Allergic reactions to methylisothiazolione in Baby Wipes

Cosmetic giant Johnson & Johnson says it is so concerned, it is taking the chemical out of its best-selling Piz Buin sun cream and other products.
Molton Brown is doing the same and big brands such as Nivea, L’Oreal, Clarins and Sanctuary are under pressure to take action as doctors say adverse reactions to the chemical have reached ‘epidemic proportions’.
Skin experts say manufacturers should urgently remove the chemical from products that are left on the skin. It can cause rashes, lumps, blisters, itchy eyes and facial swelling.
In one case, a woman’s head and face swelled up so much that doctors feared she would have trouble breathing without urgent treatment.
In another, a British holidaymaker’s skin became so inflamed that she spent two days in a Spanish hospital and needed steroids and antihistamines to calm the allergic reaction.
MI is a preservative designed to extend shelf life, and has no useful properties for users of the products.
Experts say the scale of the allergic reactions to the chemical, which has been used increasingly since 2005, is alarming.

MI is currently banned from cosmetics in Canada and Japan.

...a study published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday has linked a preservative found in many brands of wipes to itchy, scaly, and painful rashes – even some wipes touted as hypoallergenic. It's the first time that the chemical methylisothiazolinone (MI) has been reported to cause allergic contact dermatitis (ACD) in children in the United States. The authors, Dr. Mary Wu Chang, a dermatologist and professor at the University of Connecticut, and one of her medical students, Radhika Nakrani, looked at the cases of six children, ages 3 to 8, who suffered from persistent rashes that did not respond to topical and oral antibiotics and steroids. Since the rashes were located on the children's hands, faces, and bottoms, Chang asked their parents about exposure to wipes. The parents all confirmed that they regularly used two brands of moist wipes on their children: Huggies and Cottonelle, both produced by Kimberly-Clark. Patch tests revealed that the kids were allergic to MI. Their skin cleared up within days of discontinuing use of the wipes, and the rashes did not come back.

"This preservative is not new," Chang told HealthDay. "But it was used as a combination preservative [with methylchloroisothiazolinone/MCI] for many years. To try to minimize allergic reactions, it is now being used as a single preservative but in higher concentrations, and now people are developing allergic rashes to the new formulation." According to Chang's study, the amount of MI in some products has been increased from 3.7 parts per million to as much as 100 parts per million, the maximum allowed by the FDA, since 2006 when the MI-MCI combination was phased out. In addition to wipes, according to Skin and Allergy News, MI is found in at least 2,600 personal care products sold in the United States, including shampoo, lotion, sunblock, and shower gel.

A spokesperson for Kimberly-Clark provided a statement to Yahoo Shine by email that said, "Kimberly-Clark has a long history of providing products that improve the health, hygiene, and well-being of families everywhere and is constantly striving to identify and develop new solutions that respond to our consumers' needs. While our wipe products remain safe for use, we recognize that recent studies have raised concerns about the use of MI as a preservative ingredient." It continued, "We have been evaluating alternative preservative options over the past few years and are now ready to confirm that, beginning this month, Kimberly-Clark will start introducing new wet wipes that are MI-free across its entire product range in the U.S., Canada, Europe and other global markets."