Leading natural toothpaste brand Kingfisher has reformulated its products to remove the controversial ingredient sodium lauryl sulfate.
Kingfisher’s founder, Richard Austin, told Natural Products that he had “finally given up the fight over SLS”.
“It was getting to be impossible to ignore the almost daily calls and emails from customers who were unhappy with this ingredient, even if we remain firmly of the belief that SLS is both effective and safe.
“In the end we took the decision that these views about SLS have become so widespread that we ought make a new formulation, without SLS. It will take a little while for the old formulation to work its way through the system of wholesalers and retailers but since Autumn 2012 we have only manufactured toothpastes with our new SLS-free formula. It was a great relief to find out that the new toothpaste tastes and feels just like it used to.”
Commenting on the wider implications around SLS, Austin said: “This is a case of the perception of a problem winning over the evidence and actual experience. We’ve felt compelled to make the changedespite the complete absence of credible research evidence against SLS, and the fact that it is a permitted ingredient under the international COSMOS Standard developed by organic certifiers such as the Soil Association and EcoCert. It’s especially frustrating in view of the fact that we need clear commonsense science to combat the threat of GM and the like.”
