Hi, great steemians. It's cool to be here again today. Thank a lot for reading and upvoting my last post, also special thanks to those who drop comment(s) in my blog.

Today, I have an obligation to fulfill, just to intimate us about the possible infections or adverse effects that could be caused by wearing diapers on babies. So many nursing mothers and caregivers had stopped using diapers for their babies may be because of their experiences or from various information heard, it might even be due to rumors. This post will not only enumerate the advert effects but also analyze it for better understanding. Thereafter, a nursing mother or caregiver reading this post will decide if to continue to used diapers for her child or not.

Image created by me

Before I go into the intent of today's discussion, let's have a summary of the last post

I received various comments about the last post from @abigail-dantes, @dedicatedguy, @saintgentle, @rharphelle and from @utopian-io, thank you all for your comments. I was so honored to have received comments on my post from @abigail-dantes, the comment was a cool motivation for me, I felt like as if it was an angelic visitation, lol.

Her comment reads thus:

abigail-dantes (61) · 3 days ago
Gosh @oluwabori! I never knew that a discussion about diapers could get that technical 😛
The reason of why and how diapers came to exist is very interesting!
😊
I wish you a good evening & and all the best to you and your family!

I also replied to her comment:

oluwabori (55) · 3 days ago
Abi, I got to know also during my findings that diapers production is more technical than I have ever thought of. I also got to know some facts about diaper skin burn or rashes that some nursing mothers do complain about, which I will write an article about in my next post. Hope you will be available to read it. Thank you so much @abigail-dantes for this nice comment on my post, this is your first comment on my post and it made a cool signature here.

I didn't know I was in for a promise until she attached a huge importance to next post proposal. Hope not to disappoint her.

abigail-dantes (61) · 3 days ago
All right! :) I am looking forward to the next post then. My cousin is pregnant; so, I will be telling her all the things I learn from your post.

---

Lesson learned from the last post

---

The last post described a diaper a pant-like wearable underwear designed to retain and hold moisture content of excretion, it allows the person or baby wearing it to conveniently defecate and urinate inside it. It is made up of materials with high absorbency, which is usually worn under the cloth to prevent soiling the environment with excretory products. Also, diapers are categorized as cloth diapers and disposable diapers based on the absorbent materials used.

It was also explained that for a diaper to perform its function of absorption thoroughly, all the four major components of a diaper (the front permeable materials, the back impermeable bottom sheet, the absorbent pad or material, Elastic edge Bands and Adhesive strips) must be of high quality and must be placed rightly in position.

It was made clear that disposable diaper core material (absorbent material) was made by a chemical process of polymerization and crosslinking reaction of parent compound of sodium polyacrylate known as acrylic acid. Acrylic acid is produced by the oxidation of Propylene when it is allowed to pass through acrolein (unsaturated aldehyde).

During the process of crosslinking, it is very important to control the degree at which molecules engage in cross-linking so that the desired gel strength is achieved. The gel strength of the polymer must not be too high and must be too low, so as to prevent low get strength or sudden gel of polymer which blocks water from reaching the inner part of the absorbent material. Click here to read more about the last post.

Image taken by me

Let's make a deep dive into today's discusion

---

Possible Adverse Effects of Diapers on Babies

---

In considering the possible advert effects on diapers on babies according to my findings, I shall categorize those effects into two; burnt or rashes caused by diapers known as diaper rashes and other effects. I will be discussing the effects and the possible solutions concurrently.

Hope you will find these pieces of information useful

The core inner material which is the absorbent material (superabsorbent polymers) for diapers a made from series of chemical processes. Acrolein is one of the chemical constituents of superabsorbent polymers, acrolein is used as a precursor for acrylic acid. It was the first chemical to be questioned about the possibility of diaper rashes. The following properties of Acrolein describe it better; it is a very toxic unsaturated aldehyde, very reactive, is fatal when swallowed, it is highly flammable, and causes burns to skin and eyes. A statement of clarification was made that diapers are not actually made from Acrolein, diapers are made from acrylic acid and some esters to form a polymer, Acrolein just creates an intermediate reaction for acrylic acid. With this fact, Acrolein was ruled out as the possible cause of diaper rashes.

By Amanda Stoica - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

My question to you is that, do we really expect to make something actually safe from a so dangerous material? I will like to receive responses to this question in the comment section of this post. Thanks in anticipation of your responses.

Lets forge ahead

Babies who wear a diaper more than 6 hours may experience skin irritation or diaper rash, due to the fact that fluid like urine and fecal fluid might sometimes squeeze out of the core material back to the baby's skin, thereby resulting into a liquid contaminant because its no longer just the baby waste, this conterminant is a potential cause of baby rash. Also, long-term contact of baby's skin with feces and fecal fluid can cause painful redness because feces contains catalyst called urease which converts the urea in urine to ammonia causing skin irritate the skin.

Therefore, mothers and caregivers should regularly change diapers for their children. At most, a diaper should spend 6 hours which means that a child will use at least 4 diapers per day. Please, do not wait until 6 hours, you can change your child's diaper as many times as possible per day depending on how dirty the diaper is.

Among other causes of adverse effects of diapers on babies, we should be very careful of chlorine and dioxins, perfumes, dies, and Phthalates. It is very important to select diapers that are chlorine (dioxins), perfumes, dyes, and Phthalates free. Chlorine used as a bleaching agent to make diaper material purely white has been discovered to produce a trace of a toxic chemical called dioxins. Dioxins have been known as one of the major contributors to reproductive and developmental issues such as hormones interference, damage to immune system, it is also declared as a likely human carcinogen. Though the chlorine produces a small traces of dioxins but a none trace of dioxins will be preferable for babies because babies are still fragile.

Dyes used in making colored patterns and designs on diapers can actually cause skin rash for babies. When dyes from colored patterns on the leg cuff and elastic bands touche the baby's skin, it can cause allergic reactions. Dyes and perfumes on baby diapers are not necessary, so avoid them. Perfume fragrances can be too heavy for babies, they contain chemicals that can cause health issues like respiratory symptoms. Nursing mothers and caregivers should cease from wearing perfumes. Phthalates are plastic ingredient which is added to diaper materials to soften and increase transparency of vinyl used for the outer lining of diapers. Phthalates are not totally bound with other plastic materials, therefore, they can be continually released into the air. Phthalates produce toxic effects on endocrine and reproductive systems.

By US Gov -US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Domain

---

Conclusion

---

This post has made it very clear that disposable diapers contain potentially harmful chemicals such as including chlorine, dyes, fragrances, phthalates, and more. Manufacturers are becoming increasingly aware of parents concerns about toxic materials, so many of them are now declaring that their products do not contain the toxic chemicals and a list of those potentially harmful chemicals are included on the packaging cartons. Many manufacturers don't declare the constituent materials of their products and some of the will be silent about the toxic chemical, leaving us an option to make decisions about them ourselves.

I will advise that we should buy diaper brands in which their manufacturers are bold enough to declare the constituent materials of their diapers or those that have declared that those toxic chemicals I have mentioned are not included in the materials used in diaper's production. For obvious reasons, we should be conscious of the kind of diapers we wear for our babies. Hope @abigail-dantes will have many gists or crux about this post for her pregnant cousin.

Thanks for reading through this post, hope you have added to your knowledge of diapers. I will be discussing biodegradation of diapers and its environmental effects in my next article, hope to seeing you around.