Do you stink? Do you want to prevent it?

Aside from bathing regularly, it’s pretty common to use underarm deodorants or antiperspirant/deodorants.  The most common active ingredients in antiperspirants are aluminium chlorohydrate and aluminium zirkonium tetrachlorohydrate glycine.  I don’t know what all that means, I’m not current on my knowledge of chemistry.  But, the word on the street is that aluminum is bad.  I suspect that word is, at best, incomplete.  Chemistry is weird that way.  Lethal poisons totally change toxicity when they are found in differing compounds.

Everyone knows of the example of salt.  Sodium chloride.  NaCl.  Both of those elements are damned nasty when in their elemental form.  Sodium will explode on contact with water, and chlorine will simply dissolve you.

Back to that aluminum problem.   The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in their June 2003 document, Antiperspirant Drug Products For Over-the-Counter Human Use; Final Monograph, does admit that the aluminum from antiperspirants can pose a risk to people with kidney failure.  But, they don’t find evidence of toxicity from the aluminum compounds used in antiperspirants.  It appears that someone made a connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease, and extrapolated that connection to any compound that contains aluminum.  Typical of marketing people, I guess.

My wife settled on an article at Instructables.com that described how to make deodorant.  That’s fine for me.  I don’t worry about sweating.  I just don’t want to stink.  60 ml (1/4 cup) of powdered cornstarch, 60 ml sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and about 45 ml (3 tablespoons) of coconut oil.  Mix it all together, add a few drops of some essential oil if you want scented deodorant.    That’s pretty much it.  How you dispense it is your choice.  I packed it into an empty deodorant canister she saved, but new empty deodorant canisters can be had online, too.  We figured it’s better to re-use one instead of buying yet another new plastic thing that will eventually end up in the environment, where it will stay forever.  You could also use a small jar, and just put the stuff on by hand.  It’s your own damned armpits, if you can’t stand touching them, you may want to bathe more often.

I can report this formula works perfectly.  Easily as well as the commercial deodorant (Old Spice Classic) that I’ve used for years .

The cost?  Hard to work it out in my head, because we used so few ingredients to make it.  Pennies, I’d guess.  This is our main reason for this experiment:  economy.  That, and independence from a commercial product.  And, for environmental reasons.  Economy, independence, environmentalism, and effective hygiene.  A successful experiment.