Review :: DHS Fragrance Free Coal Tar Shampoo

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Review
4.5
  • Ingredients
  • Wash
  • Scent
  • Price

Summary

DHS Coal Tar Shampoo is an expertly formulated shampoo containing 0.5% coal tar and is the gentlest coal tar shampoo we’ve yet reviewed

We can’t recommend this product or this company highly enough.

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User Review
3.02 (46 votes)

buy now on Amazon DHS are a company of some repute in the USA.  They have a range of shampoos for problematic skin sufferers such as dandruff and hypersensitivity.

Before I even received the shampoo I was impressed with the way the company clearly labeled exactly what active ingredient the shampoo contains and the exact condition that the active ingredient will help alleviate.  Rather than trying to blind the consumer with science, it would appear that DHS is using information as a sales tool in itself.

I’m absolutely convinced that this transparent approach will win in the long term as people become more aware of what they are putting on and in their bodies.

Information is available at our fingertips in ways we never imagined a decade ago.  The most forward-thinking companies will be engaging with their customer base in ever more imaginative ways to make the product their customers want.   Kudos to DHS for leading the way here.

The shampoo, as the name clearly explains, is a coal tar shampoo.  Coal tar, as the bottle clearly indicates,  is an active ingredient that will help alleviate the symptoms of psoriasis and seborrheic dermatitis-induced dandruff.

If every manufacturer did this I wouldn’t need a website!

The shampoo contains a coal tar solution that’s equivalent to 0.5% coal tar.  This may not sound like much compared to some brands, but it is worth noting that a 1% coal tar solution has been proven to be more effective than 5% when treating mild to moderate psoriasis.  More isn’t necessarily better in the weird world of coal tar…

The shampoo looks and smells like a coal tar shampoo.  Be prepared if you haven’t tried one before, it really is quite a memorable experience.   It smells a bit like burnt wood.  Perhaps even stronger!  The wash was very impressive though and although they were a little slow to form, a healthy foam helped clean my hair very effectively.

My hair felt quite soft after washing, especially when compared to other coal tar shampoos and I fully expected to see a strange concoction of moisturizing contact allergens in the ingredients to achieve this effect.  How wrong I was…

We monitor shampoos for over 100 known contact allergens and DHS contains only one – a Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES).  While disappointing that the shampoo isn’t sulfate-free, it’s considered gentler than SLS which you’ll often see in shampoos.  The company has clearly put some real thought into making this formulation a gentle formulation. Again, full kudos to them for that.

This isn’t to say that the chemicals inside are completely harmless.  Coal tar itself carries some risks but DHS contains none of the known contact allergens we have in our database.  This is both extremely impressive and unique.  I genuinely hope that DHS’s approach to labeling, messaging, and shampoo formulation turns out to be hugely successful for them.

If I were to formulate a dandruff shampoo myself, I would aspire to create one that performs as well as this with such well-considered ingredients.  This is perhaps as close to an ideal a coal tar shampoo we’ve ever reviewed. One of, if not the best.   Heck, its one of the best dandruff shampoos.   Period.   If I were being picky I would have hoped it was entirely sulfate-free, and the coal tar content was 1% rather than 0.5%. However, it’s one of the best (if not the best) formulated dandruff shampoo we have reviewed on this site.

I can’t recommend this product or this company highly enough.

Author

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  • The site owner. I founded, and have ran this site for too many years now. I have extremely sensitive skin, have suffered from seb derm for all my adult life and this site is my way of doing something about it. Check out my sister site at safehouseholdcleaning.com