Studies on The Safety of Surfactants

Surfactants are more and more widely used in human contact systems such as drugs, food, cosmetics and personal hygiene products. With the improvement of human living standards, people pay more and more attention to the toxic side effects of surfactants in various human contact formulations. According to different uses, the focus of attention on surfactants mainly focuses on the irritation of mucosa, sensitization to skin, toxicity, heritability, carcinogenicity, teratogenicity, hemolytic, digestive absorption, biodegradability and so on. For example, for cosmetics, the principle of selecting ingredients in the past was mainly to dress up beautiful, and the choice of surfactants was only to consider how to achieve the best first effect or main effect, such as cleaning, foaming, emulsification, dispersion, etc. The second is to play its secondary or auxiliary effect, and little or no consideration is given to the effect of surfactants on the natural state of skin, hair, etc. At present, the selection principle of surfactants gradually tends to meet the prerequisite of protecting the normal and healthy state of skin and hair and producing as little toxic and side effects on the human body as possible, before considering how to play the best main and auxiliary effects of surfactants. This development has led to surfactants raw material suppliers, formulators and manufacturers are faced with the challenge of how to re-understand and evaluate the safety and mildness of surfactants to provide consumers with the safest, mildest and most effective products. Therefore, it is necessary to re-evaluate the safety and gentleness of the original surfactants and new surfactants.

1 Safety of surfactants

The biological changes caused by surfactants and their metabolites in the body, that is, the toxic side effects that may be caused to the body include acute toxicity, subacute toxicity, chronic toxicity, impact on fertility and reproduction, embryonic toxicity, teratogenicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, sensitization, hemolytic and so on. The contact of surfactants with different parts of the human body in different ways will put different requirements on the above toxic side effects.

The use of surfactants as various processing AIDS or synergists in the food and pharmaceutical industries increases the contact opportunity between surfactants and the human digestive tract and blood system, which puts forward strict requirements for the oral toxicity, hemolytic, hereditary, carcinogenicity and teratogenicity of surfactants. Surfactants used in food and oral drugs such as liquid, tablet, pill, etc., must be low-toxicity or non-toxic substances; If injected intravenously or intramuscularly, attention must be paid to the hemolysis of the surfactant; Long-term use needs to consider the hereditary, carcinogenic and teratogenic problems that may be caused by this.