In this week’s sneak peek at the stats, we are looking at the level of diaper damage that is associated with different detergents. These numbers are based on the over 1,800 responses to the Washing Diaper Survey.

Respondents were asked to rate the presence of diaper damage that they saw on their diapers. I have filtered the results to only show those who used the detergent for over 4 months:

Now let’s look at the results of damage based on over 1 year of detergent use (there are fewer detergents because many of the ones above did not have enough responses to be statistically valid for the next graph):

 

 

Main Findings:

All people experienced very low diaper damage (on a scale of 0 to 4, all detergents averaged at below 1, meaning very little damage).

Rockin’ Green Hard had the greatest presence of diaper damage, but these results are a little bit off since we would assume that 100% of all Rockin’ Green Hard users have hard water, which means the damage could be due to hard water.

As you can see here, we kind of owe Tide a big apology. It’s gotten a pretty bad rap as being a serial killer for cloth diapers. But, as we can see here, it isn’t as bad as we thought. In fact, out of all detergents used over a year, it actually scored LOWEST in presence of diaper damage.

BUT…

Now there are other factors to consider here, such as how the diaper works with a baby’s SKIN. There are enzymes in Tide that your baby may be sensitive to, and all of that simply depends on your own baby. You may also choose a more environmentally friendly detergent, which you would find with many cloth diaper detergents.

Also, before you jump the gun and buy Tide, remember that many cloth diaper companies have warranties that will disable if you use “non-cloth diaper safe detergents” like Tide. So you may want to look into that if you want to keep your warranty.

Remember, too, that the reason why people are opposed to Tide is because we know from scientific experiments the effects that certain chemicals in non-CD safe detergents (like Tide) have on things like PUL, elastic, etc.  So we are looking here at personal experience vs science. I’m not normally one to dispute science, but I am perhaps suggesting that the wear on diaper materials may occur after far more extended use than what we are doing for our diapers.

How surprised are you at these statistics? 

Are there other statistics that you would like to see for the Friday Sneak Peek at the Stats post? I can compare detergent statistics and cloth diaper statistics, just let me know what you want!

*Tide detergent image adapted from Amazon.com.