A: Shampoos, yes;toothpastes, no.
Q: Is sodium laureth sulfate known to cause cancer?
A: No. The chemical does not appear on any official list of known or suspected carcinogens.
Q: Is sodium laureth sulfate properly abbreviated as "SLS?"
A: No. The correct abbreviation is "SLES." The chain letter confuses this compound with another: sodium lauryl sulfate, which is abbreviated "SLS." The two substances are related, but not the same.
Q: Is sodium laureth sulfate used to scrub garage floors?
A: No.
Q: What about the other one - sodium lauryl sulfate - is it used to scrub garage floors?
A: No doubt! SLS is a powerful surfactant (wetting agent) and detergent. It has industrial uses, but is also commonly found in lesser concentrations in shampoos, toothpastes, shaving creams, etc.
Q: Ah. Well, then, is SLS a known carcinogen?
A: No. But it's not as harmless as SLES. Sodium lauryl sulfate is a skin and eye irritant and can cause dermatitis with prolonged contact. Results of some tests on animal tissues indicate that it can cause abnormal cell mutations, though I've seen conflicting evidence.
Q: Would a manufacturer freely admit to consumers, as claimed in the message, that it knowingly uses a carcinogen in its products "because we need that substance to produce foam?"
A: Are you kidding? Of course not!
Q: Is the chain letter a hoax?
A: Most likely. At the very least, it contains egregiously inaccurate information. But we can only guess at the motives of whoever launched it.
Q: Where did the misinformation come from?
A: Well, if you're asking who started the chain letter, there's no way of knowing. But as to the misinformation itself, it turns out that there are a good many Web pages containing very similar and in some cases identical statements. It's a good bet that it all came from the same source. Interestingly, all these Websites are maintained by "independent distributors" for various multi-level marketing companies hawking "natural personal care products," etc. As a matter of fact, the majority of URLs returned in a standard Web search on the keywords "sodium laureth sulfate" point to versions of the same propaganda. Assuming all the information did come from the same source, the author of our chain letter and some of these Web entrepreneurs are sloppy copyists at the very least, and/or intent on slanting the "facts" to suit their purposes.
In the chain letter, for example, the cancer rate in the 1980s is alleged to be "1 out of 8,000"; the Web pages tend to say that was the cancer rate in 1901. That sounds more reasonable, but it's no cause to assume the Websites are more accurate. On some of them, the figure cited for 1901 is not "1 out of 8,000," but "1 out of 80."
Misinformation has a way of multiplying.
Many of the pages I looked at were littered with inaccuracies, deceptive statements, and outright lies. One even alleges that "In 1993 it was documented that sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) were the leading cause of blindness in children" - as if claiming they're carcinogens weren't inaccurate enough. Another page features a link to a site vending quack cancer cures. In some cases, the texts refer to legitimate medical studies but in a misleading way, making it appear as if the studies proved more than they actually did. Small wonder that by the time this information made its way into chain letter form, virtually every statement in it was outrageously false.
What's worse, as the chain letter circulates, the information degrades even further. One of the more recent variants gives the abbreviation of sodium laureth sulfate as "SLY," which is doubly wrong.
Q: Do you think the chain letter may have been deliberately started to frighten people into using other products?
A: I suspect it, but there's no way to know for sure, and I can't prove it. For all we know, someone came across this stuff by accident, believed it to be true, and innocently wanted to share it with others.
Q: Do you really think that was the case?
A: Nope.
