I posted the following: "I am trying to make a shower gel that has a scent but is not toxic to either humans or aquatic life. And I have a hard time finding anything for the latter. Essential oils and derivatives? Nope. Synthetic ones? Nothing. I could go the unscented route, but it’s going to be hard to sell. So, considering that most of you are better informed about this topic, is there a specific ingredient that I can use for a rose fragrance that’s truly non toxic? Thanks "
On fragrange, zerowaste and sustainability. The post got deleted by mods in a manner of minutes. What the hell is going on there? I am going to stay here for much longer since that place is turning very weird. Also, can anyone here actually help me find a fragrance ingredient that won’t kill aquatic life when poured down the drain? Thank you in advance
To me it was the toxicity. I posted a meme about “look how they massacred my boy” and the old and new DonkeyKong designs and got downvoted and mean comments. The site went to shit after the API-price increase and the only reason I’m still on there is that my hobbies aren’t on lemmy yet.
I think some mods are overly jumpy with chemistry type questions because uninformed morons will confidently answer the wrong thing and the mods are afraid it will get someone hurt. That or the subs in question just aren’t geared for this kind of Q&A. You’d probably get better responses from a chemistry subreddit.
Scent compounds being potentially hazardous to some minor degree in their super concentrated form isn’t a huge issue, because that’s not how they’re going to be experienced and it’s hard to find anything that isn’t harmful in some quantity. The alchemist Paracelsus, who pioneered evidence backed approaches to pharmaceutical medicine wrote the old adage “The dose makes the poison.” Even water can kill you if you drink too much of it all at once, and pure oxygen is an extremely dangerous substance even though we need it to breathe.
That said, I happen to know a bit about chemistry and just did a bit of reading. It looks like rose oil comes in two forms - one produced by steam distillation, and one produced by solvent extraction. The one produced via solvent extraction is more common, more concentrated, and according to Safety Data Sheets (SDS) I was able to find, has more potential health hazards associated with it. The other form, known as Rose Otto, is produced via steam distillation and is less concentrated. This means you will need more and will need to adjust your formulation, but according to the SDS this is a pretty safe substance. If your concern is potential hazards of making your soap during manufacturing, then that may be a better option I guess. I still think that it’s fine to use substances that are toxic in quantities that will never make it into the final product.
Reddit doesn’t need you. Use to be a place for small communities to collaborate. Now its focusing all it’s efforts on being a proprietor and distributor of information. Any function those small communities serve is not important anymore because their user base is so large and entrenched the only thing that can sink them is gross mismanagement. As we saw with Twitter, even then, the road to broke is long and spiraling.
If have I had to guess… a combination of well meaning rules built up over time that no one actually thought out, chronically online weirdos corrupted by the little bit of power afforded by moderating (which seems common in online communities) and cabals of state actors who moderate multiple subreddits in order to control and direct the narrative.
On the other hand, with how popular reddit has become and with how many bots are out there, it might be worse without the rules.
Sadly any substances related to showering are percieved as dangerous by the stereotypical reddit mod. :D
Lmao
This is the best comment I read all year. Thank you for the laughs.
Hi-ooooo!
Oof even all the way on Reddit they had to have felt that burn lmao
Watch out. They might send an bitcoin assassin after you. One who could run you over with a mobility scooter or stab you with an insulin pen.
It’s all just bots masturbating other bots over there.
30 years ago I expected this, but thought it was going to be sexier.
The future fucking blows.
The future fucking blows.
Based on your comment that’s exactly what it’s not doing lol
Loving the reddit hate train here but to answer your question, there doesn’t appear to be any non aqua toxic rose fragrances. Even rose water can be aqua toxic. This is due to the fact that geraniol (the compound primarily responsible for a roses’ scent) is acutely toxic to aquatic life. Have you considered other light, floral scents OP?
If you have ever posted something vaguely critical of Trump, Elmo or nazis in another sub, then you may well have bots automatically remove your posts and comments on other subs
It turns out that there are plenty of people who are perfectly OK with nazis across many subreddits out there
Reddit has gone to shit
I wasn’t vaguely critical, but very clearly critical. Although I doubt it had an effect on r/ fragrance, but who knows…
You’d be surprised…
It’s definitely that. I have had the “honor” of being IP banned for over a year. Any accounts associated with my ip (and there were quite a few) were nuked. I never posted anything worse than run of the mill criticism like I do here on Lemmy but I never kissed any mods’ rings either.
Given the trend of recent posts in here. I’m going to guess that the word “toxic” triggered the automod.
I actually think you may be onto something.
Based on that logic, maybe reworking it to use ‘toxin’ instead would get it boosted…
On fragrange, zerowaste and sustainability.
/r/soapmaking might have some advice. There is a lemmy equivalent !soapmaking@sh.itjust.works but it doesn’t look very active.
The post got deleted by mods in a manner of minutes.
I’ve always struggled with Reddit’s arcane rules. I rarely know why my stuff is deleted. shrugs I don’t really post there anymore, just lurk.
Probably worth sharing it on !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
If it is any consolation – It was most likely a robot.
Like 99% of large reddits are almost entirely moderated by a modbot, and the modbot is stupider than your average LLM assistant (and LLM assistants aren’t very smart), while also being extremely strict.
Let us rejoice, for that error rate creates new fediverse members.
I can’t argue with that.
We left Reddit because of the drama. Dont bring it over here. Instead, just place your question on lemmy
Who knows? This is Lemmy
Just fyi, most people came here to get rid of reddit. There are a few communities that revolve around reddit for those with nostalgia. Might be the best plae to ask as much as this community is about asking questions.
could you use embedded flower petals?
I could, but I need to check whether this is a perfectly safe option since the aim is fragrance and zero toxicity to water life. I didn’t consider this option before, so thank you.
Organisms have incredibly complex biochemical makeup. Flowers will contain minute levels of formaldehyde and other toxic compounds. If there is no floor on what it takes to be “toxic,” then only 100% purified chemical compounds could be included.
It would be better to determine what “safe” levels are based on regulatory body recommendations and then try to stay under those.
I admit I was taken aback by the certifications provided by pure oils. I will talk about it with a few labs and see if perhaps things could work. Although I still would have preferred to go with something 100 percent safe.
Even a large volume of water can be toxic to humans. I learned this by playing The Sims.
I assume you mean by
investingingesting and not aspiration / drowning. Yes, this is the case.As someone else wrote more succinctly in this post, “The dose makes the poison.” If we don’t quantify the risks from a given exposure, saying something is toxic or non-toxic really has no meaning.
Well, in The Sims it more involved a swimming pool and a disappearing ladder.
How sad is it that fresh water is probably long term a good investment
I’ll correct my typo.
When it comes to toxicity to water life you have to think of the dose. If a rose bush sheds a few petals and it falls to a lake will anything bad happen to the life in the lake? No absolutely not. That happens naturally. The petals will quickly decompose and become nutrients that will feed the ecosystem in the lake. However if someone would drop a dozen truckloads of petals in the lake then that would be way too much organic matter for the ecosystem in the lake to handle. But some shower gel is never gonna come close to that. It’s more gonna be on the magnitude of the bush shedding some petals naturally in the lake. Same with the essential oil. Concentrated essential oil can be quite toxic to both human and other life. But in dilution it’s something else completely. A natural rose bush will evaporate tonnes of essential oil straight into the air during its whole life time and nothing takes damage from it. That’s why you can smell a rose plant when standing next to it. Dilution is sometimes actually the solution. A single drop of essential oil into the sewer drain once a day would not cause any negative effect at all when it’s diluted with tonnes of shower, toilet, sink and even industrial waste water. Diluted it won’t damage any life, especially since essential oils are biodegradable.
Also think what else gets down into the sewer. In most places your toilet and your shower are connected to the same system. The poop you put in your toilet is multiple magnitudes worse than anything you could use while showering. If your waste water treatment plant can’t even treat the poo then you have bigger problems then anything you could put into your shower gel. If it’s good enough to treat poo however then it’s good enough to treat whatever’s in your shower gel.
I admit I got quite a bit worked up with the constant greenwashing found everywhere and got a bit paranoid about contributing to the problem. I will have to talk a bit more with some specialists from the labs that I will be collaborating with (hopefully they won’t tell me what I want to hear, but be honest) and perhaps I find a solution. If all fails, then fragrance free it is…
Poop is really not as bad for the environment as tensides etc. Unless you eat hazardous stuff it is more like manure.
Largest problem with manure, including human manure in this case, is the algal blooms that result from the phosphorous and nitrogen getting into water. That can cause eutrophication that can cause the collapse of entire ecosystems. But of course with proper sewage treatment this risk is minimized. You peeing in the lake while swimming is more akin to the bush by the lakeside dropping leaves. However when it’s an entire town’s untreated sewage then it’s a whole other issue and the results can be catastrophic.
But yes 1 tonne of pure tensides is much worse than 1 ton of poop. However poop tends to come in humongous quantities which is where the real problem lies.
I second this—you can distill your own rose water from flowers. I’m sure you can find flowers to ethically source that would be quality for this purpose.
Edit: oh I see you said rose water is toxic to marine life? That’s unfortunate
