It’s time for another closer look at the stuff that goes into our favorite beauty products. Today’s target: urea.
Urea (sometimes known as carbamide) is an organic chemical compound. It is produced by humans and many other mammals, amphibians, and some fish. It is produced when the liver breaks down ammonia and protein or ammonia and amino acids. The kidneys then send urea out of the body along with urine. Urea helps carry excess nitrogen out of the body.
Um… sounds like kind of a yucky thing to put into beauty products! But it’s used in cleansers, conditioners, hair dyes, and even tooth-whitening products. Outside of the beauty world, urea is used in fertilizers, glue, detergents, and feed for livestock (the high nitrogen content is thought to aid in animal growth). Urea can also be found in some barbituates (drugs that suppress the central nervous system) and diuretics (drugs that increase the rate of water removal from the body). Veterinarians may use urea as a topical antiseptic.
Urea is also useful as a diagnostic tool. Testing for urea levels can help doctors detect diseases and disorders of the kidneys.
A cool fact about urea: it was the very first organic compound to be synthesized artifically using inorganic compounds. This was huge for the chemistry world, where the old assumption had been that there was a fundamental difference between organic and inorganic compounds. Synthesizing an organic compound proved that there was no fundamental difference between the two.
Undiluted, urea can be a skin and eye irritant. But don’t worry — it appears in very small amounts in beauty and personal care products.
I’m torn between thinking it’s kinda cool to use a waste product in so many different ways… and thinking that it’s kinda gross to use a waste product on your skin. What do you think?