This is something that has never even crossed my mind. I bought some Paul Mitchell brand "Baby Don't Cry" shampoo today for my kids. For some reason I glanced over the ingredients and found sodium lactate listed. There are lots of other "natural" sounding ingredients like ginger extract etc... My two-year-old son is allergic to dairy. If sodium lactate is in fact a milk ingredient (I'm always wary of anything beginning in "lact"), I've never considered what skin contact might do. Then I remembered when he was about 5 months old my daughter kissed his arm while she was eating an ice cream cone, and he got a little rash in the area where she kissed him. Any thoughts on the shampoo? My first instinct is to take it back and stick with what we've been using. Can skin contact of a food allergen cause more than a mild rash? Thanks in advance for your input.