Objective: We determined a safety level of the agents by the residual amount of the anionic surfactants in wastewater from the objects after their washing with the agents for the treatment of children's products. Materials and methods: 16 detergents for children's clothes washing were purchased at the supermarkets of Kyiv. In our study we applied sanitary-and-chemical research methods: express method for the assessment of the anionic surfactants on the clothes fabrics; an extraction-photometric method for the determination of the the residual amount of the main active substances of the anionic surfactants in the experimental sample. Results: The analysis of the results shows that there is a significant difference in the surfactant amount in the wastewater after washing with powder and liquid detergents based on the synthetic anionic surfactants and natural soap. Therefore, the anionic surfactants are rinsing best of all from the clothes washed with the detergents based on natural soaps (Soaps “Droog”, “Clean & White”, “Kroha”). After washing of the children's clothes with powder and liquid detergents for automatic washing based on synthetic anionic surfactants, the residual amount of the anionic surfactants on the fabrics exceeds the accepted hygienic standard. Conclusions: It has been discovered that even after repeated rinsing, the fabrics, treated with washing powder and liquid detergents, contain the residual amount of the anionic surfactants that exceeds normative parameters (8 of 13 investigated detergents based on the anionic surfactants) by 2-3 times. Taking into account a specificity of children’s functional skin state, especially the incompletely formed multistage protection system, it is recommended to use the detergents based on natural soap and products containing less than 5% of the surfactants for washing of the clothes of the children aged 0 to 6 years.

Background. The study is devoted to the assessment of the cytotoxic properties of various surfactants by a method that is highly sensitive to identification of their negative effect on living mammalian cells. Objective. The aim of the work is to carry out a comparative assessment of modern surfactants in terms of the degree of manifestation of cytotoxic properties. Methods. The study of 10 surfactants was carried out with a new method for assessing the cytotoxic effect of agents based on surfactants, which is a modification of The RBC Hemolysis Test and Hemoglobin Denaturation Test. This method calculates the integral cytotoxicity index, which takes into account the data obtained by two tests. The following indicators were determined in the work: the percentage of hemoglobin denaturation in a 1% surfactant solution (D, %), the concentration of the surfactant solution at which hemolysis of 50% erythrocytes occurs (H 50 ,%), and the cytotoxicity coefficient (C c , conv. un.) of surfactants which is calculated by the formula C c = H 50 /D10000. Results. According to the integral C c indicator, the studied surfactants can be ranked according to the degree of toxicity reduction in the following order: sodium lauryl sulfate (0.09)-sodium laurate sulfate (0.13)cocamidopropyl betaine (0.27)-sodium salt of polyethoxysulfosuccinate (0.27)-alkyldimethyl betaine (1.07)disodium cocoamphodiacetate (1.99)-sodium salt n-palmethylglutamic acid (3.22)-cocoglucoside (27.86). Diethanolamides of coconut oil fatty acids and polyquaternium 7 in the studied concentration range (up to 1%) did not show denaturation properties. Conclusions. Studies have shown that surfactants significantly differ from each other by the level of the damaging effect, the most aggressive components were anionic and amphoteric surfactants, nonionic surfactants have a significantly lower cytotoxic effect (10 times). The results obtained should be taken into account when creating soft agents based on surfactants.