Eli5: Why chemicals in products, like shampoo or cleaners, don’t go reaction among themselves and form whole different compound?

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Eli5: Why chemicals in products, like shampoo or cleaners, don’t go reaction among themselves and form whole different compound?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Shampoos do kind of change, but very slowly, on the scale of years.

As others have said, what gets put into most consumer products especially cosmetic products like shampoo, is chosen for not being very reactive in the first place. Any chemical that tracts easily with other compounds in the bottle is also going to be reactive with your body, probably in bad ways.

Then it is standard to add preservatives and stabilizers to the mix. Paraben is a well known and common example. It acts as a preservative. And there are often some form of wax added that thickens the product to prevent settling.

To-the-trade, professional use only shampoos and conditioners tend to have less of these extra chemicals or far less. It can make for a more effective or more predictable product when combined with other salon chemicals. But it makes for a much shorter shelf life.

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