316 JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS dency to permeate unless high concentrations are employed. 3. Formulators should not reject the use of quaternaries in hair or skin care products because of earlier and probably unjustified generalizations about irritancy. 4. It must be recognized that the proof of non-irritancy and safety of every surfactant- containing product must be assessed before marketing. APPENDIX • "MR. LATVEN: We have investigated between 45 and 50 surface-active agents fol- lowing instillation in the eye and found essentially the same result. However, we have got to add one thing, namely, that the nonionics can be just as irritating as the cationics in specific instances, as you have already pointed out. The incidence, however, is less. We find around 25 per cent of all nonionics are irritating in consideration of corneal opacity and around 62 per cent of anionics fall into the opaci- fication class, where it is 100 per cent with the cationics. As you have also pointed out, the important question is whether or not the final formulas produce corneal opacity. That raises a very important question, namely: When one investigates a final formulation and obtains results such as that, only one out of nine or ten animals shows opacification. How can one interpret it? I must admit complete ignorance. DR. DRAIZE: Occasionally one serious reaction only is obtained in a group of test subjects. Such a single reaction is deemed significant, since in the general population an occasional sensitive individual may be encountered, and from a standpoint of overall safety such an individual may not be overlooked. MR. LATVEN: I wonder if I could ask another question on your interpretation, namely, the insidious character of a number of these surface-active agents is the fact that they don't produce pain on instillation .... " REFERENCES (1) J. H. Draize, in Appraisal of the Saj•ty of Chemicals in Foods, Drags, and Cosmetics (Assoc. Food Drug Officials, U.S., Topeka, Kansas, 1959). (2) H. P. Drobeck, "Current Topics on the Toxicity of Cationic Surfactants," in Cationic S•factants, J. Cross and E.J. Singer, Eds. (Marcel Dekker, New York, 1994). (3) R.A. Cutler and H.P. Drobeck, "Toxicology of Cationic Surfactants," in Cationic S•rfactants, E. Jungermann, Ed. (Marcel Dekker, New York, 1970). (4) J. H. Draize and E. A. Kelley, Toxicity to eye mucosa of certain cosmetic preparations containing surface-active agents, Proc. Sci. Sect. Toilet Goods Assoc., 17, 1-4 (1952). (5) L. W. Hazelton, Relation of surface active properties to irritation of the rabbit eye, Proc. Sci. Sec. Toilet Goods Assoc., 17, 5-9 (1952). (6) P. C. M. Van der Valk, J.P. Nater, and E. Bleumink, Skin irritancy of surfactants as assessed by water vapor loss measurement,J. Invest. Dermatol., 82, 291-293 (1984). (7) E. Berardesca, D. Fideli, P. Gabba, G. Rabbiosi, and H.I. Maibach, Ranking of surfactant skin * Discussion after the Draize and Kelley presentation (4). From page 4 of the Proceedings of the Sdentific Section of the Toilet Goods Association, 17, May 1952.

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