• Formulating

  Sea Salt Spray

  Posted by RickS on March 16, 2020 at 7:02 pm

  Hello everyone -

  I was looking to make a simple Sea salt spray and had some questions i hope the more experienced community can help with!

  Understand sea salt spray usually consists of water+epsom salt+carrier oils+essential oils. 

  But i am seeing ingredient lists of products in the market consisting of preservatives and emulsifiers like polysorbate 20 and PEG40 hydrogenated castor oil.

  Questions:
  1) Are they adding the emulsifiers so that upon application, the user would not have to shake the bottle?
  2) given the 4 ingredient mixture above, would a preservative even be necessary? if so, why? wouldnt the salt change the PH level enough so that the solution doesnt require a preservative?

  Thanks so much in advance all!
  Rick

  alchemist01 replied 4 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies

  • hair
  • hair product
  • spray
• 3 Replies

• 

  EVchem

  Member

  March 17, 2020 at 12:04 pm

  1) Yeah emulsifiers are there to help the essential oils stay distributed throughout product.

  2) yes- epsom salt won’t affect pH enough to put in in a low-risk scenario. And for a fun read, this paper shows that bacterial growth can occur even with high amounts of magnesium sulfate (as we would find on mars)

• 

  RickS

  Member

  March 20, 2020 at 3:13 pm

  Thanks so much for the response!

  In general if i add enough salt to water ratio, would it possibly be able to act as a preservative?

  Can epsom salt even act as a preservative? Or is sea salt better?

  Thanks again!
  Rick

• 

  alchemist01

  Member

  March 20, 2020 at 5:30 pm

  Microbes can grow in salt solutions approaching saturation. I have no idea how much salt you’re adding but I would use a traditional preservative.

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