165: Would You Lather?
I can’t stand you.
In a cursed game of Would You Rather (that I came up with while I was using the slim jim of slippery goo and old hair), we discussed the relative merits of prevention with regard to shower cleanliness. And yes, Andrew, you’re right, I need to get back on the post-shower cleaner spray. But what do these do anyway?
According to an article from a trade journal about chemicals and engineering — from a website that looks like straight-up Web 1.0 dogshit from 2001 (!!!!!!), which you know is 100% the truth — it has to do with the way that the chemicals impact the water molecules and how they sit on your shower wall. From the article:
The surfactant breaks the surface tension of water droplets, flattening them and allowing the water to run down in the form of a sheet. The phenomenon is called sheeting action. Those droplets contain soap scum; oils and debris from the body; and salts of calcium, magnesium, or iron. If allowed to dry on their own, the droplets will leave residues that would build up over time. The chelating agent sequesters the ions of these salts, rendering them soluble. The alcohol helps to dissolve all the ingredients in water and to remove oily human debris.
Wow, “human debris” sure is a gross pair of words!
Like, yeah, is that article 25 years old? Yes. Had mold really changed? Not so much! Our relationship to household chemicals sure has, though. None of the three daily shower sprays I looked at had the same chemical makeup, though they all had roughly the same idea: A surfactant, an alcohol, and a chelating (ion-binding) agent (which I’m pretty sure just makes the spray gentler on the user). And all had switched away from the, shall we say, extremely intense chemical compound used at the turn of the century.
To review quickly, surfactants help water and oil mix, which is what aids in cleaning. In this case, spraying a surfactant onto the wall of your shower after showering and letting it dry will help keep things from sticking and making your shower dirty. So really, daily shower sprays don’t need to have a ton of ingredients. And there’s a wide range of ingredients that they could have that would work, because there are a LOT of surfactants!
The surfactant referenced in the article is “a mixed ethylene glycol ether nonionic surfactant.” Ethylene glycol ethers are pretty heavy-duty so, while the very conventional shower sprays might work a little better, they may also, you know, kill you or make you cough a lot.
Scrubbin’ Bubbles, the best currently-available analog for the shower spray covered in the article, makes their ingredients incredibly difficult to find. Like, you have to click through at least five different websites to get there. Meanwhile, the next two that I’ll use for comparison make the ingredients available right on the product page. Hmm!
When I did finally locate the ingredients to Daily Shower Spray in Rainshower® (yes, their parent company, SC Johnson, has actually trademarked “Rainshower”), I found alkyl polyglycoside. This a nonionic surfactant like in the old shower spray, although a much gentler one. Not a huge surprise, since even huge corporations are trying to at least nominally scale back on using chemicals that can kill you, although I did find it strange that that’s basically the only active ingredient — no chelating agent in this one.
The Method spray that I used to use (linked above) uses decyl glucoside and lauryl glucoside, both of which are nonionic surfactants. A quick Google search (I am very much not a chemist) shows that these are both used pretty regularly in household and cosmetic purposes, so they’re super-safe. And, in my experience, it really does work. Neat! Method also seems to use a combination of other pretty regular ingredients, like lactic acid, to make up its chelating agent.
Grove’s shower spray uses tetrasodium glutamate diacetate and capryl glucoside. The first of those is a plant-derived chemical often used as a less harsh substitute for a chelating (ion-binding) agent called ETDA. And yes, if you guessed, the E does stand for ethelyene so, again, to my untrained eye, the Grove shower spray seems to be formulated more similarly to the Old Timey Shower Spray of Yore. The second ingredient is the surfactant and it’s listed as “mild,” “gentle,” and “biodegradable,” but honestly, the others might be, too.
One key piece, though, is that the shower needs to be “reasonably clean” before you use the spray, so you’ll want to give your bathroom a clean before you start adding the daily spray to your regimen. I’m mostly talking to myself with this tip!
Do you find this fascinating? Of course you do.
Listen to the pod here:
We also talked a lot about shower curtains. I’ve been looking at some of the more earth friendly ones but I can’t decide which one seems less like a steaming pile of BS. Unsurprisingly, loads of people are disrupting Big Shower Curtain, especially since the days of dreamily wandering Bed, Bath, and Beyond and trying to picture how much cooler of a person you’d be if you had a shower curtain with, say, a print of a Monet painting on it.
The two main ones I’m looking at right now are Quiet Town and Outlines, but I’d love to get put onto whatever else y’all have heard of!
As always, we love to hear from you. xoxo.