allergy to polyethylene glycol, propylene glycol, ethylene & butylene glycols
Product Recommendations – Or Not?
Tips to Surviving a Glycol Allergy
As someone with multiple allergies to chemical ingredients and scents, I am always looking for products that are safe to use. OK, so if I know what to avoid, what do I use instead? Well, like discovering the different names for PEG or PG, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Manufacturers are not required to keep the same ingredients in the same product over time – and that’s a good thing for innovation. A company that can say their product is “New & Improved” gives a message to their customers that they are always looking out for ways to make their product better.
But for us, that ‘new and improved’ product may mean a big reaction if we don’t notice the change.
What to do With Product Recommendations
I’m not a big fan of product recommendations, simply because the formulations can change at any time and if you’re not carefully reading each label, each time, you could think a product was safe when it wasn’t.
**Note that you may buy the exact same product and it may have different ingredients by the time you buy it.**
Because glycols are usually inactive ingredients, each batch can be different and you will not know for sure unless you read the label each time you buy the product.
That said, I know that it does help to at least have a place to start from. It’s a lot of work to look through thousands of products to find the one you can use. To offer some help, below are links to lists of products I am using or have used in the past.