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Heavy Metal Index

Potential Allergens in Disposable Diaper Wipes, Topical Diaper Preparations, and Disposable Diapers: Under-recognized Etiology of Pediatric Perineal Dermatitis

Yu, Treat, Chaney, and Brod tallied potential allergenic ingredients in 63 diaper wipes, 41 topical diaper preparations, and the disclosed ingredients of 3 top-selling disposable diaper brands.

Yu, Treat, Chaney, and Brod tallied potential allergenic ingredients in 63 diaper wipes, 41 topical diaper preparations, and the disclosed ingredients of 3 top-selling disposable diaper brands. The retailers are described here only as a large US drugstore catalog and a large online sales ranking. The authors do not name the three diaper brands. The paper is an ingredient inventory. It is not a metal analysis.

Key numbers

Botanical extracts were in 60 of 63 wipes and 30 of 41 topical preparations. Tocopherol acetate was in 40 of 63 wipes. Fragrance was in 21 of 63 wipes and 18 of 41 preparations. Those frequencies are the authors’ counts of labeled ingredients.

Table 1 patch-test percentages are adapted from another study and are not measurements from this inventory. They are not entered as this paper’s results. No nickel concentration, and no other metal concentration, is reported. No metal row was entered.

Methods (brief)

Online catalog review of labeled ingredients. No digestion, migration, or spectrometric method is described.

Evidence fitness

The counts support a statement about how often the named ingredient classes appeared on these labels. They do not support a metal level, and they do not support a clinical prevalence.

Limitations

A labeled ingredient is not a measured concentration. The catalog is one retail channel at one time. Topical preparations are not assigned to a zinc-oxide or non-zinc-oxide cream row because the paper does not make that split.

Update history

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