Diaper Rash & Diapered Skin Health Resources

The Science Behind Huggies® Wipes

3 min. Read

The Science Behind Huggies® Baby Wipes

Huggies® has been conducting infant skin health research for over 25 years. Our highly specialized and dedicated team of scientists helps ensure our products are always safe and designed with baby skin health in mind. Ingredients and materials used in our baby wipes are carefully selected by scientists and product safety experts to be safe and gentle on baby skin, ensuring a low potential of causing irritation or an allergic reaction. Since baby wipes are often also used to clean baby’s face and hands, it is critical that we ensure that the wipes are safe to use around babies’ eyes. We take pride in our manufacturing process. It is of utmost importance to us to ensure that our wipes meet the highest quality and safety guidelines established or recognized by scientific organizations and government agencies so that we can provide you with the assurance that our wipes are safe for use on babies, even premature newborns. That is why our wipes go through rigorous microbiological and safety testing, including laboratory and clinical studies, to ensure they are safe, effective, and gentle to clean infant skin at all stages.

Huggies® baby wipes are designed with skin health in mind

Baby wipes are designed to clean the mess from baby’s skin in the diapered area. They consist of two main components: the base sheet and the formulation. The base sheet is a disposable, cloth-like material mainly made of wood pulp, polypropylene, polyester, rayon, or combinations of these materials. The material type used to make the baby wipe influences its thickness, absorbency, and softness to the touch. The formulation, or solution, used to pre-moisten the wipe contains ingredients that can help with the cleaning process, which helps keep baby’s skin clean, healthy, and comfortable.

Every Huggies® baby wipe is made with a unique base sheet designed to be gentle on baby’s skin

Huggies® baby wipes have a plant-based* base sheet consisting of wood pulp and polypropylene fibers and is manufactured using proprietary technology. The materials are carefully selected so that the base sheet is made to be cushiony and soft to the touch for you and your baby.
The materials are designed to be thick enough to absorb and lock-in urine and poop during the cleaning process while still being gentle on baby’s skin.
The wipes are specifically designed to protect your hands from the mess while cleaning your baby’s skin.

*Huggies® baby wipes are 70%+ plant-based by weight.

The formulation used in Huggies® baby wipes is a pH-balanced, triple purified water-based solution with gentle ingredients.

All Huggies® baby wipes free of harsh ingredients. In fact, Huggies® Natural Care® Sensitive baby wipes are made of 99% purified water. The remaining 1% contains just the essential ingredients needed to clean and care for baby’s skin while ensuring the wipes stay moist and fresh. These wipes have been recognized by the National Eczema Association as safe for use on sensitive skin.  All of our wipes are hypoallergenic and dermatologically tested, this means that all Huggies® baby wipes have undergone a full product assessment and confirmatory safety testing in human studies by a dermatologist to ensure they are gentle and safe for sensitive skin. Throughout the years, significant advances have been made to baby wipes, including efforts to remove ingredients with irritation or skin-sensitizing potential such as methylisothiazolinone (MI).The team responsible for the design of Huggies® baby wipes is committed to continuously reviewing the ingredients used in our wipes to ensure they are made to the highest standards and are free of unwanted chemicals or additives.

Every Huggies® wipe contains the following essential ingredients to ensure they are designed with skin health in mind:

Water: Our baby wipes are primarily made up of water. The source of this water is purified to ensure that trace minerals, solids, or microbial contaminants are removed.
Gentle Cleansing Ingredients: Irritants present in poop and urine are the main contributors to diaper rash. Ensuring baby skin is free from these invisible irritants is essential to help minimize the risk of diaper rash. Huggies® baby wipes contain a gentle cleansing ingredient called Polysorbate 20 that helps clean urine and oily poop residues that cannot be removed by water alone.
pH-balancing Ingredients: Healthy infant diapered skin has a slightly acidic pH (about 5-5.5). Keeping skin pH at this level is critical to maintaining a healthy skin barrier, preventing over-growth of harmful microorganisms, and helping to minimize the risk of diaper rash. It is important that baby wipes are formulated to match the slightly acidic pH of healthy infant skin. Unlike properly formulated baby wipes, water has a pH ranging between 7-9, which is higher than the healthy pH of baby skin. Therefore, water alone is not optimal for healthy baby skin. Our wipes’ formula contains ingredients to help balance the pH and keep the wipes fresh.
Gentle, mild preservatives: The high water content in baby wipes increases the risk for microorganisms to grow. Gentle, mild preservatives like Sodium Benzoate help to keep the wipes fresh and to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold in the baby wipes before and during use. This is important to help ensure baby has a consistent, safe and clean experience from the first sheet to the last sheet in a wipes package.

Not all wipes are made equally

Wipes formulations and base sheet materials vary by brand and product variants. Therefore, when caring for baby skin, it is important to be mindful about products used and check that ingredients have been selected with infant skin health in mind. Lastly, you should also consider the packaging for the baby wipes. The package should provide easy, one-handed dispensing at every diaper change to help protect the unused product from contaminants. In addition, the packaging should be able to keep the wipes moist and fresh from the first sheet to the last sheet in the package. Take a look at all our Huggies® baby wipes (designed with baby’s skin health in mind) to find the wipes that work best for you and your baby.

Learn more about the Huggies® Diaper Rash Care Guide coming soon.