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Pheno alternate - Sodium Benzoate + Potassium Sorbate
We sell a line of cosmetics, wondering if we can reduce the pheno a bit in our formulations. These are for example a retinol serum, hyaluron serum, vitamin c serum.
For example if we used something like .25% sodium benzoate + .25% potassium sorbate + .25% phenoxyethanol + .025% ethylhexylglycerin would that have a similar effect as just using .65% phenoxyethanol + .065% ethylhexylglycerin?
Or if there is a standard concentration of sodium benzoate + potassium sorbate when it’s used as as the only preservative?
We also use Hyalurosmooth, which has a bit of pheno in it already, but we don’t think it’s enough all on it’s own.
Any thoughts would be helpful, thank you!!
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3 Replies
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Could you post some more information? You could theoretically reduce the phenoxyethanol and replace the lost activity with another preservative, but you need to consider a few things:
- pH of finished product
- leave on or rinse off application
- other ingredients in the formula
- whether the replacement is active against the same microbes as phenoxyethanolAs always, when changing the preservative you will need to do PET to determine if the changes made still maintain an adequate level of preservation.
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Ok great thank you for this! It is a leave on Retinol Serum - I will take this to our formulator and work further! Thank you again for these suggestions, I do appreciate it.
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If it’s a retinol product, your pH will likely be a little high to use sodium benzoate/potassium sorbate- their efficacy drops off significantly the higher pH gets. At pH 6+ they are useless
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