Forum Replies Created

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  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 24, 2017 at 8:20 pm in reply to: Chemist advice needed on Climbazole in Capric/Caprylic Triglyceride

    that looks to me like the plastic is being etched by the oil; if it were precipitation, the oil itself would be cloudy, and have particulate matter in it

    we used to have exactly the same thing happen to polystyrene tubes which had IPM (a similarly polar oil) in them

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 23, 2017 at 6:57 am in reply to: Egg Albumin

    one of our customers has a product formulated on the same principle: in this case, the albumen is present as a dry powder, and the end-user mixes it with a carbomer gel at the point of use to form a serum

    given the trouble you’re having with stability in solution, it may be worth taking the same approach here

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 23, 2017 at 6:51 am in reply to: Help! Toner is sticky!

    my prime suspect is PEG-40 HCO; try using a different solubiliser, e.g. polysorbate 20

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 20, 2017 at 6:59 am in reply to: Decyl Glucoside

    @Lainee they generate a lot less foam than alkyl polyglucosides, and from my experience with two-phase mouthwash and makeup removers, they result in clean and prompt phase separation even when included at very low levels (i.e. < 0.1% w/w)

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 19, 2017 at 1:09 am in reply to: Decyl Glucoside

    try using a cationic instead of decyl glucoside, and add it to the water phase

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 13, 2017 at 5:28 pm in reply to: replacing cyclo

    a rep recently recommended coco-caprylate/caprate (Cetiol LC from BASF, among others) as a replacement

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 13, 2017 at 5:26 pm in reply to: liquid foundation doesn’t stick to the skin

    @Belassi which particular European regulations?

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 10, 2017 at 3:06 pm in reply to: “Period of time after opening” Calculation

    you’ve not found an exact method because it is a matter of judgment, and essentially a ‘best guess’ 

    the key factors are the type and design of the packaging, how the product behaves over a long period when the pack is opened (i.e. will it dry out or otherwise degrade), and the microbiological risk (i.e. can the end-user potentially contaminate the product while it’s inside the pack)

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 8, 2017 at 10:39 pm in reply to: Tighten the skin gel/cream

    I wouldn’t recommend using this type of product on the genitals at all; just peeling the film off could cause severe irritation

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 8, 2017 at 10:37 pm in reply to: Octyldodecanol in shaving cream…

    it might be a typo for glycol distearate

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 6, 2017 at 5:13 pm in reply to: For those who think the FDA isn’t watching ingredient labels…

    @ozgirl on a similar subject, we once received an IBC of propylene glycol that had a dead bird in it

    also, donkey’s years ago we used to import henna powder in bulk from Somalia, and when it came in it was usually full of foreign objects; mostly bits of wood, metal, plastic and rubber, so we had to sieve it and send it off to be irradiated before it could be used in production

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 6, 2017 at 5:11 pm in reply to: spf of caffeine and sodium benzoate

    and reading the paper more closely, it seems this combination of ingredients inhibits UV-induced carcinogenesis, which doesn’t necessarily mean it has an actual measurable SPF

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 6, 2017 at 5:08 pm in reply to: Tighten the skin gel/cream

    it’s usually done by forming a rigid film on the surface of the skin

    a number of hair styling polymers can do this job, or, if you’re not worried about the moral, ethical and legal consequences of using industrial-grade materials in cosmetics, sodium silicate (which, among other things, is used as the binding agent in cement)

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 5, 2017 at 11:02 pm in reply to: Lemongrass Essential Oil in Body Wash

    that’s most likely down to the myrcene content in the oil; myrcene contains a conjugated diene group and is therefore very prone to oxidation / side-reactions

    do you absolutely have to use the oil? if you don’t, you could go to a fragrance house to get a synthetic fragrance blend that smells like lemongrass but is less prone to oxidation

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 5, 2017 at 6:55 am in reply to: For those who think the FDA isn’t watching ingredient labels…

    blimey, the worst we’ve ever had end up in a batch was one of the plant worker’s keys

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 3, 2017 at 9:24 am in reply to: spf of caffeine and sodium benzoate

    negligible, I should think; their UV/visible absorption spectra lie almost entirely in the UVC range (which is absorbed by the atmosphere), and they absorb nearly no UVA or UVB

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    October 2, 2017 at 3:39 pm in reply to: glycerol to preserve cosmetics

    it is actually related to %w/w of water, but it’s not a linear relationship, or in a multi-component system, an easily calculable one: with a water/glycerine mixture, you’d need at least 40% w/w of glycerine before any significant inhibition of microbial growth occurs

    in cosmetics, this is only useful in things like toothpastes, which generally have than 50% w/w water

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 28, 2017 at 12:21 am in reply to: Creams stability tests

    you’re not manufacturing or storing the product in unsealed, i.e. open tubes - what do you hope to achieve by carrying out stability tests under those conditions?

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 28, 2017 at 12:18 am in reply to: Heating, Cooling and Pouring

    you need to heat it to a high enough temperature to ensure all the solid matter melts in reasonable time

    allantoin is not oil-soluble, so it will make your formula grainy

    also, what’s ZMG?

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 26, 2017 at 10:08 pm in reply to: Ultraviolet glass vs. Amber, Green, Blue or Clear Colour Bottles

    in high concentrations, ammonia etches several types of plastic (we keep
    it in  glass bottles, and remove the wads from the lids); its use is generally limited to perms, oxidative dyes or depilatories, and concentrations in finished products are generally not high enough to cause damage

    before they were filled into aluminium tubes, oxidative dyes (based on PPD, resorcinol etc.) were filled into glass packaging because the active dyestuffs oxidise and visibly discolour when exposed to air, and most plastics provide an insufficient barrier to air

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 25, 2017 at 7:00 am in reply to: How long does it take for a pomade to reach its full hardness?

    that depends on which waxes you use in the formula, the congealing point of the formula, and how much shear is applied below that temperature

    in general I find products like this have fully hardened by the following morning

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 21, 2017 at 7:04 am in reply to: Query on Hair Conditioner

    given that it’s near the end of the list, it’s probably a residual solvent from one of the other ingredients (possibly vanillin?)

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 19, 2017 at 8:52 pm in reply to: How can I know that a particular lab or chemist is good?

    @Bobzchemist and some CMs resort to dodgy tactics (providing uninformative/misleading/incorrect documents) in order to actively prevent customers taking their business elsewhere, by rendering the products nearly impossible to reproduce by anyone but the most skilled chemists

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 19, 2017 at 8:45 pm in reply to: Problem with shampoo

    @em88 what’s your method of manufacture? HEC has to be hydrated correctly or else it’ll separate from the rest of the batch

    @Belassi on the contrary, BHA is not subject to any legal restrictions in the EU, nor has IFRA restricted its use in fragrances

    my only comment is that in this particular instance it’s unnecessary - there are no oils prone to oxidation in the formula

  • Bill_Toge

    Professional Chemist / Formulator
    September 18, 2017 at 9:52 pm in reply to: Tanning (self-tanning) products

    to make successful formulations consistently, it takes years of practical experience and a solid theoretical grounding in materials science

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