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Ozone preservative
Can ozone (Ozonide) alone be used as a preservative in cosmetics?
I can see it could kill microbes but would such a cosmetic product pass a challenge test? -
5 Replies
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Ozone is a very unstable compound and quickly decomposes back to its original oxygen. In the presence of organic matter, ozone can form explosive ozonides. It also has a strong “electrical” odour - mainly due to our association with the electric sparks forming ozone.
I also doubt it would pass health and safety requirements.
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first of all, ozone and ozonides are two different things
ozone is a dark blue, acrid-smelling gas that acts as a strong oxidising agent and decomposes readily in aqueous solutions; if you put it in a cosmetic product I very much doubt it’d remain stable for long enough to act as an effective preservative
ozonides are either inorganic salts of ozone (just as unstable as ozone itself, and often explosive), or adducts of ozone to organic compounds; the latter are also unstable, and the majority of them don’t even have INCI names
in my view, even trying to create a stable formulation with either of them, let alone trying to get it to pass a challenge test, would be completely impractical
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@johnb @Bill_Toge ;
Sorry, my fault - this is about ozonides. -
@johnb funnily enough, ozone actually has a registered INCI name and it’s not subject to any restrictions in the EU - probably because nobody uses it
in the dim and distant past I can remember using it for ozonolysis reactions in the lab; the smell is very harsh, nearly as bad as sulphur dioxide, and once you’ve smelt it you never forget it!
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@David as I said above, to the best of my knowledge there are no ozonides, organic or inorganic, that have registered INCI names, or are stable enough to be used in consumer products
the only time I’ve ever come across them are as reactive intermediates in an organic synthesis
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