www.incontinentsupport.org

Hi,
I remembered someone telling me about how vinyl used for incontinence or baby plastic pants is sometimes treated with lanolin in order to make it more skin friendly, softer or whatever the case might be. I don't know if it's true because of the adverse effect that oil has on vinyl.
However, I vaguely remember once having seen an advertisement for vinyl diaper covers using this as a selling point.

I googled for it and could not find anything about this use of lanolin, though I did find something completely different that I wanted to ask about. My searching for "vinyl" or "plastic" and "lanolin" produced an avalanche of websites that oppose the use of plastic pants but favour using "woolen soakers" by way of diaper covering for babies: "Plastic Pants, No! Woolen Soakers,Yes!"
I understand that this is not an "Average Joe" point of view but more - ehm, would "Alternative West-Coast-ish" cover it? - but of course it could be an interesting thing to research if it's any good.

But even though lanolin is essentially used (by sheep) to waterproof wool I have serious trouble believing that it would work in such a way that it could function as a diaper cover - at least a diaper cover that does something other than, well, exist. I can imagine that you can treat wool in such a way that it will repel a liquid that falls on it - in the same way that a sheep uses it when being out on a rainy day. The wool fibers, a bit waxy from the lanolin, will not absorb the liquid but let it slide down alongside the sheep, towards the ground.
But surely it won't work like that in a diaper cover .. I mean, if that would work, than a turned-over thatched straw roof would make a fine organic swimming pool.

Other than that, it's a bit over-the-top in how they put things like "plastic pants cause rashes" which I think is about as true as saying that the weather forecast causes the sun to shine. It sounds a bit like the automatic association train to me that goes like: plastic -> unnatural -> BAD vs. wool -> natural -> GOOD

-m

I think what they are talking about is using the wool soaker like a pantie liner in side panties with a water proof crotch.

it's not completely clear but as far as I have understood it they were in any case talking about using a knit woolen pant instead of using a vinyl pant - which doesn't make much sense. The lanolin comes in when they want to make it more waterproof.

But if they also want to use wool as an absorbent it would even make less sense to apply lanolin to that.

It's weird

You are right I don`t know Maria.I guess I am thinking the flannel pads you see for sale.I guess I will just stick to my diapers.It seems a urine leak would be easer to handle for a women than a man.

You are right I don`t know Maria.I guess I am thinking the flannel pads you see for sale.I guess I will just stick to my diapers.It seems a urine leak would be easer to handle for a women than a man.

You have to go back in history - using wool soakers was the main way of dealing with infants' incontinence before rubber or plastic pants were invented. Obviously it just slowed down the appearance of liquid running down baby's legs into the carpet.

Anyone who is pushing the use of these nowadays is undoubtedly the same kind of people-hating environmentalist who thinks we should emulate North Korea by turning out all the lights, and that we should stop fouling the environment with our noxious exhalations of carbon dioxide.