What you use as part of your daily oral care routine really matters. That's why it's important to know and understand what ingredients are in your oral care products. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is an unnecessary ingredient that can harm both your health and the planet's and should never be used in your oral care or personal care routine. 

What is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate?

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, more commonly known as SLS, is a chemical ingredient and is what is known as a surfactant. A surfactant lowers the surface tension between ingredients, allowing it to trap dirt which can then be washed away with water. It also has foaming properties and produces a foamy, rich lather.

What is Sodium Lauryl Sulfate Used In/For?

Because of its surfactant properties and foaming properties, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is used in a variety of both household and personal products. In the home, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate can be found in laundry detergents and dishwasher detergents. In personal care products due to its foaming properties, SLS can be found in shampoos, mouthwashes, soaps, and body washes. 

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is a common ingredient found in generic toothpaste formulas.  

What Are The Effects Of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate?

SLS has been deemed safe by the European Union, but for some users, it can increase mouth ulcers, mouth irritation, and inflammatory reactions in the mouth and its tissues.

Increasingly it is an ingredient that has come under significant criticism. That is because Sodium Lauryl Sulfate is made using palm oil. We lose 25 orangutans every day due to palm oil production. The sourcing of this ingredient is directly responsible for deforestation, destruction of rainforests, harm to the wildlife species who live there, as well as labour rights abuses against workers, including children. 

At Spotlight Oral Care, we vow to protect our precious rainforests, and the people who work in them, by never, ever including palm oil, or SLS, in our oral care solutions. 

Did you know, your mouth is 50 times more absorbent than your skin? What goes into your oral care products really matters. At Spotlight Oral Care, we use only the highest quality clean, active ingredients, and all of our oral care solutions are free from sulphates, microbeads, palm oils, parabens, triclosan, DEA, and SLS also known as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.