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To adjust the pH of a lipstick….yes or no
Hi everyone,
Hope all is well with you guys and here’s wishing you all a very blessed, happy and prosperous new year 2016.
I wish to find out if I should neutralize a lipstick formulation which is at pH 6. If so can I use sodium lactate to neutralize it?
The formulation includes candellila wax, carnauba wax, castor oil, triglyceride, dimethicone, jojoba oil, sweet almond oil and polyisobutene as the main ingredients, others in 1% and below like vit C and vit E, sweeteners, lip flavors, and grapefruit seed oil as a natural preservative..Thank you very much in advance. -
6 Replies
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This is actually an interesting skin care question - which means that there’s not an easy answer for it.
The pH of your lipstick will affect the colors of some of the pigments that you’ll use, so experimenting with different pH options/adjustments might be crucial if color matching is very important.The natural pH of skin, including lips, is 5.5 - 5.6, but neutral pH is 7.0. The primary skincare question is then - do I want a neutral pH value at about 7, (which might actually raise the pH of skin) or do I want a pH that matches the skin’s acid mantle? That’s the question that is difficult to answer.Personally, unless you’re having a problem with color, or you need for some reason to say “neutral pH” on your label, I’d leave your formula alone. -
Agree with BobZ. Right now you have an oil-based formulation. Sodium Lactate is water-soluble, so you would need to add a bit of emulsifier to incorporate it. As BobZ points out, if anything, you would be better off dropping the pH to match the skin’s acid mantle balance. At pH 6.0, I’d leave well enough alone if you are happy with your formulation. -
besides, if it’s oil based then it won’t have a pH, regardless of what the probe says
the pH of a solution is a measure of how many hydrogen ions are present in it, or (more accurately) what proportion of the solvent exists in its protonated form
oils are not protic solvents, hence they can’t be protonated; also, their electrical permittivity is far too low to support stable ions of any kind
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^ What @Bill_Toge. If there is no water in your lipstick, the pH measurement is meaningless.
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I agree with @Perry and @Bill_Toge, but…to take a very extreme case, if you made a lipstick with 50% of powdered citric acid, for example, this eventually would have a negative effect on skin/lips, as the skin’s moisture and/or saliva slowly dissolved the acid.
So, it pays to check on how the lipstick will affect the skin. You can do this by applying a damp pH strip to the surface of the lipstick for a few minutes, or by dissolving the lipstick in a solvent and then adding water and reading the pH, or by melting the lipstick, homogenizing with water, and then checking the pH of the emulsion. pH isn’t really the right term when applied to the stick itself, but I’m not sure what else we’d call it. “Apparent pH”, maybe? -
The pH scale as applied to aqueous systems does not apply to anhydrous systems.
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