Who is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and why is she in my toothpaste? 😡🤬😡

I hear Sodium Yanny Sulfate

Foaming agent. She gets everything nice 'n... lathery.

I wonder if there's a random bored chemist that has a youtube channel just talking about what each ingredient in daily life items does
- I've actually come across this one in hematology, its used as a reagent in some analyzers to lyse red cells to release hemoglobin for direct measurement. source: I'm a lab tech.
- Reddit had a great food science community before the API freakout
Very fancy way of saying soap
- It isn't. Soap is the salt of a fatty acid, sodium lauryl sulfate is a salt, but not of a fatty acid. Both are surfactants (meaning it breaks surface tensions), but have some different properties. A relevant difference in cosmetics is that SLS strips oils waaay better, which can damage your skin barrier and your hair. For some people it works fine, for others it's too harsh and soap is better. (For me it damages my hair structure and thus makes my waves lackluster, but is fine in shower gel)

Fun fact, SLS is the chemical that makes orange juice taste so bad after brushing your teeth.

That stuff can cause canker sores. I switched to SLS free toothpaste and dont get them anymore.

And why do you need supervision while brushing your theeth?

I suppose a small child could swallow the cap of the toothpaste?
Still pretty weird I don't recall seeing this warning on toothpaste here in France. That being said we are big boys who are allowed to buy "Kinder Surprises"...
- We have Kinder Surprise in Canada. Youre thinking of the US.
- Children could also swallow the toothpaste. Not a huge deal if they do it once but iirc it can be pretty dangerous in the long run

That's the stuff that triggers canker sores in your mouth.

Yeah I avoid it for this reason. Also for anyone looking for toothpaste without it.
Sensodyne doesn't have it but it's expensive.
Some of the Toms doesn't but most does.
I found out the cheap dollar tree sensitive toothpaste doesn't have it either. So that's what I use.
It's actually pretty hard to find toothpaste without it. Hope that helps.
- Every time I'm out looking for tooth paste I have to dig and dig for the one or two that don't have that ingredient. It's annoying as heck. Everything is fine and then you return from a vacation with a canker sore because the travel pack had it. I wanna sue somebody over this.
Yup. I would get canker sores all the time and they stopped as soon as I switched to Sensodyne.

SLS is not fun to breathe. Just fyi

That thing? That thing? That thiiiiinnnng?

Detergent, used in a lot of cleaning products.