Bloom Baby Bathing Bar

Details

A plain soap bar for a household that would rather not buy another plastic bottle. The reason this page is long is the number in the next paragraph. This is real soap, saponified vegetable oil, and real soap is alkaline. Measured pH of a 1 percent aqueous solution at 27 C is 9.6. A baby's skin surface settles at about 5.0 to 5.5 in the first weeks, its barrier is thinner than an adult's and it lets more through, so a wash at 9.6 raises that surface pH for a while after every bath. Any bar sold as a gentle baby soap sits at roughly this figure whether it prints one or not, because a saponified fatty acid cannot exist much below pH 9. Take it lower and the soap splits back into free fatty acid and stops being soap. So we print the number instead of the adjective, and we grade this bar from 12 months. For a newborn, for skin that reacts, and for anyone who wants a cleanser at skin pH, the Top-to-Toe Wash on this same shelf is built at pH 5.0 and is the right answer. Buying that instead of this is not a downgrade. The second number is Total Fatty Matter, and it is where the category word comes from. Bathing bar is not a grade and carries no minimum, which is exactly why the trade likes it. Toilet soap has one: IS 2888 sets Grade 1 at 76 percent TFM, Grade 2 at 70 and Grade 3 at 60. This bar assays 72.8 percent, so it is a Grade 2 toilet soap by test rather than a bathing bar by evasion. It cannot be Grade 1, for an arithmetic reason worth knowing: 9.5 percent of this bar is the glycerol formed during saponification, we leave it in, and glycerol is not fatty matter. A 76 percent bar has had that glycerol drawn off and sold. Ours stays where it was made.

• Full INCI, in descending order: Sodium Sunflowerseedate, Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Aqua, Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Sodium Chloride, Tocopherol
• With percentages: Sodium Sunflowerseedate 33.0, Sodium Cocoate 23.0, Sodium Shea Butterate 17.0, Aqua 11.0, Glycerin 9.5, Butyrospermum Parkii Butter 3.6, Cocos Nucifera Oil 1.2, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil 1.2, Sodium Chloride 0.3, Tocopherol 0.2, which totals 100.0
• The superfat is those three unsaponified oils added together, 3.6 plus 1.2 plus 1.2, which is 6.0 percent. That is oil left deliberately unconverted so the bar cleans without stripping
• Glycerol 9.5 percent, measured by periodate oxidation titration rather than assumed from the recipe
• Free caustic alkali below 0.01 percent, against the 0.05 percent ceiling in IS 2888. This is the test that proves the sodium hydroxide was fully consumed, and it is the only honest answer to a parent who has read the word lye on a label
• No talc. Not asbestos-free talc, not cosmetic-grade talc. None. There is no talc in this bar, none anywhere in Bloom, and we do not sell a baby powder at all
• Fragrance-free, meaning no parfum, no essential oil, no masking fragrance and none of the 26 EU declarable allergen components. Phthalates reach baby cosmetics mainly as fragrance carriers, so this is also the phthalate control: GC-MS for DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP and DNOP, none detected
• Paraben-free and formaldehyde-donor-free, and the honest answer to what replaced them is nothing at all. A cured bar at pH 9.6 holding 11 percent water is not a growth medium, so it carries no preservative of any kind. Where a Bloom product does need one, the wash and the lotion, we name it and print the percentage
• Lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium by ICP-MS, each under the limits in the Cosmetics Rules 2020
• Palm-free. Sodium Palmate is the cheapest hardener in the trade and there is none here. Hardness comes from the coconut fraction and from drying the bar down to 11 percent water instead
• Honest trade-off one is the pH, above. It is the reason for the 12 month grading and no recipe change removes it
• Honest trade-off two: unscented and uncoloured means it smells faintly of its own oils and it is the off-white those oils happen to be
• Honest trade-off three: a bar holding 9.5 percent glycerol goes soft in a wet dish and dissolves faster than a hard commodity bar. It has to drain
• Keep it away from the eyes. At pH 9.6 it stings, and nothing in the recipe changes that