What Is a Cruelty Free Diaper?

Diapers, the most basic item every mom needs to buy for her baby. At times, you may need to make emergency, late-night visits to your local pharmacy or grocery store to pick up a bag of diapers.

You try not to forget diapers in your diaper bag when leaving the house, although it happens to all of us that it still occasionally slips our minds.

Your diaper caddy is overflowing with diapers, you can’t even find the baby wipes beneath it all.

You buy so much of this product, yet do you spend the time to think about what it’s actually made of and what the process of safety testing is? Or do you buy what is popular or on sale?

Think about it for a minute – this is a product that sits directly on your baby’s soft, delicate skin, for 24 hours a day, every day. You should know exactly what it is made of.

I’m going to tell you some of the ingredients that are contained in these diapers and what you should look out for. Additionally, I will delve into the topic of “what is a cruelty free diaper”.

Ingredients in common diapers

The following are a few ingredients found in diapers which, according to Juliet Spurrier, MD, are toxic:

Chlorine

This is used in many diapers to whiten the material, like bleach. However, this is unsafe for babies since it releases dioxins, which can cause many issues, such as cancer, reproductive problems, and damage the immune system.

Dioxins are only found in trace amounts in diapers, but it’s better not to contain any, rather than trace amounts.

Fragrances

These are used in diapers to mask the smell of pee and poop. According to the FDA, companies don’t need to list the exact ingredients of these fragrances.

Therefore, companies can add whatever chemicals they want, without it being screened for safety.

Specifically, in diapers, the fragrances are known to cause respiratory issues as well as diaper rashes.

Fragrances are also found in baby shampoo so be sure to check out this list of natural baby shampoos that are fragrance free.

Phthalates

These are added to diapers to increase durability and flexibility. Since babies wear diapers for a few years of their life, these phthalates have plenty of opportunities to enter the body through the skin.

Studies have shown that phthalates can cause many diseases including diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.

Again, companies are not obligated to disclose if they use phthalates or not, which gives them free rein to add them to their diapers.

There are many more dangerous and toxic ingredients in diapers but I will not go into all of them. This should be enough to make you question what brand of diapers you choose to use for your baby’s health.

Remember that when you use natural diapers, free of harmful ingredients, you can prevent diaper rashes for your little.

Read more about it in my article where I surprise you with the secrets I wish I had known earlier about preventing diaper rash naturally.

What is the cruelty involved in diapers?

It may come as a surprise to you that there can be cruelty involved in making diapers. It’s easy to hide it from the public since these big companies focus so much on advertising what they offer, that you, the consumer, don’t think about how they offer it.

Unfortunately, animals are always the “guinea pigs”, the “scapegoats”, and the “lab rats”.

Notice how all of these terms mention animals since this is the sad reality of how animals are treated. The diaper industry uses innocent animals to test for safety.

They force the animals to ingest parts of the diaper. They also test for skin allergies of the diapers by using animals.

These methods are so outdated. There is no need to test products on animals anymore when there are other ways to run safety tests.

Luckily, there are several brands of diapers that do not contain the harmful ingredients mentioned above and they are also cruelty free.

Cruelty free diaper brands

I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, I may earn a commission. Thanks.

Now that I have shed light on the negative aspects of popular diaper brands, let’s focus on what you can use and what is safe for your little munchkin.