Quick Dry Shampoos

On the Groom_TNT list @ yahoogroups, Samantha wrote to ask:

Love love love this quick dry shampoo- especially for those cockers. I use Tropiclean regular and spa line because they claim to be all natural and do not test on animals.

In your opinion are there harsh chemicals that make up the Davis quick dry? If there is I will stop using it. But boy oh boy it cuts down on your drying time.

Here was my resonse:
Thanks for the question, Samantha. It gives me an excuse to brew a third cup of coffee this morning. Today I am drinking a combination of Timothy’s “Sugar Maple Bush” and Caribou Coffee “Mahogany”. I have a Keurig coffee maker that I enjoy. Okay, so I need a life, we know that. I love that you care about what is in your products.

Let me give a short answer first and then expand it. I don’t think that the Davis Quick Dry is an unsafe or dangerous product. The truth is, however, we don’t know what the ingredients are. So I cannot be specific. It would help if groomers would ask manufacturers for ingredient lists. It does not have any impact for me to ask, because they expect me to ask. They can say, “Groomers don’t care, only BBird cares”. So please, ask Davis what is in the Quick Dry shampoo, and then get me to look at the information they (or any manufacturer) provides.

What makes a shampoo dry more quickly? The ingredients of quick drying products are tightly held trade secrets, perhaps the most “proprietary” and guarded ingredients in the industry. Even Show Season, who tells me just about anything, will not tell me what the secret ingredient is in Speed Dry. From what I can deduce, there are several ingredients that might be used in a shampoo that would decrease drying time.

1. Some surfactants break water into smaller particles which are easier swept off by HV dryers. We can call these “mystery” surfactants.
2. Most silicone ingredients cause water to sheet and blast off a surface more swiftly. There are silicones used in car washes to speed drying.
3. Alcohol displaces water and creates faster evaporation.
4. An acidic pH causes the hair cuticle to close tightly creating a smoother surface which dries faster.
   

Some of what might make a shampoo dry faster is what is NOT in the formula. Many moisturizing and humectant ingredients attract and/or hold moisture to the hair shaft. This competes with drying. Silicones, on the other hand, seal moisture within the hair shaft while creating a smooth outer surface that dries faster. In this sense, silicone ingredients are both moisture protectors and promote faster drying. Humectants such as glycerin and propylene glycol attract moisture. Oil ingredients also slightly add to drying time, because they compete with the drying process.

What is a “harsh” ingredient? Usually the concept of harshness implies that the ingredient or formula has potential to cause irritation or damage to skin or eyes. Most of the effective cleaning agents used in shampoo formulas could be consider to be harsh or potentially irritating if looked at by themselves in full strength concentration. They are not so harsh when mixed with other ingredients in a diluted formula that is rinsed off. We cannot look at ingredients in isolation. When formulating a shampoo, there is always a trade-off between harshness and cleansing ability. The truth is that the milder detergents are not as good at removing dirt and excess sebum. This is less of an issue for human shampoos, because we humans have been talked into washing our hair every day, so there is less build-up of dirt and sebum than we see on most of the pets we groom. Cleansing is largely a function of the attraction of the detergent to the dirt and sebum. Milder detergents have less attraction and less ability to emulsify oils.

Now, Samantha, are you ready for me to blow your mind? Here goes: Whether or not a shampoo is marketed as “natural” has nothing to do with the harshness of the ingredients, or the harshness of the total product. “Natural” is not necessarily “mild” or “gentle”. What you need to understand that “natural” is a marketing term, and that marketing is all about language and image. Are you following me? Marketing is about how you describe your product, not so much what is actually in there. Sometimes a product can have the same old same old ingredients in a green package, and be marketed as “natural”. There are no rules or definitions of what is natural.
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) is probably the most harsh detergent surfactant available. Yet it can be described as a “natural surfactant from coconut.” To read more about this, consider my article on the GroomBlog. http://groomblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/far-from-coconut-surfactants-journey.html

“No Animal Testing” is another marketing tactic. What does it mean? I know of NO pet shampoo companies that engage in animal testing. Mostly they use ingredients that were tested decades ago (on animals) by the big companies. Ingredient testing is a hugely expensive undertaking, and only the huge companies like Proctor and Gamble or Dow Chemical have the research funds to engage in ingredient testing, with or without animals. While some of the major ingredients, such as Sodium Lauryl Sulfate and Cocamide DEA have been tested at the expense of the lives of thousands of rats, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc., by chemical manufactures or huge conglomerates, other ingredients have been barely or insufficiently tested. Some of the newer cosmetic preservatives, for example, that are used in the “natural” or alternative products have not been sufficiently proven to be effective for the two year shelf life groomers are used to having. This is why so many of these alternative products are sold in small bottles only. But look at this, “no animal testing” simply means that WE don’t do the testing, not that it hasn’t been done by someone else and we rely on those results. Ask your companies what kind of testing they DO. LOL!