The other day I unwittingly caused a bit o’ dramz for Johnson’s. I was at a launch for another (non-competitor) product and the PR peep was talking about formaldehyde. She mentioned that you could even find a form of it in Johnson’s Baby Shampoo and that it had since been rukked off the shelves. I tweeted this information and it ended up spreading like wildfire. Thing is, this is only sort of true in regards to a few other countries like America and NOT South Africa. Oops! 

Let me clear this up further by sharing a bit of a press release I was subsequently sent by J&J:

We have been phasing out formaldehyde releaser preservatives from our baby products. The preservative technologies we use are safe and approved by authorities in the European Union and in the United States, as well as in China and India, and we have not seen any evidence of allergy in hundreds of millions of real life uses of these products. However, we know that some consumers are concerned about formaldehyde, which is why we offer many products without formaldehyde releasing preservatives, and are phasing out these types of preservatives in our baby products worldwide.  JOHNSON’S® Baby Shampoo manufactured and sold in sub-Sahara Africa do not contain any formaldehyde releasing preservatives.

So to re-iterate, local Johnson’s baby shampoo is formaldehyde-free and perfectly safe for both you and your baba. To those of you who told me you were immediately going to chuck all your J&J goodies in the bin, I’m well and truly sorry. If anything, I’ve learned the power of social media and will be sure to check the facts before dropping such an explosive ‘lil tweet.

Love, love

Leigh