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Allergic reactions to cosmetics
Dear friends,
A client of mine has a shampoo formula with 3 different fragrances. Two of them (particularly one) are causing some complains. My client asked a clinical lab to run HRIPT to the 3 shampoos, plus a sample of the base without fragrance, and two major world brands. The methology is based on an index irritation score, that goes from non-irritant (from 0 to 0.2) to irritant (from 1.0 onwards). The shampoo base with no fragrance was a non irritant, as well as that same base with one of the fragrances. The shampoo with the ramaining fragrance and the leading brand were slightly irritants.
Now, this was done with a panel composed mostly of healthy volunteers, and it’s mainly done to see if there’s some irritation issue. In real life, there will be consumers that will have some sensitivity to a certain allergen, developing some sort of contact dermatitis, but that would be the few. It’s very hard to have a product that doesn’t cause some kind of reaction in some people, and I believe brands live with that (as long as this group is not big, and that the product doesn’t have any major flaw). To put some context, my client sold about 1 million of shampoo bottles, and received around 50 complaints (45 related to itchiness/redness/dandruff/etc., and 6 that showed some small wounds). I also believe people (and consumers in this context) are not able to discriminate what caused the issue, and the effect might be caused by many things, besides the shampoo (for instance, we have a high UV radiation this summer, which triggers inflammation).
Am I taking the right angle on this, by saying that brands have to live with the issue that some small group of people will show a reaction to some sensitizing agent in your formula? I hope you could tell me about your experience, especially if you have history of products that went to HRIPT and other clinical tests.
Thanks a lot!
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14 Replies
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Well, your client has now documented through HRIPT testing that two of shampoos cause irritation and that the base does not. Yes, it is difficult to create a cosmetic product that someone, somewhere will not react to. But, the problem is that you now know and have documented that two of the fragrances cause irritation. Sounds like your client is setting themselves up for potential problems. I would replace the two fragrances that are causing the irritation.
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Hi Mark,
Thanks for your reply. Just to be clear, the two “problematic” products were one of my client’s shampoo, and a Pantene that we also tested…and I don’t think P&G would make any change to their formulas because of that ????. Now, they both showed to be “slightly irritating” (P&G’s being even a little higher). My point being, should we worry about it, keeping in mind that so far, only 50 clients complained out of 1 million bottles sold? As mentioned, sensitization to a fragrance component from some clients if very hard to avoid. I wish I work in P&G’s or UL’s call center, to have some reference ????
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Hey Ketchito:
I look at it this way … why take the chance for the sake of a non-functional fragrance? There is risk in everything and 50 out of 1.0 million is not a lot, but its still 50 potential lawsuits or one Class Action lawsuit. Olaplex is now facing a Class Action lawsuit over Lilial in Canada and California.
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Can you tell us what percentage of fragrance was in that formula?
In one of my shampoos i was using head & shoulders fragrance. It was irritating and causing dandruff at 0.1% but not at 0.005% for 10 people that i have the feedback.
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Thanks @MarkBroussard I didn’t know Olaplex was still using Lilial ????.
@Abdullah The level of these fragrances is around 0.50-0.55%, which is more or less standard.
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Apparently Olaplex was selling stock in Canada that still contained Lilial.
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hi there
I would like to say 2 things.
First, as long as you are using Fragrance you are always at risk of allergic reactions 26 Allergens are listed mainly in Europe they are discussing 80 something at the moment and more than 200 Allergens are known as components of perfumes. So you cannot eliminate that issue completely someone will always be allergic to one component or another.
Second, if you know that the Perfume courses the Issue it’s worth taking a look to see if you are able to eliminate for example at least the 26 main allergens in the Perfume of your Product, so you can at least argue that you are already aware and searching for alternatives.
The only other possibility would be to work completely without perfumes. And yes cosmetic brands are aware of that issue and most of them are not very into solving the issue due to consumer expectations of products (who would buy shampoo without any perfume on a normal shelf?).
Sidenote: Trends like natural products are not very good for that issue as well because natural Fragrance oils are all containing at least 1 of the 26 main allergic ingredients.
Hope that helps
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I almost never formulate products using essential oils or fragrances. There is a large market segment with sensitive skin issues that don’t want EO’s or fragrances in their products. Or, they simply don’t want to smell like a cosmetic product.
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What do you use then to mask the smell of ingredients or give the product a nice smell?
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@gordof Thanks for your reply. My client actually asked his fragrance manufacturer to work on the fragrance, and both prototypes that they presented were either less bloomy (the one with less linalool) or with a totaly different character and lower potency (the one without allergens). Since my client is competing against the leading brand, they cannot have a fragrance that performe worse. My bet is that its competitor focuses on overdose fragrance to win share, and when there’s a group of consumers with bad reaction, they have the magic solution: an antidandruff shampoo ????.
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Usually nothing. The smell of the ingredients combined is generally not an issue. If it does become an issue, then a hydrosol works on some formulas like Toners. If absolutely necessary, then relatively benign essential oil like lavender.
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Thanks
Good to know that lavender is benign.
Some more questions.
1. Is lavender fragrance oil as benign as essential oil?
2. Is apple fragrance oil benign or not?
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Lavender oil is allergies wise not very tolerated as all essential oils are not good for Perfum-allergic people.
It contains depending on the field it Groth on
Around 40-50 % linalool
0.5-2 % Geraniol
0.5-2% Limonene
0.1-0.5% Coumarin
Linalool is known to be one of the substances most allergic reactions occur for Percetice wise in the Population.
and the others are although in the list of the 26 Potent Allergiens for Perfume Products and need to be declared separately on the INCI
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Fragrance oils, I generally do not use. The exception being if a client wants a particular scent, I usually have it reverse engineered by Alpha Aromatics who have the necessary analytic equipment to quite accurately recreate a fragrance.
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