over some perfume ingredients, if not the fragrance itself. You'll probably have to do more research yourself.
https://taenk.dk/system/files/2022-01/Whats-that-smell-repor...
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-...
> Most products have fragrance free alternatives.
That itself is a big change that took a while.
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.
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.
"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]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power,_Sex,_Suicide
This is why I get outside and sweat every day.
Not well versed in the field, what are the basic implications of this for health?
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...
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/
How can something be a negative ion generator without simultaneously being a positive ion generator?
You're right but a lot of times the positive ion is far less reactive and/or more massive than the negative ion. Not so much for OH-. Charge is not the only thing that matters.
.
That isn't how chemistry works.
Isosaccharinic acid has the same chemical formula (C6H12O6) as glucose, which isn't acidic. However, they both have the same net charge.
When something is an acid, it dissociates into both a positive ion H+ and negative ion (rest of the molecule)
HA ⇌ H+ + A-
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.
The article does not come to any health conclusions, just studies the impact on indoor air chemistry.
if only there was a 'Discussion' section in the article, that goes over the basic implication of the study results... if only.
Yeesh, who taught you to debase others.
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?
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.
Is your name Richard, by any chance?
jesus
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)
> 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.
You get what you pay for
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.
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.)
I have this problem when using the JShelter addon if I enable the privacy switches. Your browser is probably resisting fingerprinting.
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?
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
For a slightly more digestible take, see https://news.uci.edu/2025/05/21/lotions-perfumes-curb-potent...
But really, I wouldn't worry about the result of this study _at all_ in daily life. It's quite surprising to me that this would be the top HN article at the time of this comment.
limonene, linalool, "parfum" are the scourge of this age
But are great as part of a cannabis strain profile!
This is impossible to read.
wow!, we are emiting a potent biocidal gas strait through our skin!.....it explains so much! and ya, O³ is going to chemicaly break almost anything it touches, which will definitly yield some bad to have on you stuff if the precursor is just wrong. also , most definitly there is a wide diference in peoples indidual chemistry, so this phenominon will join many others in waiting for a more nuanced understanding of how human biochemistry works.
[flagged]
That's far too often. I'm conserving water, the environment, money, and my OH field by only rolling around in the watering trough once a month. /s
Speak for yourself! The best defense against those sneaky Toxins is a good thick armor of crust… if you waste it on the trough, it’ll take months for you to build it back!
Remember personal care startup Mother Dirt, who briefly flirted with live “ammonia-oxidizing bacteria” as an alternative to soap?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90348480/how-this-bacteria-crawl...
This is like the Pollution Hypothesis for why Temperature gains due to Global warming trends lower in India due to higher particulate matter relative to the rest of the planet.
The price of living in society is that we must also be considerate of those around us…
I genuinely havent washed properly in over a decade. I wash my armpits, genitals and asscrack usually daily with some all natural "soap" and thats it. No baths or showers. I get compliments on my skin daily and when I tell people my "skincare routine", followed by that I'm eating healthy, sweating daily through exercise, sleeping good and getting sunlight, they assume the not washing part is a joke because I "would stink if that was true" and I would have dreadlocks in my hair.
If we’re all smelly, then none of us are smelly!
Only half-joking: I really do think people habituate quickly to fragrances and scent norms.
I’m hygenic but I (and the people around me) really do avoid scented personal care products. I really notice when I’m in regions or settings where kids schlump around in clouds of Axe Body Spray or Summer Strawberry Juicy Whatever Mist.
Or when an older person has become so habituated to their own perfume that they’ll tell you with a straight face they’re barely wearing any. Ma’am, I literally followed your scent trail to find you.
Some people are very sensitive to body odors, don’t generalize please
For sure. I’m among them—very sensitive both to human (and animal) odors and to fragrances. For me at least it tends to be fragrances—usually synthetic ones associated with body or room products—that people are able and willing to concentrate to an overwhelming intensity.
I certainly recognize that others’ sensitivities can go the other way, and I apologize for sounding dismissive toward the distress that can cause.
And perhaps we can share a sigh over people we’ve met who like to combine a pungent personal odor along with a pungent concentration of perfume or cologne…