High Purity Material Cosmetic Triethanolamine（TEA 85/99） CAS: 102-71-6

Triethanolammonium salts in some cases are more soluble than salts of alkali metals that might be used otherwise, and results in less alkaline products than would from using alkali metal hydroxides to form the salt. Some common products in which triethanolamine is found are sunscreen lotions, liquid laundry detergents, dishwashing liquids, general cleaners, hand sanitizers, polishes, metalworking fluids, paints, shaving cream and printing inks.

Various ear diseases and infections are treated with eardrops containing triethanolamine polypeptide oleate-condensate, such as Cerumenex in the United States. In pharmaceutics, triethanolamine is the active ingredient of some eardrops used to treat impacted earwax. It also serves as a pH balancer in many different cosmetic products, ranging from cleansing creams and milks, skin lotions, eye gels, moisturizers, shampoos, shaving foams, TEA is a fairly strong base: a 1% solution has a pH of approximately 10, whereas the pH of skin is less than pH 7, approximately 5.5−6.0. Cleansing milk–cream emulsions based on TEA are particularly good at removing makeup.

Another common use of TEA is as a complexing agent for aluminium ions in aqueous solutions. This reaction is often used  to mask such ions before complexometric titrations with another chelating agent such as EDTA. TEA has also been used in  photographic (silver halide) processing. It has been promoted as a useful alkali by amateur photographers.