Badger Sunscreen recall demonstrates risk of small brands
This was bound to happen. A mid-sized but growing brand who positions themselves as “natural” and “safer” than conventional products doesn’t put a proper preservative in their products and they end up having a microbial contamination problem.
The push by some in our industry to remove “toxins” and “scary chemicals” has led to the creation of products that are demonstrably less safe. And in the case of Badger Sunscreens, they are downright dangerous!
No one should buy products that do not have a preservative in them. And no one should formulate products that aren’t properly preserved. It’s really that simple. You should never compromise product safety for your marketing story!
Formulating Reality
No matter how much a brand wants to believe that preservatives like Parabens and Formaldehyde donors are scary, they are not. They can be safely used in cosmetics. The thing that is scary is the prospect of exposing yourself to microbial contaminated products. Microbes can cause disease, blindness and for compromised immune system individuals…death.
And what are you protecting yourself from by avoiding parabens and other proven preservatives? Nothing.
There is NO evidence that standard preservatives used in cosmetic products represents a significant risk of anything for consumers. On the contrary, using non-preserved or improperly preserved products is a proven risk. You should not do it!
Hopefully, the folks over at Badger stop listening to marketers and start listening to reasonable scientists who know that you need a proper preservative to make safe products.
Badger’s response
One troubling thing to me is Badger’s response to this microbial contamination. Rather than admitting that their decision to use an inadequate preservative was wrong, they simply blame it on some contract manufacture issue. There is no talk of re-formulating to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.
Hey Badger, if you’re listening, put a proper preservative in your system and you won’t have issues like this! You are risking the lives of children and the safety of your consumers. They trust you to do the right thing and that means…USE PRESERVATIVES!!
