Meagan Muses: I love your site– it makes me feel smarter all the time. I’ve got a question about diazolidinyl urea. I see it on labels for lotions and cleansers all the time. Doesn’t urea come from urine? That seems disgusting to me. What’s the story?
The Right Kidney, uh, Right Brain
, Replies:
You’re sort of right Meagan, but not really.
What is urea
Let’s start by explaining that “diazolidinyl urea” is a preservative and it’s used in many cosmetics to keep microscopic bugs from spoiling the products you bought with your hard earned money. It so happens that urea is one of the compounds used to make this ingredient. In addition, urea is also used in some creams and lotions as a moisturizer. So urea is used in cosmetics, but does urea really come from urine?
What is urine
Well, urine DOES contain urea. That’s because urea excretion is just one of the ways your body gets rid of the excess nitrogen waste material that it generates. Different animals process this waste in different ways: Aquatic organisms excete it in the form of ammonia. Reptiles and birds excrete it in the form of uric acid. And we humans excrete it in the form of urea.
Does urea come from urine
But fret not – the source of the urea used to make cosmetic ingredients is not someone’s bladder. Industrial urea is synthetically made in large chemical reactors which are rarely, if ever, peed into. As a matter of fact, urea was the FIRST organic chemical ever to be synthetically created from inorganic starting materials. Back in 1828 chemist Friedrich Woehler reacted potassium cyanate with ammonium sulfate to create urea! Ah, there`s nothing quite like a piece of chemical trivia like that to put a sparkle in my eye!
So in summary, the basic message of today’s post is that we should all get down on our knees right now and thank Dr. Woehler for inventing urea so we don’t have to worry about whether or not some stranger had to pee in our Clinique lotion in order to stop bacteria from growing in it.
Or something like that.
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NICE! Thanks for setting us strait on that oh so very important issue. I really appreciate the thorough information on that Urea Urban Legend.
I cannot believe I saw this ingredient in a jar of cocoa butter. This is a lotion for the whole body. Some ingredients scare the life out you. Why can’t they make plain cocoa butter without all these vile sounding chemicals.
Wait a minute. Urea is a serious problem in make up. Not only is Diazolidinyl urea (imidazolidinyl urea, DMDM hydantoin or sodium hydroxymethylglycinate) made from formaldehyde as a preservative but it also release formaldehyde in very small amounts into your blood. It is one of the primary causes of contact dermatitis due to cosmetics.
In 2009, there was another study that linked formaldehyde use to leukemia and an additional study that showed 70% of women in the study developed abnormal menstrual periods and had an increase in spontaneous abortions. There are numerous other studies you can find on pubmed.org regarding urea / formaldehyde in cosmetics.
@Dr. Garrett: We agree that formaldehyde gas in high concentrations does pose a health risk. But low doses of formaldehyde releasing preservatives (like DMDM Hydantoin) have been evaluated and shown to be safe. (Remember that this ingredient is typically used at about 0.2% or less.)
The CIR Expert Panel noted that Diazolidinyl Urea was relatively non-toxic in oral subchronic studies. At 5%, Diazolidinyl Urea was not an ocular or skin irritant. In three studies of sensitzation potential, Diazolidinyl Urea was a mild sensitizer, but was not a sensitizer in a fourth study. Diazolidinyl Urea was nonmutagenic when tested in the bacteria, or in the micronucleus assay. At concentrations up to 0.4%, Diazolidinyl Urea was a mild cumulative skin irritant in humans. It was not a sensitizer in a repeat insult patch test on nonpatient volunteers. Diazolidinyl Urea was not a photosensitizer at 0.25%. (The previous courtesy of http://thurly.net/15p7.)
Well, if one only used the product one time I may be tempted to agree with the CIR that it is safe “enough,” but we use these products every day of our lives and the cumulative effect of harmful chemicals is a known danger. As for trusting the government agencies.. well we have parabens and other “harmful” ingredients, many of which were actually grandfathered in when the FDA was established. The FDA is not (in my opinion) the bastion of safety for the masses. It is paid for by the chemical industries that make our medications and cosmetics (having worked for a lobbyist, I understand how this type of coercion works.) When it was established, the FDA realized the extreme cost to re-engineer many products so it left the companies to monitor themselves. We know how that turned out don’t we? Let’s not put all our faith in the federal government, look at Europe where the use of D-Urea and I-urea have both been banned, or so I have read. I love that old adage: “Believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see” still holds true today!