You might say, “I have not noticed a problem”. Perhaps you have not, but then again, maybe that persistent case of athlete’s foot is caused by pushing your feet through the dark recesses of the wetsuit legs. On a macro level, just think about the inside of the drain in your bathroom. It gets treated much the much the same as a suit. Water rinses down the drain; skin cells and soap.  And we both know how gross a drain can become.

Another reason to be wary of using oil on the surface of neoprene, rubber and latex is these items are damaged by acid, petroleum and alcohol.  Any bacterium living on the surface will excrete waste products.  These waste products are gas, (the odor that we smell) and acid, (similar to the uric acid we excrete). These acids would be held in place by the oily residue left on the suit and thus speed suit deterioration.   Speaking of ureic acid (urine or any bodily fluids) released inside an oily suit will be retained by the alcohol.  Chemically, alcohol helps water and oil to mix. Alcohol is the second ingredient of PAM. It will help the water based acid to mix with the oily surface, once again “eating” your suit from the inside out. This is also why our suits tend to rip out first in the crouch and knee areas.  

You may think that washing the suit would take care of all the above.  It would help, however, soaps and detergents contain phosphorous, which when mixed with water create phosphoric acid, another acid that will destroy the integrity of neoprene and rubber.  It is best to keep all acids and acid forming products away from you suit. Plus it is pretty tough to get the oil out of all those billions of recessed cells in the inside of the suit. SuitJuice contains no phosphorus, dyes, oils, alcohol or perfumes.

An additional reason for using a product that is not oil based is the environmental aspect.  For us, this is a primary factor in why NorthShore Industries, exists.  We believe it is everybody’s personal reasonability to keep our water as clean as possible.  Oil is the most difficult of all substances to remove from water. Personally, we support the use of products that do not have an adverse affect on our environment.

It is true that a can of PAM is about half the cost of a bottle of SuitJuice and dish soap is very inexpensive. However, when one adds up the true cost of a cooking spray in terms of potential skin rashes, damage to my overly expensive wetsuit and environmental contamination it becomes much more expensive. In fact if one could use something that performs better than grocery store products, extending the life of my investment and cost only pennies more, ask yourself, -- Why would you?

Of all the compelling reasons to use NorthShore Products the simplest is; they work without sacrificing you, your suit investment or the environment.