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The true story of Pampers Dry Max, Part 2: What Dry Max is doing to kids
By Jennifer and Jeremiah | May 18, 2010 | 20 comments / Comment now
Old and new. Photo by AJsMomma.
In our last post, we discussed the history of disposable diapering in the United States, and how Dry Max represents a new spin on a trend Pampers has been pushing for a quarter of a decade. But the heart of this issue, for us, is in defining the problem and advising parents based on what we see. So it's time we got to the heart of the matter. What is it that Pampers Dry Max diapers appear to be doing to some of the infants and toddlers who wear them that goes so far beyond "everyday" diaper rashes that parents speak out, form groups to help spread the word, and demand a product recall? Is it even possible that a company would invest millions of dollars in pushing an idea so far that it can cause significant harm?
We had planned to cover both that topic and our diaper teardown and analysis in a single post, but we get into a LOT of detail in our teardown and analysis, and we've also seen a lot of push back from Pampers in the media regarding whether or not potential problems with Dry Max are even a legitimate issue for discussion. (They are "insulted.") Because of this, we've decided to dedicate a full post to what appears to be happening to kids, and how Pampers is spinning it, before we publish our analysis of why all of this might be happening. Defending the existence of a problem in the same blog post as the level of analysis we are bringing to bear just wasn't working. So what was conceived as a three-part series will now be four, although I promise we'll have the third installment - the teardown and diaper analysis - up sometime Wednesday. [Update: Part 3 is now online.]
Pampers' defense against claims that diaper rashes have become a bigger problem with the introduction of Dry Max rely on internal documentation collected by the company and now shared, presumably in full, with the Consumer Product Safety Commission for the government's investigation. There are, however, some significant problems with their defense.
Until about a week ago, Pampers claimed they had received two complaints for every million diapers sold. This figure was presented as a "normal" level of complaints.
A million diapers is a lot of diapers. But let's not confuse diapers with consumers. We encouraged Casey, a reader we'll introduce you to later in this post, to estimate how many Dry Max diapers she used before discontinuing them; she tallied up an estimate of 360 diapers, including the period when she did hourly changes to try to address the problem. Based on the report of Alexis, whose story we'll also share, we'd assume she used one full package before switching brands. 100, 150 diapers.
Here comes a little guesswork - it could be off by a little or a lot, but is used to make a point independent of the actual figures.
If Pampers began introducing Dry Max diapers into the disposable diaper stream about a year ago, and admits to having done it since last August, we might assume that that date was the point when they were selling Dry Max diapers almost exclusively. Let's also estimate that the average child (averaging newborns to toddlers) uses somewhere around 150 diapers a month. That means a parent whose child was not suffering from a debilitating diaper rash - the level that would cause them to discontinue use of the diaper and switch to another brand - would have bought an average of 150 diapers a month for nine months, or 1350 diapers, while a parent whose child did have such a reaction, and discontinued use, did it after purchasing somewhere between 100 (a reasonable average number of diapers in a single package) and 400 diapers.
See what we're driving at? The implication of a figure like "two complaints for every million diapers sold" is that the ratio of satisfaction to dissatisfaction is 1:500,000. But if you consider that during this period satisfied customers are likely to have purchased far more diapers than those whose children suffered significant harm - in our example, anywhere from 3.5 times to nearly 14 times as many - you get a very different picture of the impact. That's because the reported number of incidents is the same, but the total pool had been wildly exaggerated.
If you go to a restaurant 14 times and I go once, and I complain about the service, the restaurant manager could conclude that everything is fine because only one out of every fifteen meals served resulted in a service complaint. If this occurrence were scaled up, however, he'd be a fool to think that this record makes him a shoe-in for the local "Best Restaurant" poll.
(And don't forget [thanks, Sarah!] that treating complaints as an indicator of the extent of any product safety problem disregards anyone (everyone) whose child experienced an unusually serious rash but did not call to complain. How many consumers a single complainant represents is an open question in product safety circles, and varies depending on the circumstances, but the answer is certainly not "one." Through research, surveying, and mathematical modeling, companies that wish to know such things are able to develop reasonable estimates.)
Two weeks ago, Pampers was stating they had had "no increase" in complaints of rashes than with their previous designs, and cited a rate of two complaints for every million diapers sold as proof. Here is one of several references made to that figure:
Jodi Allen, president of Pampers' North American division, who has been making the rounds and engaging consumers directly on the question of Dry Max rashes, repeated this figure in an interview with Advertising Age:
A few days ago, however, spokesperson Bryan McCleary began using a different figure. We noticed it first in an article published by the French wire service AFP:
McCleary repeats it again in an interview with Business Week:
Those figures differ by a factor of ten, folks. In other words, for every ten complaints Pampers admitted to in articles published on May 10 and May 13, they are now admitting to one. Meanwhile, the estimate of Dry Max diapers sold (two billion) has not been altered.
So... what happened between May 13 and May 15 that could possibly cause a company to scale back its own internal estimates of harm by a factor of ten, never publicly correcting or referring to the discrepancy and pushing forward with their new numbers as though nothing had changed?
Oh yeah.
Inconsistent statistics and misleading expressions of them are certainly frustrating, but even they are not the biggest problem with Pampers' public analysis of what is happening in homes that use Pampers Dry Max. The elephant in the room is the reason why the parents who are angry with Pampers are as angry as they are, and it is probably a contributing factor in why, if a product engineering problem existed, it might not be fixed in the product testing phase. It is also something so blindingly obvious it is very strange to us that no major news organization has yet made mention of it.
Pampers has publicly relied exclusively on the number of diaper rashes that are occurring, without considering their severity. They have stated that they have not received complaints or calls at a more frequent rate than with the old diapers. Even if we are willing to suspend our disbelief and accept these numbers (see #2, above), it does not follow that a similar number of diaper rashes, of much greater severity, would not represent a product defect, a problem that needs to be addressed, or a significant hardship for infants and their families.
We suspect that Pampers does not even collect information regarding the severity of diaper rashes, as doing so would be a complex undertaking and create potential product liability issues. If this is true, it means that Pampers has no data regarding how severe diaper rashes from Dry Max diapers are compared with their old diapers or with competing brands, and they have given no indication that they believe such knowledge would be beneficial or would affect their belief in their product's quality. Which is ridiculous.
As in the case with Carter's tagless clothing, it looks to us like we're dealing here with an irritant that causes contact dermatitis in some but not others; that the non-universality of effect causes some reasonable people with good intentions to question its reality; and that the "diaper rash" it produces is likely to be so severe that it is the worst the child has ever experienced and, in many cases, the worst the parent has ever seen.
To illustrate what appears to be happening, we'd like to share two stories with you. Like so many consumer accounts of unusual diaper rashes experienced with Pampers Dry Max, in both of these cases parents were using reformulated products that were not labeled as having been changed - and, in fact, were sold in packaging still advertising product features (such as a mesh liner) that were no longer present.
ZRecs reader Alexis and her then sixteen-month-old daughter had their first encounter with Pampers Dry Max over a year ago, in March 2009. Here is Alexis' story:
Alexis' daughter recovered fairly quickly; they went to their pediatrician, who prescribed multiple oatmeal baths, Benadryl, and three different topical creams. But it seemed clear to Alexis, and seems reasonably clear to us, that her daughter had a sensitivity to the new diaper that she did not have to the old version. In our view, even parents whose kids haven't reacted to Pampers Dry Max should be able to accept that.
But compared with many consumer stories about these diapers, Alexis and her daughter were pretty lucky. After reading our initial warning about Pampers Dry Max, reader Casey wrote in. We have read and received many accounts which share many of the characteristics of Casey's, but hers offers a couple of insights you won't see in some: A frank admission of how difficult it can be to identify a problem when you are using a product you have learned to trust; and how guilty a parent can feel after realizing that their child's suffering could have been avoided "if only" they had put the pieces together sooner.
Think a diaper rash is a diaper rash is a diaper rash? Tell that to Casey.
That's it for today. For those who have been waiting patiently for us to tell you what we think might be wrong with Dry Max diapers, you don't need to be patient for much longer. We'll publish our diaper dissection and analysis of possible causes of rashes by tomorrow at noon. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to comment below with your thoughts. [Update: Here it is!]
Move on to Part 3 of this series, in which we dissect pre- and post-Dry Max diapers and discuss potential sources of irritation. Or jump back to Part 1, in which we discuss the history of disposable diapering and Pampers' role in it.
Like what you read here? Subscribe to our RSS feed, connect with us on Facebook, or follow @ZRecs_Safety, @ZRecsMom, and @JMcNichols on Twitter!
We had planned to cover both that topic and our diaper teardown and analysis in a single post, but we get into a LOT of detail in our teardown and analysis, and we've also seen a lot of push back from Pampers in the media regarding whether or not potential problems with Dry Max are even a legitimate issue for discussion. (They are "insulted.") Because of this, we've decided to dedicate a full post to what appears to be happening to kids, and how Pampers is spinning it, before we publish our analysis of why all of this might be happening. Defending the existence of a problem in the same blog post as the level of analysis we are bringing to bear just wasn't working. So what was conceived as a three-part series will now be four, although I promise we'll have the third installment - the teardown and diaper analysis - up sometime Wednesday. [Update: Part 3 is now online.]
Three ways Pampers' assessments minimize the problem
Pampers' defense against claims that diaper rashes have become a bigger problem with the introduction of Dry Max rely on internal documentation collected by the company and now shared, presumably in full, with the Consumer Product Safety Commission for the government's investigation. There are, however, some significant problems with their defense.
1. Diapers versus consumers
Until about a week ago, Pampers claimed they had received two complaints for every million diapers sold. This figure was presented as a "normal" level of complaints.
A million diapers is a lot of diapers. But let's not confuse diapers with consumers. We encouraged Casey, a reader we'll introduce you to later in this post, to estimate how many Dry Max diapers she used before discontinuing them; she tallied up an estimate of 360 diapers, including the period when she did hourly changes to try to address the problem. Based on the report of Alexis, whose story we'll also share, we'd assume she used one full package before switching brands. 100, 150 diapers.
Here comes a little guesswork - it could be off by a little or a lot, but is used to make a point independent of the actual figures.
If Pampers began introducing Dry Max diapers into the disposable diaper stream about a year ago, and admits to having done it since last August, we might assume that that date was the point when they were selling Dry Max diapers almost exclusively. Let's also estimate that the average child (averaging newborns to toddlers) uses somewhere around 150 diapers a month. That means a parent whose child was not suffering from a debilitating diaper rash - the level that would cause them to discontinue use of the diaper and switch to another brand - would have bought an average of 150 diapers a month for nine months, or 1350 diapers, while a parent whose child did have such a reaction, and discontinued use, did it after purchasing somewhere between 100 (a reasonable average number of diapers in a single package) and 400 diapers.
See what we're driving at? The implication of a figure like "two complaints for every million diapers sold" is that the ratio of satisfaction to dissatisfaction is 1:500,000. But if you consider that during this period satisfied customers are likely to have purchased far more diapers than those whose children suffered significant harm - in our example, anywhere from 3.5 times to nearly 14 times as many - you get a very different picture of the impact. That's because the reported number of incidents is the same, but the total pool had been wildly exaggerated.
If you go to a restaurant 14 times and I go once, and I complain about the service, the restaurant manager could conclude that everything is fine because only one out of every fifteen meals served resulted in a service complaint. If this occurrence were scaled up, however, he'd be a fool to think that this record makes him a shoe-in for the local "Best Restaurant" poll.
(And don't forget [thanks, Sarah!] that treating complaints as an indicator of the extent of any product safety problem disregards anyone (everyone) whose child experienced an unusually serious rash but did not call to complain. How many consumers a single complainant represents is an open question in product safety circles, and varies depending on the circumstances, but the answer is certainly not "one." Through research, surveying, and mathematical modeling, companies that wish to know such things are able to develop reasonable estimates.)
2. Inconsistent numbers
Two weeks ago, Pampers was stating they had had "no increase" in complaints of rashes than with their previous designs, and cited a rate of two complaints for every million diapers sold as proof. Here is one of several references made to that figure:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission said last week it is probing reports about babies and toddlers suffering severe diaper rashes and blisters from the new, thinner diapers. P&G responded that the claims were "completely false" and that it has received fewer than two complaints about rashes for every million Pampers sold. [Link]
Jodi Allen, president of Pampers' North American division, who has been making the rounds and engaging consumers directly on the question of Dry Max rashes, repeated this figure in an interview with Advertising Age:
At any given time, 250,000 U.S. babies have diaper rash, Ms. Allen said. But P&G has gotten only two reports for every million among the 2 billion Dry Max diapers it’s sold so far. While it’s not dispatching teams to every home that reports a rash, P&G is doing extensive follow-up calls when it gets complaints and inviting some parents to visit a pediatrician on the company’s dime to explore the problems. [Link]
A few days ago, however, spokesperson Bryan McCleary began using a different figure. We noticed it first in an article published by the French wire service AFP:
"Two billion Drymax have been sold," said McCleary. "America has voted with their purchases.
"We saw a big increase in sales, a big increase in consumer acceptance... they will be appearing in other Pampers markets soon."
He said complaints about the diapers were not above normal levels of one per five million sold. [Link]
McCleary repeats it again in an interview with Business Week:
P&G spokesman Bryan McCleary said in an interview that the company has found no evidence that the diapers cause rashes or burns and that P&G has received one rash complaint for every 5 million Dry Max diapers sold -- about 400 complaints so far. [Link]
Those figures differ by a factor of ten, folks. In other words, for every ten complaints Pampers admitted to in articles published on May 10 and May 13, they are now admitting to one. Meanwhile, the estimate of Dry Max diapers sold (two billion) has not been altered.
So... what happened between May 13 and May 15 that could possibly cause a company to scale back its own internal estimates of harm by a factor of ten, never publicly correcting or referring to the discrepancy and pushing forward with their new numbers as though nothing had changed?
Oh yeah.
3. Numbers versus severity
Inconsistent statistics and misleading expressions of them are certainly frustrating, but even they are not the biggest problem with Pampers' public analysis of what is happening in homes that use Pampers Dry Max. The elephant in the room is the reason why the parents who are angry with Pampers are as angry as they are, and it is probably a contributing factor in why, if a product engineering problem existed, it might not be fixed in the product testing phase. It is also something so blindingly obvious it is very strange to us that no major news organization has yet made mention of it.
Pampers has publicly relied exclusively on the number of diaper rashes that are occurring, without considering their severity. They have stated that they have not received complaints or calls at a more frequent rate than with the old diapers. Even if we are willing to suspend our disbelief and accept these numbers (see #2, above), it does not follow that a similar number of diaper rashes, of much greater severity, would not represent a product defect, a problem that needs to be addressed, or a significant hardship for infants and their families.
We suspect that Pampers does not even collect information regarding the severity of diaper rashes, as doing so would be a complex undertaking and create potential product liability issues. If this is true, it means that Pampers has no data regarding how severe diaper rashes from Dry Max diapers are compared with their old diapers or with competing brands, and they have given no indication that they believe such knowledge would be beneficial or would affect their belief in their product's quality. Which is ridiculous.
Two tales of Dry Max rashes
As in the case with Carter's tagless clothing, it looks to us like we're dealing here with an irritant that causes contact dermatitis in some but not others; that the non-universality of effect causes some reasonable people with good intentions to question its reality; and that the "diaper rash" it produces is likely to be so severe that it is the worst the child has ever experienced and, in many cases, the worst the parent has ever seen.
To illustrate what appears to be happening, we'd like to share two stories with you. Like so many consumer accounts of unusual diaper rashes experienced with Pampers Dry Max, in both of these cases parents were using reformulated products that were not labeled as having been changed - and, in fact, were sold in packaging still advertising product features (such as a mesh liner) that were no longer present.
ZRecs reader Alexis and her then sixteen-month-old daughter had their first encounter with Pampers Dry Max over a year ago, in March 2009. Here is Alexis' story:
[My daughter's daycare] called my husband on a Friday saying that she had broken out in a horrible diaper rash and that we should come and get her from school. She had an awful red, bumpy, rough diaper area and swollen redness from her belly button to the small of her back. Part of the rash was a really bad yeast rash but the other part looked how your skin looks after you skin your knee. It was very painful and she screamed every time I used a wipe or even a cloth diaper rinsed with warm water on her bottom.
The pediatrician's office was closed but we called the on-call doctor who said it sounded like an allergic reaction. I was confused because she had not eaten anything different, no new lotions or creams, nothing. And she had no rash in the morning when I changed her.
We had just opened a new box of diapers and brought them to the daycare that morning. They were the same brand of diapers we'd been using since day 1 - Pampers. Upon closer inspection I found that the mesh liner that we had come to love with Pampers (and is why we paid so much money for the darn things) had been removed. Also, the new diapers were as stiff as a board and she leaked out of every single one out of the box, before we had realized this is what caused the reaction.
Alexis' daughter recovered fairly quickly; they went to their pediatrician, who prescribed multiple oatmeal baths, Benadryl, and three different topical creams. But it seemed clear to Alexis, and seems reasonably clear to us, that her daughter had a sensitivity to the new diaper that she did not have to the old version. In our view, even parents whose kids haven't reacted to Pampers Dry Max should be able to accept that.
But compared with many consumer stories about these diapers, Alexis and her daughter were pretty lucky. After reading our initial warning about Pampers Dry Max, reader Casey wrote in. We have read and received many accounts which share many of the characteristics of Casey's, but hers offers a couple of insights you won't see in some: A frank admission of how difficult it can be to identify a problem when you are using a product you have learned to trust; and how guilty a parent can feel after realizing that their child's suffering could have been avoided "if only" they had put the pieces together sooner.
We have been Pampers users since Kael, my 4.5 year old, was born. Even when we used cloth during the day, we used Pampers at night. I say this, because when we were doing what we thought was "trying everything" to get rid of the rash, we did not switch diapers for a very long time. I assumed Pampers were the diapers, and because of our previous experiences with them, I never once assumed it could be the diapers that were causing the problems.
Somewhere around November 2009, Asa, my younger son (now almost 3), started developing a diaper rash. It's not unusual for him to get an occasional rash. He has sensitive skin, and so we were prepared. We tried all our usual tricks. We used Butt Paste, Aquaphor, Vasaline, Desitin, A&D. We started changing him hourly all day long. For a 2.5 year old, this is a big waste of diapers, but it was worth it to get rid of the rash that no paste could cure.
After using the different types of diaper creams for weeks, I decided it wasn't working. Because he had been sensitive to dairy when he was younger, I decided to work on dietary issues. I limited his fruit intake thinking that maybe his poop was too acidic or sugary. (I know it makes almost no sense now.) I eliminated milk, cheese, and yogurt from his diet. I did this in early December. I remember because it was the holiday season and crazy to try to control what he was eating with all our get-togethers.
In December, we went to my parents' house for Christmas and spent 10 days with them. At some point in early December, the rash started moving down the backs of his legs. During the time we were there, my mom was really appalled by Asa's rash. This was when I decided to start doing very frequent changes.
Also, looking back on Facebook, I found the post from my friend that first caused me to suspect the diapers would be the issue. It was posted January 31.
On January 31, I was reading my Facebook updates and a friend of mine made an offhand comment about how Pampers had a new diaper that was causing rashes.
Apparently pampers has reformulated their diapers to be 20% less material and still as absorbent, but they put them in the old boxes without notice and these new materials can cause serious diaper rashes to babies. hmm, glad I use huggies ;-)
We were really surprised, because none of the boxes of diapers had indicated anything new or different with the diapers. We switched immediately. We noticed a small improvement in the rash. Instead of red, raised, and cracking, it was no longer cracking open.
At this point, I made our first doctor's appointment. We went in, explained our situation to the doctor. He glanced at the rash, said it didn't look like any sort of typical diaper rash but assumed it was a yeast/fungus rash. He recommended an over-the-counter antifungal. We used it for a week with no results. Then I contacted a friend of mine who is a nurse practitioner that specializes in dermatological issues. She recommended that we try some hydrocortizone cream on a small spot. She said that if it was inflamed that would help it. It did. We used it for quite some time, but every time we stopped using it, the rash returned. We finally made an appointment with our family doctor. She diagnosed it as a type of contact dermatitis. She prescribed a stronger steroid and a compounded diaper cream made only at our pharmacy. Finally, after using those for about a month, we are to the point that Asa only has one small red spot on his leg.
I do have to say that looking back I cannot believe how long it took us to put things together. This has been a very long, drawn out issue for us. :(
Think a diaper rash is a diaper rash is a diaper rash? Tell that to Casey.
Tomorrow: Dissection and analysis (we swear)
That's it for today. For those who have been waiting patiently for us to tell you what we think might be wrong with Dry Max diapers, you don't need to be patient for much longer. We'll publish our diaper dissection and analysis of possible causes of rashes by tomorrow at noon. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to comment below with your thoughts. [Update: Here it is!]
Move on to Part 3 of this series, in which we dissect pre- and post-Dry Max diapers and discuss potential sources of irritation. Or jump back to Part 1, in which we discuss the history of disposable diapering and Pampers' role in it.
Like what you read here? Subscribe to our RSS feed, connect with us on Facebook, or follow @ZRecs_Safety, @ZRecsMom, and @JMcNichols on Twitter!
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This series is utterly fascinating to me. Thank you for writing such a thorough analysis. I am happy that I’ve been using cloth and Huggies with my 19-month old. With my daughter, now 4 1/2 and well out of diapers, I used Pampers almost exclusively. She had *horrible* diaper rash as a baby and occasional bad stretches as she got older right up until she was toilet trained. We tried everything but never thought to use different diaper brands. No one ever suggested it might help, and I never read anything suggesting the diapers might be the culprit. Now I wonder if I could have saved her a lot of pain and us a lot of grief (not to mention the cost of expensive creams) by switching brands. Live and learn, I guess. I wish though that pediatricians would take diaper rash more seriously because I always felt somewhat blown off even when my daughter’s rash had oozing sores.
My younger child has much less sensitive skin than my daughter and had never had a problem, but I will not be using Pampers in the future.
I found the new dry max do not absorb at the same rate as the old dry weave Pampers. My 21 month old gets leaky diaper first thing in the morning with Dry Max. It is not a big leak just damp pants but none the less the old Pampers did not have this problem. I complained to Pamper by email and switched to Huggies. Pampers sent a $10 off coupon so I bought one final box of Pampers but when that one is gone I am done with Pampers. No rashes but I think they may absorb more but they do not absorb as quickly and that would cause more rashes. Since a rash starts when urine or wet mixes with fecal matter against the skin.
The best diaper rash advice I ever got was to dry with toilet paper after rashes. We keep a roll on the diaper change table.
Thanks so much for publishing this series. You do very thorough work. We use cloth at home, but do use disposables at the sitter. We have not had a problem with Pampers, but you can be assured I will not buy them again based on how the company is mishandling this.
Thank you SO much for writing these articles. I would have known nothing of this issue had I not been a fan of Z-recs on Facebook. Thankfully, our daughter has not had a reaction to the Dry-Max but I have definitely noticed that they leak overnight (which they didn’t do in their previous version). I’m thinking that I’m switching brands starting ASAP, if only because I’m so appalled at how Pampers is not responding to the problems appropriately!
Do the Pampers Swaddlers contain this as well?
And if you think - how many people just switch diaper brands withOUT complaining to the company. I know many people who go through different types of diapers to find one that doesn’t give their babies rashes and I know they don’t complain about it and just assume their baby is sensitive to that particular diaper.
I am fascinated by your research into this issue. We use cloth diapers, but 6.5 years ago, before I started using them, I always noticed how Pampers smelled SO much more than other brands. All the diapers have a disposable diaper odor, but Pampers is the worst. I am waiting on the edge of my seat for tomorrows post.
Swaddlers do contain the dry max as well. It’s hard to trust this company at ALL now that all of this has taken place. We have switched our baby to gdiapers, which is a cloth hybrid diaper. She, too, experienced a severe “burn” on her little bottom. She had the rash that looks kind of yeast-like, but when treated with antifungals, it did not even begin to clear up...normally it would be gone within 24 hours if that is what it was from. She also had the blisters, two large ones, and her bottom was bleeding. At one point, when I was changing her, I was actually crying with her. There is nothing that compares to watching the child you love experience pain like that. It was awful. I have decided that, if Pampers (and other diaper companies) can put chemicals in their products that are strong enough to cause burns, or rashes of this magnitude, and are not required by law to disclose the ingredients to the parents whose children are wearing them...well, then, I don’t want anything to do with disposable diapers. It’s just not worth it.
I totally understand how Casey feels. We had been loyal Pampers customers since our daughter was born in 2006. We tried other brands to save money, but kept coming back to Pampers because they were better quality. When our son was born in August 2009, we continued using Pampers Swaddlers. Do to his size, he quickly outgrew the Swaddlers, and we moved him into Cruisers Late November 2009. We noticed that he started to develop a serious rash, and we used every cream imaginable. We also started him on solids at this point, so we assumed it might be a reaction to the food, so we changed his cereals. At his 4-month well visit, the pediatrician glanced at it and recommended Petroleum Jelly. That was mid December. It wasn’t until mid January when I happened to catch a comment on Pampers Facebook page from another parent, that I was aware of the diaper being the problem. By this time, his whole bottom was covered by the rash, and every time he pooped, the blisters would bleed. Seeing my four-month old with blood spots the size of a half-dollar in his diaper is heart-breaking. We immediately switched him to Huggies, and within a day the blisters stopped bleeding, and within a week, WITHOUT using creams, just switching to Huggies, the rash had disappeared.
Sounds like they are using the same liners in the US and Germany! My son developed a terrible, bloody rash on his bottom after using the Pampers here in Germany. After multiple trips to the doctor and countless creams, we switched to a store brand. Not only do they cost less than half the price, we haven’t had a rash since. We were so discouraged with Pampers products that we stopped using their wipes too.
I have used Pampers since my first child (who is 6 now) was born. Now I have my Son who has had nothing but problems with diaper rash since late last year. Because it was the winter months and my daughter has sensitive skin I just assumed that was the problem. The rashes he had would bleed and puff up. Everynight I would hear him call me “Mommy I wet!”. It was really frustrating. I never knew it could have been the diapers. I did notice, however, that once he began potty training and we switched to the store brand pull ups he hasn’t had a problem.
I’ll never buy another Pampers product again. A company that turns it’s head when a problem comes up is not a company I want to have anything to do with now or in the future.
After I read Casey’s story this all flooded back to me! I forgot how awful the whole thing was - not being able to clear up and figure out what was causing the rash.
I should add that the only thing that cleared up my daughter’s diaper rash was also a compounded medication (sadly not covered by our insurance). It was a mixture of aquaphor, zinc oxide, and burrow’s (sp?) solution. Like Casey we tried Aquaphor, Butte Paste, Triple Paste, several anti-fungals, hydrocortisone, and antibiotic!
We bought as many cases of the Pampers with mesh that we could find - which was only possible by opening the cases - luckily the stores took back my returns without any questions. After those depleted we switched brands.
My daughter was born in October of 2008. We had received several packages of differently-branded diapers as gifts, including Pampers Swaddlers, so we tried them all to see what we liked best. She didn’t have any problems with any of the brands until we tried the Pampers, when she broke out in rashes matching the pattern of the mesh liner. We donated what was left of the Pampers and stuck with Huggies. This was before the Dry-Max era, but I’d hate to think what her reaction would be to the new Pampers, if she was already sensitive to the old. We’ve always used Pampers Sensitive wipes, but I’ve decided that once we’ve used up our stock, we’ll be switching brands because I refuse to support a company that is operating with such blind disregard for its customers.
Absolutely fascinating. Thank you for these articles. I’ve always loved Pampers. Started using them nearly 10yrs ago with my first child. Insisted on using them again with my now 2yr old daughter But now I’m not so sure about the company. We still only use the baby-dry but I don’t like how they’ve been addressing the Dry-Max/diaper rash problems.
And after having to deal with a month long unknown diaper rash problem when my daughter was a newborn (due to brand specific wipes) I’m very wary of changes in diapers and wipes. I know that I have one of those that is skin sensitive.
It is interesting that amazon has an ad for pampers and drymax on the right of this blog post. We used to use pampers but switched to cloth. I am trying to get rid of what pampers we have left at daycare and then we are done with them. I am not waiting for my child to get sensitized to the chemicals in their diapers.
Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts and your stories to everyone who has done so.
@Nicole, our Amazon advertising is based on text found in our posts. It doesn’t know any better and more often than not supplies relevant product ideas to readers. That said, I will note that we avoid putting links with Amazon affiliate codes in our blog posts when we do not believe products are safe. Just an internal policy.
“If you go to a restaurant 14 times and I go once, and I complain about the service, the restaurant manager could conclude that everything is fine because only one out of every fifteen meals served resulted in a service complaint.”
That’s an inaccurate comparison. 14 meals may be perfectly fine, and the one dud of a meal. With these diapers, it’s a problem that adds up after using several diapers.
For what it’s worth, I’m not defending Pampers. I don’t use disposables at all. I’m a cloth-diapering mom who detests disposables.
Disposables contain a lot of chemicals, and baby skin is particularly sensitive to these chemicals. Among other things, they can sap moisture from the skin that skin needs to be healthy. Chemicals can also cause burns. To have a thinner diaper that absorbs as much as “regular” diapers, or even more than those “regular” ones, means that the chemicals used need to be more concentrated.
The disposable diaper industry is freaking genius! They pour gobs of money into marketing and advertise that diapers can hold so much and need to be changed so little but how many consumers stop to think… “but is that good/normal/natural?” Mammals in general do not like to sit in their own pee or poo. We are mammals (and intelligent ones at that!) and shouldn’t do so either, but billion dollar marketing has caused us to over-ride our natural instincts. There are many moms and dads out there who don’t even know about their diapering OPTIONS. Cloth diapers have come a looooong way and in all honesty are superior- and sometimes even easier- than disposables in many ways! The idea of not diapering an infant at all is considered absurd by many in the western world, and even fewer parents have ever heard of Elimination Communication which requires few to no diapers at all! Do most folks know that disposables are loaded with toxic, cancer-causing chemicals that their baby’s tender, warm skin and genitals are sitting in 24 hours a day? Of course they don’t- fantastic marketing by huge companies have seen to it that all we know about disposables are that they are convenient, easy, and the best thing for our children. I’m not affiliated with these sites, but have found them extremely beneficial with researching my pottying options:
The Real Diaper Association
Diaper-Free Baby
From what I hear, the CPSC is continuing to get MANY MANY complaints about these products, far more than P&G;would have us believe. If your baby has been affected, definitely contact them by calling (800) 638- 2772 or filling out an online form (http://www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/incident.aspx) and submitting it to .
I am enjoying your posts but I think your logic in section 1 above is a little odd. Every time a baby is put in a diaper there is the potential for diaper rash. So of course, you would measure the likelihood of a rash by diaper and not by baby. Just as, in a restaurant, each time anyone visits whether they are a repeat customer or not there is the potential for a bad experience. So again, you would measure problems by visits, not by unique customers.