Not all sulfates are harmful or "bad", unless maybe if you're allergic to sulfates. Some can be irritants, especially to those with eczema, but not all of them are.
I truly believe that the reason there's so much negativity towards sulfates is because of ethanolamine lauryl sulfate. It was a surfactant found in shampoos and such, in the 70's. It was found to contain nitrosamine contaniments. Ethanolamine lauryl sulfates were removed from shampoos. But unfortunately that's when they myths began. Now with the internet, anyone can write whatever they want about it and it spreads. Then people use those articles to base their opinions on and back up their own articles and it continues to spread. It's like a disease.
Here's some info on Sulfates, mostly on SLS because that's what everyone's afraid of the most:
http://www.treehugger.com/style/common- ... ancer.htmlhttp://personalcaretruth.com/page/2/?s=sulfateI recently had someone freak out about my bath salts and tell me that they would cause cancer because they contained, wait for it......Magnesium Sulfate.
To me, sulfates are a lot like alcohols. They get a bad rap because of the word and that's it. I make lotion that contains cetearyl alcohol. People see the word alcohol, think rubbing alcohol, which they remember as drying, which leads them to think that the lotion is drying to their skin. Yet, cetearyl alcohol is a fatty alcohol, so it does the opposite of what they think it should do.