Toiletries and food allergies

[greenbananas]

Last night I stupidly tried a new brand of hand cream without reading the label properly first and a couple of minutes later, when it was well rubbed in, I touched DS's face. He quickly developed a red, raised bump about 2cm in diameter.

In tiny letters, nearly at the bottom of the ingredients on the hand cream bottle, it does say that it contains hydrolysed milk protein. I should have read it carefully!!

This has got me thinking again about the labelling on toiletries. For example, it bothers me that at my sister's house, there is a bottle of handwash which was advertised as containing 'moisturising milk proteins' but when I checked the scientific-sounding ingredients on the back I found no obvious mention of milk products.

When I'm checking food labels, I know which words I should be looking for (casein, albumen etc.) but I haven't got a clue what all those long chemical names on toiletries mean. Do toiletries have to be labelled if they contain common allergens (nuts, milk, egg etc.)?

they do label them , but sometimes its in latin. esp in the case of nuts.

you can get a list of the latin names, i got one from a good allergy book, e.g the complete guide to food allergies and intolerences by prof brostoff.

obviously if you are peanut allergic , you would stay away from pears soap , as its made from peanut oil!

milk is in a lot of toiletries, and sesame is in make up , like lip sticks.

i have even been reading toilet rolls recently , and questioning the moisteriers!

label reading. for everything, thats my life!

Oh dear, Labelling in latin does not sound great. (I didn't do Latin at school!!)

In the 'ingredients' lists I have read, water is described as 'Aqua' and perfume is described as 'Parfum' - it seems to me that manufacturers are deliberately trying to obscure their ingredients in scientific-sounding gobbledegook.