Here's what years of soap formulation has taught us: sulfates work — but they don't work the same way for every skin type.
Sulfates like sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) are surfactants that create lather and lift dirt from skin effectively. What most soap labels won't tell you is that the same mechanism that makes them powerful cleansers can also strip the skin's natural moisture barrier — something we factored directly into how we approach our own formulations.
This page breaks down exactly what sulfates are, how they function in hand soap, and what you should know before choosing a sulfate free hand soap formula that's right for your skin.
TL;DR Quick Answers
What Is Sulfate Free Hand Soap?
Sulfate-free hand soap cleans without sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) or sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) — the harsh detergents that strip your skin's natural oils with every wash.
What sulfates actually do:
Create lather — not cleanliness
Strip the skin's natural moisture barrier
Trigger irritation, dryness, and redness — especially in children
Compound barrier damage with repeated daily exposure
What sulfate-free means in practice:
Gentler on sensitive and eczema-prone skin
No barrier disruption
Equally effective at germ removal — often more so
Safe for daily use on little hands
What we learned making NOWATA: Our children's hands cracked after every wash. We traced it directly to SLS. The problem wasn't their skin. It was the soap.
The bottom line:
Sulfate-free isn't a trend — it's what the science supports
Lather ≠ clean
31+ million Americans have eczema linked to irritants like SLS
Gentle and effective are not opposites
NOWATA's answer:
100% plant-based formula
Zero sulfates, parabens, or synthetic fragrances
Clumping technology physically removes 99.9% of germs
No water or rinsing required
Doctor-made. Parent-tested. Sulfate-free by design.
Top Takeaways
1. Lather Is a Marketing Tool — Not a Measure of Clean
Foam ≠ hygiene
Squeaky-clean = barrier stripping
Technique drives germ removal — not chemical strength
Feeling powerful and actually working are not the same thing
2. 31 Million Americans Have Eczema — Most Are Still Using the Soap Causing It
SLS and SLES strip the skin barrier on every single wash
9.6 million affected are children under 18
Damage compounds with repeated exposure
That "sensitive skin" your family has? It may be a formulation problem — not a genetics problem
3. Sulfate-Free Is What the Science Has Been Pointing to All Along
NIH studies confirm measurable skin barrier disruption from SLS
Post-wash irritation is avoidable — not normal
Physical germ removal outperforms chemical stripping
Gentle and effective are not opposites — the industry just never tried hard enough to prove it
4. The Sink Is Optional — Clean Hands Aren't
Standard faucet: ~2 gallons per minute
Traditional handwashing needs infrastructure that isn't always there
Playgrounds, trails, backseats, lunchrooms — all need a solution
Waterless hygiene is a public health opportunity — not a convenience feature
5. You Deserve to Know What's Touching Your Family's Skin
Ingredient labels are regulated — marketing claims are not
"Gentle," "natural," and "clean" mean nothing without a full ingredient list
Transparency is a baseline obligation — not a selling point
We publish every NOWATA ingredient because our kids use it first
What Are Sulfates, Exactly?
Sulfates are a class of synthetic surfactants — cleansing agents derived primarily from sulfuric acid and fatty alcohols sourced from petroleum or plant oils like coconut and palm. In hand soap, they serve one primary function: breaking the surface tension between oil and water so dirt, bacteria, and grease lift off your skin and rinse away cleanly.
The two you'll encounter most often on ingredient labels are sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). SLS is the stronger, more aggressive of the two. SLES is a milder derivative that's been processed to reduce skin irritation potential — though both belong to the same sulfate family.
How Sulfates Create Lather — and Why That's Complicated
The rich, foamy lather sulfates produce isn't just satisfying — it's functional. Foam helps distribute the cleanser evenly across your hands and signals to most people that the soap is working. The challenge is that lather intensity has become culturally associated with cleansing power, which isn't entirely accurate.
At NOWATA™, we've found that some of the most effective cleansing formulas produce modest lather. Heavy sulfate concentrations can create abundant foam while simultaneously over-stripping the skin — leaving hands feeling clean on the surface but compromised underneath.
What Sulfates Actually Do to Your Skin
Sulfates don't distinguish between the oils and bacteria you want removed and the natural lipids your skin needs to stay healthy. This is the core tension in sulfate-based formulations.
The skin's moisture barrier — sometimes called the acid mantle — relies on a delicate balance of natural oils and proteins to function properly, and the best eco-friendly soap choices respect that balance instead of stripping it away. Repeated exposure to high-concentration sulfates can disrupt that barrier, leading to:
Dryness and tightness after washing
Redness or irritation, particularly around the knuckles
Increased sensitivity in people with eczema, psoriasis, or reactive skin
Prolonged recovery time between washes for already-dry skin types
For people who wash their hands frequently — healthcare workers, food service professionals, parents of young children — this disruption compounds over time.
SLS vs. SLES: Is One Safer Than the Other?
SLES undergoes an additional manufacturing process called ethoxylation, which makes it gentler on skin than SLS. However, ethoxylation can introduce trace amounts of 1,4-dioxane, a byproduct flagged by the EPA as a possible human carcinogen. Reputable manufacturers test for and minimize 1,4-dioxane levels, but it's a variable worth knowing about when evaluating ingredient transparency.
SLS, while more irritating, doesn't carry that particular concern. Neither ingredient is universally dangerous at the concentrations used in hand soap — but neither is without trade-offs.
Who Should Pay Attention to Sulfates
Not everyone reacts to sulfates the same way. People with the following skin profiles tend to be most affected:
Dry or dehydrated skin that struggles to retain moisture
Sensitive or reactive skin prone to redness and irritation
Compromised skin barrier conditions like eczema or contact dermatitis
Frequent hand washers whose skin doesn't have adequate recovery time between exposures
If your hands feel uncomfortably tight or dry after washing, your soap's sulfate concentration is one of the first variables worth examining.
What NOWATA™'s Formulation Approach Tells Us About Sulfates
Developing our own soap formulations required us to make deliberate decisions about every ingredient — including whether sulfates belonged in the formula at all. What that process reinforced is that sulfates aren't inherently bad ingredients. They're powerful, functional, and widely studied. The question is whether their concentration and pairing with other ingredients serves the skin or works against it.
A well-formulated soap accounts for what sulfates remove and what the formula gives back — through moisturizing agents, skin-conditioning ingredients, and pH balancing that supports the skin's natural barrier rather than depleting it.
The Bottom Line on Sulfates in Hand Soap
Sulfates are effective cleansers with a legitimate role in some hypoallergenic hand soap formulas, but “hypoallergenic” depends on dose, wash frequency, and what the formula includes to offset barrier damage. Whether they're right for your skin depends on your skin type, how frequently you wash, and how the rest of the formula is constructed around them. Reading ingredient labels with a basic understanding of what sulfates do and what they cost the skin puts you in a much stronger position to choose a hypoallergenic hand soap that actually works for you long term.
"Most people judge a hand soap by how it feels in the moment — the lather, the scent, the rinse. What they don't feel is what's happening to their skin barrier over time. After formulating our own soap line at NOWATA™, we became acutely aware of how sulfate concentration and ingredient pairing determine whether a formula is genuinely working for your skin or quietly working against it. The soap that feels the most powerful isn't always the one doing the most good."
Essential Resources
When we started developing NOWATA, we didn't rely on industry assumptions. We went straight to science. These are the seven resources that shaped how we think about sulfates, skin health, and what genuinely clean hands actually mean — and we think every parent, caregiver, and label reader should have them bookmarked.
1. The Official Word on What "Soap" Actually Means Legally
Most people don't know that the FDA distinguishes between true soap and synthetic detergent products — and the difference matters more than most brands will tell you. This resource explains exactly how hand soap is classified, regulated, and labeled under U.S. law. If you've ever wondered whether a "sulfate-free" or "gentle" claim is legally meaningful, start here.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration URL: https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/it-cosmetic-drug-or-both-or-it-soap
2. How the EPA Defines a Safer Hand Soap
The EPA's Safer Choice program evaluates personal care products against independently verified environmental and human health standards. This is the government's own benchmark for what genuinely safer soap looks like — beyond marketing language and self-reported claims.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency URL: https://www.epa.gov/greenerproducts/hand-soap
3. What 60 Toxicity Databases Say About SLS
The EWG Skin Deep database cross-references sodium lauryl sulfate against nearly 60 regulatory and toxicity databases and returns a plain-language hazard score. We encourage every family to look up the ingredients in any soap they use — including ours. Transparency isn't optional when it comes to what touches your child's skin.
Source: Environmental Working Group — Skin Deep URL: https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ingredients/706110-SODIUM_LAURYL_SULFATE/
4. Why SLES Isn't the Safe Swap Most People Think It Is
Sodium laureth sulfate is marketed as the gentler alternative to SLS — and in some ways it is. But its manufacturing process introduces the potential for 1,4-dioxane contamination, a byproduct the EWG flags with its own hazard data. When we formulated NOWATA, we didn't swap one sulfate for another. We eliminated them entirely. This resource explains why.
Source: Environmental Working Group — Skin Deep URL: https://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ingredients/706089-SODIUM_LAURETH_SULFATE/
5. The Clinical Research That Confirmed What Our Kids Were Already Telling Us
When our children's hands cracked after every wash, we went looking for peer-reviewed evidence — not forum opinions. This University of California study documents the measurable effects of long-term SLS exposure on the skin barrier, including elevated transepidermal water loss, dryness, and irritation. This is the science behind what "barrier disruption" actually means in practice.
Source: National Institutes of Health — PubMed URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16283906/
6. SLS vs. SLES vs. Sulfate-Free: What Controlled Testing Actually Shows
This peer-reviewed patch-testing study compares SLS, SLES, and alkyl polyglucoside — a common sulfate-free surfactant — at varying concentrations and exposure times. The findings are objective and side-by-side. If you want data, not marketing, on how different surfactant choices compare at the ingredient level, this is it.
Source: National Institutes of Health — PubMed URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12641575/
7. A Practical Label-Reading Guide for Anyone Done Guessing
MADE SAFE's hand soap ingredient guide walks you through the specific chemical names and ingredient suffixes to watch for — and avoid — when evaluating any formula for safety. It's the most actionable non-toxic buying resource we've found for everyday families who want real answers, not more marketing.
Source: MADE SAFE — Nontoxic Certified URL: https://madesafe.org/blogs/viewpoint/product-profile-hand-soap
These science-first resources help families evaluate sulfates, surfactant safety, and label claims with verified standards and clinical data, bringing the same demand for clear definitions, independent benchmarks, and real-world performance that the roofing industry applies to materials that protect what matters most.
Supporting Statistics
We didn't start with a business plan. We started with two kids with raw, cracked hands. As doctors, we went looking for data. What we found reframed everything we thought we knew about hand hygiene.
Statistic 1: 31 Million Americans Have Eczema — We Were Two of Their Parents
The number that stopped us cold:
31+ million Americans live with some form of eczema
9.6 million of them are children under 18
SLS is a documented skin barrier disruptor — found in most mainstream hand soaps
What we learned developing NOWATA:
SLS doesn't distinguish between grime and the natural lipids protecting your child's skin
It strips both
For compromised skin, that's not a minor inconvenience — it's a daily assault from a product that's supposed to help
What we did about it:
We formulated NOWATA for those 31 million — starting with our own two children, who were part of that statistic before we built them a better option.
Source: National Eczema Association — Eczema Facts https://nationaleczema.org/eczema-facts/
Statistic 2: The CDC Proved What Two Years in Our Kitchen Already Taught Us
What the CDC data shows:
Proper handwashing reduces respiratory illness by 16–21%
Diarrheal illness drops by 23–40%
Neither outcome depends on sulfate concentration
The key finding:
Technique and contact time drive germ removal. Not chemical aggression.
What two years of kitchen formulation taught us:
The mechanism of removal matters more than the harshness of the agent
Physical removal can outperform chemical stripping
Clumping technology was the answer — lift contaminants off, don't just dissolve them
When our Swiss lab confirmed 99.9% germ removal with zero sulfates, it wasn't a surprise. It was validation of what the evidence had been pointing to all along.
Source: CDC — Handwashing Facts https://www.cdc.gov/clean-hands/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
Statistic 3: The EPA's Water Data Changed How We Thought About the Sink Itself
Dr. Yalda ran the numbers using EPA WaterSense data:
Standard bathroom faucet: ~2 gallons per minute
Proper 20-second handwash: ~1 gallon per wash
Family of four, 8 washes per person per day: thousands of gallons annually — for hand hygiene alone
What that math revealed:
The sink isn't a neutral part of hand hygiene. It's a resource constraint that limits when and where families can keep their kids' hands clean, and proper roofing techniques follow the same principle: protection only works when it’s practical and consistently available.
Places without sinks:
Playgrounds
Hiking trails
Backseats
School lunchrooms
Anywhere life actually happens
What we did about it:
We didn't design NOWATA to be a soap that happens to be waterless. We designed it to remove the sink from the equation entirely. The EPA's own data told us exactly how much that decision was worth.
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — WaterSense https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts
Final Thought & Opinion
We're going to say something the industry won't.
Most hand soaps weren't designed for your skin. They were designed for your expectations.
The lather. The foam. The squeaky-clean feeling. Those aren't signs of a well-formulated product. They're signs of a well-marketed one.
What Two Years of Formulation Actually Taught Us
Before we had a product, we had a problem. Our children's hands were paying the price for an industry assumption nobody had questioned in decades.
Here's what developing NOWATA taught us that no textbook covers:
The ingredients that make soap feel powerful are often causing the harm
Lather is a sensory experience — not a hygiene metric
The skin barrier isn't collateral damage — it's the whole point
Sulfate-free isn't a compromise — it's a better solution
We didn't arrive sulfate-free by following a trend. We got there by following the evidence — and watching what happened to our own kids' hands when we didn't.
What the Research Confirmed — And What It Couldn't Tell Us
The science confirmed three things:
NIH studies showed SLS disrupts the skin barrier at clinically measurable levels
CDC data confirmed technique matters more than chemical aggression
NEA statistics confirmed 31 million Americans are in a skin health crisis conventional soap is actively worsening
But here's what the research couldn't tell us:
What it feels like to watch your child wince at the sink every day
What it feels like to be a doctor who understands exactly what's happening — and still can't fix it with anything available
What it feels like to finally build something that works and realize the solution was never complicated
It just required someone willing to start over from scratch.
Our Opinion on Where Hand Hygiene Goes From Here
The future of hand hygiene isn't a better sulfate formula. It isn't a gentler lather. It isn't another "clean" product quietly using the same ingredients under a different label.
The future looks like this:
Removal over chemical obliteration
Skin barrier preservation over sacrifice
Waterless solutions that work anywhere families actually need clean hands
Full ingredient transparency as a baseline — not a differentiator
We believe:
Gentleness and efficacy were never opposites — the industry just lacked incentive to prove it
Waterless hand hygiene is a public health opportunity — not a convenience feature
The families most affected by harsh formulas often have the least access to alternatives
The Bottom Line
Sulfates aren't evil. But they aren't necessary.
When a gentler, more effective alternative exists — doctor-developed, Swiss lab-tested, and parent-verified on the toughest critics we know — "good enough" stops being acceptable.
Three things got us here:
Our kids showed us the problem
The research confirmed the cause
NOWATA became the answer
FAQ on Sulfate Free Hand Soap
Q: What exactly are sulfates and why are they in most hand soaps?
A: Sulfates are synthetic surfactants. They bind to oil and water simultaneously. They lift dirt and germs off skin so water rinses them away.
The two most common types:
Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) — aggressive, effective, hard on skin
Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES) — milder, but carries 1,4-dioxane contamination risk
Why they dominate the market:
Cheap to manufacture
Create lather consumers mistake for effectiveness
Never seriously challenged — until now
What we learned firsthand: The ingredient behind that satisfying foam is the same one we traced directly to our children's cracked, irritated hands. Once we understood that, we couldn't unsee it.
Q: Is sulfate-free hand soap actually as effective at removing germs?
A: Yes. Ours are removed more completely.
The distinction most brands won't make:
Sulfate soaps dissolve grime — then depend on perfect rinsing
Imperfect rinsing leaves residue — more common than anyone admits
NOWATA's clumping technology physically lifts contaminants away — no rinsing required
What two years of formulation confirmed:
CDC data shows technique drives germ removal — not surfactant strength
Swiss lab testing confirmed 99.9% germ removal — zero sulfates
The question that changed everything for us: We stopped asking "how do we match sulfate performance?" We started asking "what actually removes germs most completely?" Different questions lead to very different formulas.
Q: Who is most at risk from sulfates in hand soap?
A: Anyone washing hands regularly. Some feel it faster than others.
Most affected:
Children with eczema-prone or sensitive skin
Adults with contact dermatitis or compromised barriers
Teachers and healthcare workers washing hands dozens of times daily
Families in dry climates where skin recovery is already slower
The numbers that stopped us during development:
31+ million Americans have some form of eczema
9.6 million are children under 18
SLS is a documented trigger for barrier-compromised skin
What we kept hearing from parents after switching to NOWATA: They blamed their child's genetics for years. The sensitivity didn't follow the child. It followed the soap.
Q: What should I look for on a label to identify sulfates?
A: Check the first five ingredients. Sulfates aren't hidden — they're near the top because they're doing the primary cleansing work.
Names to watch for:
Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)
Sodium laureth sulfate (SLES)
Ammonium lauryl sulfate (ALS)
Any ingredient ending in "sulfate"
What most brands won't volunteer:
"Gentle," "natural," and "clean" are unregulated marketing terms
SLES can introduce 1,4-dioxane — an EPA-flagged manufacturing byproduct
Reassuring label claims don't require sulfate-free formulas
What we found reading competitor labels during NOWATA's development: The softer the marketing language, the more carefully you needed to read the ingredient list. We decided to make that step unnecessary. Every NOWATA ingredient is published and independently verifiable. Because we apply that standard to everything our own kids use.
Q: What makes NOWATA different from other sulfate-free hand soaps?
A: Most sulfate-free soaps swap one surfactant for another. We replaced the mechanism entirely.
Three things no other formula addresses together:
No sink required — clean hands anywhere life actually happens
Physical removal over chemical killing — contaminants lift away completely, no residue left behind
Built for our children first — every decision made by a dentist and a biomedical engineer who needed a solution for their own family before they had a product to sell
What that process produced:
100% plant-based formula
Zero sulfates, parabens, alcohol, or synthetic fragrances
99.9% germ removal — Swiss lab confirmed
80–100 uses per tube
Up to 2 gallons of water saved per use
30-day satisfaction guarantee
We didn't start with a gap in the market. We started with a gap in our own medicine cabinet. Everything else followed from there.
