When you're going through TSA, it's not just sides that
matters. I received a call from my mom
who had what she thought was a very strange and probably pretty
concerning experience going through airport security.
She had her hands swabbed and she tested positive for a
chemical that is used to make explosives.
Jana, what are you up to? Well, today we are going to talk
about the one ingredient that you should never use before
going through airport security. Whether she made it to her
international destination, I do not yet know, but hopefully.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of
Beauty by The Beaker. I'm Sadie.
And I'm Natalie. And we're cosmonic chemists who
are here to give science a hot new makeover.
We sure are, because it's Wednesday and that's what we do.
Every single Wednesday you can find us here giving science a
really hot new makeover. Every every week until until
that fateful day that we run out of storage on our external hard
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So to prevent that from happening, please subscribe like
comment. Share this with a friend Share
this with a friend who's going to go on an airplane sometime
soon. Yeah, have you ever considered
that your cosmetics might get you stopped at TSA?
Probably because we're all concerned about that with our
size of our cosmetics, but maybe for other reasons.
Oh. So there's more than just one
quart size bag that I need to be concerned about.
When you're going through TSA, it's not just size that matters.
Tell me more. OK, so if you don't already
know, I recently drove across the country from Utah to
Kentucky, and then I went to because my father-in-law moved
to Kentucky. Guys, it's such a long story.
Have you ever heard of it? Where is it on a map?
I can't point it out. It's above Tennessee, OH.
OK, I can't point that one out. Either well, and Tennessee is in
the South officially. And so then we went to Kentucky.
Then we actually did go to Tennessee.
And from Tennessee I flew to my home in Salt Lake.
And while I was gone, my parents so graciously borrowed my dog,
Owen Spalding. That is really nice of them.
But they did it on the condition that the day after I returned, I
would drive them to the same airport so that they could
embark on their own expedition. Coincidentally, the scheduling
just worked out this way. It was not that they booked a
trip the day after, because that was their condition.
It was just that. Like we're going to need a
vacation after watching out. For a week.
I wouldn't have blamed them if that was the case.
Oh my God, me either. But it really just happened.
The stars aligned that I was getting home the day before they
left. But at any rate, I had to drive
them to the airport, and shortly after I dropped them off, I
received a call from my mom, who had what she thought was a very
strange and probably pretty concerning experience going
through airport security. Oh, did she bring more than a
quart size bag of toilets? Well she is an over Packer but
that is not why not the issue today while she was going
through she was stopped and she had her hands swabbed and said
she tested positive for a chemical that is used to make
explosives. Jenna, what are you up to?
Well, my first thought. Well, yeah, Potassium nitrate.
Duh. To me, a cosmetic formulation
chemist with extensive oral care experience, this came as no
surprise. It was almost an expectation.
Yeah, I'm like if. She'd come back negative.
It would have been. Weird.
Exactly. I said, well, yeah, duh, you use
Sensodyne toothpaste. And she said, wait, what?
Huh. You know about this?
Yeah. And I said, does it?
Everyone turns out maybe not. Oh.
Well, tell the people. Well, today we are going to talk
about the one ingredient that you should never use before
going through airport security, potassium nitrate.
Keep an eye out. So what is potassium nitrate?
Common theme Atoms, Positive, negative.
Like magnets, they stick together.
We've talked about it before, but potassium nitrate, no
different. This can be broken down into our
positive and negative parts that magnetically attract to one
another. There's the positive or cationic
potassium ion and then a negative or anionic nitrate
group. So I do like the.
Potassium is positive and nitrate is negative.
That's. Yeah, that is that.
Works out so nicely. The universe did us a solid with
that one. It really did.
Or just human coincidence with naming and everything aligning
in such a way that that happened to work.
Out did you manifest that to be honest?
Maybe so that word nitrate might ring a bell or two for some of
you, because it does for me for more than just the fact that I
am a chemist and deal with chemicals.
But for me, the first thing that I think of when I think of
nitrates is processed meat, because I remember a time when
there was a big scare around nitrates in like salted and
processed meat. Oh, interesting.
I'm not sure if that's something that people are still like
worried about in any probably. I'm sure that they are, but that
is a modern day application of potassium nitrate as well.
What does it do in meat? Great question.
Nitrates are powerful oxidizers. What that means is when you what
that mean? What that mean?
What that mean is that if you heat it up, then it supplies
oxygen. Essentially.
If you put energy into it, then it can be a source of oxygen or
an oxidizer. That means it can provide oxygen
and when it's used in meats, it oxidizes the meat and you react
it with the nitrates and it oxidizes it and changes the
color of the meat to be red. So that's what we do now instead
of using red 40 to dye meat. Crazy how the entirety of meat
processing has been discussed on this podcast.
Literally who knew this was a meat processing podcast?
Literally because we also remember when we talked about.
The jungle junk, Yes. Yeah, we've gone all the way
from the beginning. It's crazy.
That's been chronological too. That's.
Kind of insane. Weird.
Oh, OK. That's wild.
Yeah, just. Wait till we start talking about
petroleum in vegan alternatives, but that's a conversation.
Nitrates are naturally occurring compounds made of nitrogen and
oxygen, and they're found in soil, and they're crucial for
plant growth. So if you are a human and you
want a plant to growth, what might you do to it?
What might you give it? Maybe I'd give it some food and
water. Those are good things to give it
another name for plant food fertilizer.
So potassium nitrate or nitrates in general, very common
ingredients in fertilizer. For potassium nitrate, it
contains potassium and then the nitrate, which is nitrogen and
oxygen. So potassium, nitrogen and
oxygen, all of these are really essential atoms for plants to
grow. They use all of these, so
potassium nitrate. I'm going to say it's.
Good. Yeah, good food source for
plants 2. Thumbs up for Plant.
But nitrates are also used for a variety of other things.
The compound consists of 1 nitrogen atom and then three
oxygen atoms. So when these molecules get
excited, the oxygen, the oxygen atoms get a little bit Lucy
Goosy. I Love Lucy Goosy.
So the oxygens kind of come loose and this compound can
decompose, but that results in like an oxygen output if you
will. So for each compound, 3/4 of it
is oxygen, right? Some of you may know a thing or
two about oxygen. I know I need.
It you do. But it can also hurt me it.
Can, because pure oxygen is really reactive, like explosive,
yeah. Interesting.
You may know where I'm going. I could guess.
Nitrates are the primary component in gunpowder and are
used to make other explosives like fireworks.
Yes, exactly. So like I mentioned, when
they're heated, they give off oxygen.
And we all know that a fire needs oxygen in order to burn.
So nitrates can kind of be thought of as little like
holding vessels for oxygen. It's like a stable oxygen tank
that holds on to it until it's heated up.
So then once you apply energy to it, you have these little oxygen
tanks that open up, right? That results in an explosion.
Yeah. Yeah, they're getting really
loosey goosey, Yeah. They do, and it happens pretty
fast when you have a bunch of them that process again, they're
powerful oxidizers, right? And the same thing that makes
them useful in explosives is what makes them useful in
fertilizer and for curing meat. It's that they readily let go of
those oxygens. They decompose with just you put
in a little energy and it falls apart.
And then you can use all those pieces for something else, which
is great. It's really helpful.
Yeah, just depends. Depends.
Yes, definitely. But when you're going through
airport security, part of the explosive Trace Detection
testing or EDT is ETDETD. It doesn't matter is swabbing
and testing for trace amounts of nitrates or explosive residue.
Hmm, right. So interesting.
Yeah. So as we have covered, nitrates
are used, they're used daily by a lot of very innocent people,
whether they are going about their day-to-day activities or
maybe they're jet setting on new adventures.
But today we're going to cover how you can limit your nitrate
exposure before you hit your security checkpoint.
Yeah, that is. Helpful.
Because my mom somehow had elevated nitrates on her hands.
What did they do though? Arrest her like or did.
They had to search her entire luggage, so pulled everything
out, swabbed all of her stuff. So luckily for her, the airport
security line was short. Yeah, but this honestly could be
kind of a big deal if you were in a hurry and you're like, I
really wish I didn't use Sensodyne this morning because I
happen to get swabbed and now I look like I am in pyrotechnics.
Literally. And you have 20 minutes to get
to your gate and you were hoping to pee before you got on the
plane and now you can't. Exactly as.
TSA is going through your. Whole bag.
So yes, I mentioned that. My first thought was that it was
my mom's Sensodyne toothpaste, which she did confirm on the
phone that she had used that morning.
Well, I would hope so. Imagine if she didn't.
Yeah, then it'd be a bigger conversation.
So how does potassium nitrate work in Sensodyne?
Yeah, you may have guessed that the ingredient that I'm going to
talk about again is potassium nitrate.
Why wouldn't it be? You're like that conversation's
over anyway. Sensodyne's totally different,
has nothing to do. With that, throw everything out
that we just talked about. No.
So decreasing oral sensitivity or decreasing sensitivity,
that's a drug claim. And so it's regulated by the
FDA. In order for a product to claim
that it's going to decrease sensitivity, it has to include
an active ingredient that is monitored by the FDA.
So in this case with Sensodyne toothpaste or any oral care
product that claims to decrease sensitivity, it has to include
potassium nitrate. But unlike our other examples
for decreasing sensitivity, it's not the nitrate that we're
using, but actually the potassium maybe, which we'll
talk about that too. But the idea behind it is that
once in your mouth, these potassium nitrate compounds can
degrade, and then the potassium, the positively charged part,
accumulates at the nerve endings and blocks the signals from
going through. So then when hot, cold or sugary
things come in contact with your teeth, you just don't receive
the pain signal that you would before because your nerves are
all plugged up with potassium. Interesting.
It's like comedogenic for your gut.
Kind of, yeah. But like, intentional, yeah.
The type of comedogenicity we want.
So Colgate carries a sensitivity relief toothpaste and from their
website this is what they say potassium nitrate nitrate does
in toothpaste. This is directly from their
site. Potassium nitrate is a salt
compound and a natural desensitizing agent.
It blocks pain signals from your dental nerve to your brain so
you don't feel any discomfort. By brushing your teeth with a
toothpaste with potassium nitrate, you're coating your
teeth with a solution that reduces pain and sensitivity.
Potassium nitrate calms the tooth nerve activity so that you
feel less discomfort when eating hot, cold, sweet or sticky
foods. So that's what they're saying.
Interesting theory, Yeah. But honestly, there's not like a
lot of great data to back this up.
I was kind of surprised how not great the data was to back it
up. Really.
Yeah, just. Given that it's an OTC
regulator, yeah. And that it's like kind of the
only one, right? But I did want to look into it a
little bit and see on their website, they gave what looked
like a lot of good information on potassium nitrate being a
good ingredient. And everyone knows about
Sensodyne toothpaste. Yeah.
And I think it's pretty well like, this is exactly an example
of how people don't actually care about studies to back up
ingredients. As long as they assume that it's
going to work, then they're on board with it working, right?
I've never questioned the validity of sensitivity relief.
Yeah, in oral care. Well, especially because they
definitely do work, at least in my experience.
Yeah, a lot of people I know like, use sensitivity
toothpaste, and they have great results.
So it's surprising that the data doesn't back it up.
But this is kind of the best case scenario.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
And it's, again, that's not at all to say that that's not
exactly what's happening. It could be that the mechanism
described is exactly how it works.
But at any rate, because it's what we like to do, let's talk
about the study that this is kind of based on.
Again, couldn't find a lot, but the best study that I found I'll
link it here and it's one of those tests where they are kind
of comparing using something to not using anything at all.
O The test was comparing one group that was using a fluoride
toothpaste in combination with a mouth rinse that contained 3%
potassium nitrate and 90 parts per million sodium fluoride.
OK. Then the control group was just
using the toothpaste with fluoride?
Why did they add in the sodium fluoride in?
The potassium. Nitrate mouth threads well.
As you've already identified, there are some issues with this
study. For one, we're comparing using a
mouth rinse that contains additional fluoride to using no
mouth threads at all. Yeah, ideally, yes, the control
group would have been using the exact same mouth rinse with the
additional fluoride, just without the potassium nitrate.
Yeah, kind of like the ketogenicity thing.
We're testing tooth sensitivity. Yeah, it's subjective.
It's subjective and we're not super blind to it because it's
not like one group didn't know they were not using mouth rinse,
right? Like we're not.
Yeah, yeah. So some holes, some holes.
Sometimes it's like, like, why not though?
Like that was such an easy way to make the study so much more
accurate. I don't know.
And our results were that both groups saw significant decrease
in sensitivity, but the group that used the mouse rinse saw an
increased like more sensitivity, more or less sensitivity.
Yeah, the the group that was using the mouth rinse had a
greater decrease of their sensitivity, you know, but like.
Who knows if it's because yes, potassium nitrate, it could
just. Literally because.
Using a mouth rinse contributes to that, yeah.
It could be. And again, the mouth rinse and
the toothpaste both had fluoride in it.
My first thought is that because the mouth rants had additional
fluoride that maybe it was that they were double dosing the
fluoride whereas the other group was just getting one dose of the
fluoride. It may have had nothing to do
with the potassium nitrate because the toothpaste group
that was just using that still saw a decrease in sensitivity.
If it was like baseline there stayed completely the same and
the other one had decreased, then like maybe that would be,
you know, we still couldn't rule out that it was a passenium
nitrate only, right? The other study that I saw that
I didn't actually include here, but was LinkedIn.
Some of the brand websites like Colgate's website was one where
they basically concluded that 5% potassium nitrate decreases to
sensitivity and higher concentrations due to OK.
So it's like they tested higher concentrations and people
reported that their sensitivity was decreased, but like so did
the lower concentrations. Yeah, that was like the result.
Interesting. Yeah, I was able to find those
two studies, but yeah, this one was the best one and not like,
awesome. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Yeah. So could it have been that
potassium nitrate was helping with tooth sensitivity?
Certainly possible. But it also is probably a good
idea to continue to use fluoride because that probably has a
little bit more scientific backing than potassium nitrate
even does. And you know, at the end of the
day, whether or not this toothpaste is going to help with
tooth sensitivity, it will increase your chances of being
flagged through TSA. It will increase the amount of
nitrates present that could be picked up in a swab.
My mom had also mentioned that her TSA agent said something
about like other hand creams or like baby products containing
nitrates. I just wanted to dig a little
bit deeper to find if there are any additional products that we
need to be avoiding that have potassium nitrate in them or if
oral sensitivity products are the only ones.
And I was actually only able to find three more products.
Oh, so they're definitely not common in cosmetics, but the
other three products that I could find that did have
potassium nitrate in them are the Estee Lauder Set and Refresh
Perfecting Makeup Mist. Not entirely sure why it would
have them. Maybe buffering, Yeah, maybe an
active, not entirely sure. And then two products from
Lemaire, the treatment lotion and the hand treatment, both of
these contain potassium nitrate. Neither are like marked pocketed
as it has this in it as an active ingredient.
It's probably just in there because the formula was made
using it because I mean, it's in fertilizer and stuff.
It's going to help your hands grow, yeah.
Exactly. You know, we don't know all the
reasons, no. They could grow and become less
sensitive. Maybe it's curing your meats,
Your hands meats. My hands are really pink after.
I use that lotion. So yeah, those were the only
cosmetics that I could find that were not for oral care.
So if I did miss any, you know of any other cosmetics that
contain potassium nitrate, please let me know, drop them in
the comments. But As for oral care, if it ever
says anything about decreasing sensitivity, because that is a
drug claim, we know for a fact that it is going to contain
potassium nitrate. So maybe if you're in a hurry
and you're going through the airport, skip that one that day.
Yeah, don't use your oral sensitivity products.
Yeah, I mean, the chances of you being stopped and swabbed are
somewhat low, but. It I mean.
It's enough that they will empty your suitcase and swab all your
other things too. It's mostly just an annoyance.
Yeah, you're not going. To get in trouble.
But yes, yeah, obviously false negatives are a thing that they
account for. The TSA agent didn't seemed like
super shocked that this had happened.
Yeah. And my mom obviously innocently
going about her travels. Yeah, she's like, I have no clue
what's going on, but at least if you ever do get swabbed TSA now
you might not be confused about. Why, Yeah.
Because yeah, I'd probably be like, what?
What are you talking about? What did you find?
Yeah, and maybe like your oral care products aren't a big deal,
but have you ever thought about maybe don't spread fertilizer
with your hands before going through TSA?
I don't know if people are thinking about that, but that
would probably be a bad idea. Me gardening 20 minutes before
leaving for the airport, that is important.
But yeah, I mean, if anything else, good to know that nitrates
are what they're looking for and that nitrates do exist for just
regular people all the time. Like, throughout your day,
you're going to encounter them. Yeah, especially if you're a
gardener like her of cured meats.
Exactly, yes. But yeah, I just know, you know,
summer's coming up. We're getting to that time where
people are going to be hopefully traveling, going on some on
their summer vacays, just. Setting a little bit.
Yeah. So if you happen to find
yourself going through an airport, maybe keep it in mind.
Yeah, just a nice little PSA he might not have heard before.
Yeah. Well that was so interesting.
Thank you so much. I learned something new that was
very fun. Well, I'm glad you did.
And I'm so sad that your mom had such a harrowing experience at
the Yeah. Luckily she got about through
security. Whether she made it to her
international destination, I do not yet know, but hopefully.
You don't yet know still. No, I just, no, I don't.
I should check. I told her to text me and now it
has been some time. Yeah.
Because yeah, they were direct, so they should be there by now.
Yeah, they should. Hopefully.
My mom didn't get stopped for her sensodyne.
She got jailed. It may have been in her bag, I
don't know. Potassium nitrate.
She also likes to garden. Well anyway.
Well, yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode.
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