Perry44
Forum Replies Created
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You’ll need to provide more information about the specific ingredients in the system. Typically, thickening should happen within a few minutes.
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Generally, there are 4 ingredients considered sulfate surfactants.
They include:
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate,
Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate,
Sodium Laureth Sulfate
Ammonium Laureth Sulfate.All other surfactants are considered “non-sulfates”. There are too many to list but things like Decyl Glucoside, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, or Sodium Cocoyl Isethionate.
If you are avoiding “sulfur” then you’d also want to avoid an ingredient like Sodium Olefin Sulfonate. Anywhere you see the letters “Sulf-“ that means there is sulfur in the molecule.
Of course, there are ingredients that are not surfactants that also include some sulfur like Sulfuric acid, Thioglycolic Acid, Allyl Isothiocyanate, Methionine (an amino acid), etc.
I will note that it is highly unlikely that sulfur is causing your problems. It is a component of every cell in your body and being allergic to it is not really possible. However, sensitivity to Sulfur derivatives is possible. That’s good news because it means that just because a product has some sulfur containing molecule doesn’t mean you will have a reaction.
Ultimately, yes you will have to try different cleansers until you find one that doesn’t cause your reaction.
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An extract will not cover an odor significantly. You need a fragrance specifically designed to do it. Or a strong smelling oil like tea tree oil might work.
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I see no reason consumers should avoid fragrance. The toxicologists at IFRA would agree.
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I’d suggest you read this post about cosmetic ingredient expiration dates.
Expiration dates on food products and ingredients make sense because they have a huge impact both on the taste and the safety of the food. When something goes rancid it has a consumer perceptible impact on taste. But for cosmetic ingredients, expiration dates don’t matter much.
In fact, there really is no formal “expiration date”. It is an arbitrary date that helps keep ingredient sales moving. I think it helps with ingredient marketing, but it doesn’t tell you much about the ingredient.
Here’s the difference. While food ingredient changes make big impacts on the final product, cosmetic ingredient changes often do not.
When you say the components of an oil “will (not) last more than 2.5 years” it’s hard to know exactly what you mean. The primary components of most oils (saturated fatty acids) aren’t going to change in a meaningful way. Palmitic acid & stearic acid are not prone to chemical degradation over time. So, they won’t change significantly even after 10 years.
However, unsaturated fatty acids are prone to oxidation and those can certainly change. But is it a change that will impact the formula? Not always.I’m looking at the fatty acid profile of cranberry seed oil and it looks like it has some Palmitic and Steric acid. In 3 years, this won’t change. But it does have Oleic, Linoleic, and Linolenic acid. These have double bonds which will change. They will oxidize and produce different types of organic molecules which can affect the Viscosity, Melting Point, but most importantly the Color and Odor.
Now, if you are only using 1 or 2% in the formula and other ingredients are having a more significant impact on color and odor, it might not matter if the cranberry seed oil has changed. That’s why you set specifications for things like color and odor and you can retest after some arbitrary point in time.
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Steinberg being feisty as ever! I do agree, preservative free is a bad claim.
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Oxidation is the answer. Hydrocarbons in Vaseline chemically change by reacting with air, UV light, introduced contaminants. Heating can also speed up oxidation. To slow it down, keeping it stored in a cool dark place might help.
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If you haven’t passed stability, it might be premature to go to HRIPT. Also, any formula changes you make should require a repeat of the micro testing too. You’ve got to have a stable product first.
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There is no requirement to do that as far as I know.
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Some consumers might care but the vast majority don’t. All you have to do is look at the sales of products that use traditional preservatives. The brands you mentioned are all best sellers. Clearly consumers that buy these products don’t care.
It’s not surprising to me that @mikethair has a different perspective because his consumer group is filtered & they are looking for more natural products. Most consumers aren’t. The natural/clean market makes up about 20% at most of sales. This means 80% of product sales is not clean/natural.
As a new brand I don’t think your preservative matters in terms of marketing. What matters is your brand story, your fragrance, your packaging & whether the product meets your claims. Wasting marketing attention by pointing out what preservative you do or do not use seems like a waste of effort to me. While some people may avoid buying your product because it has some ingredient in it they find objectionable, no one is going to buy your product because of what preservative you use. You need a better marketing story than that.
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It might be possible but it also depends on what ingredients are in the formula.
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The EO is the problem.
You have to understand how the molecules arrange themselves in the solution. The reason you are seeing haziness is because the particles that are dispersed throughout the system are larger than 100 nm.
So, you most likely don’t have enough surfactant (soap or polysorbate) to surround the oil particles to a tiny enough size to be transparent or you haven’t used a high enough mixing force to create tiny particles.
Polar molecules and non-polar molecules are not generally compatible. If you don’t have enough surfactant, you’ll get haze.
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You could also try Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose.
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Sunscreens are designed to stay on your skin and resist easy wash-off. That way you don’t immediately sweat them off and they continue to give you protection. If they were easier to remove, they wouldn’t work well as sunscreens.
The ingredients you described in sunscreen are not responsible for your breakouts. Things like silicones and glycols are not known to cause breakouts in people. But without more specific ingredient information, it is difficult to give you any good advice. Just keep trying to find one that works for you.
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I think they are just setting themselves up for a lawsuit.
“100% natural ingredients”? In what world is Cetearyl Glucoside and Cetearyl Alcohol 100% natural? There is no plant or animal that produces those ingredients. Maybe “naturally derived” you could argue, but those aren’t natural.
Their labels also don’t conform to legal standards. The proper labeling of the first ingredient should WATER. Not AVENE WATER or AVENE THERMAL SPRING WATER. Just WATER.
So, if they can’t be bothered to properly label their products, I suspect they have preservatives in their formulas, they just decided not to put it on the label.
As far as replicating the product goes, sure that’s simple enough. But product performance is only a tiny piece of the puzzle when it comes to the success of a beauty product brand. No product on the market can perform significantly better than any other product (at least from a consumer standpoint). It is futile to try to compete in terms of performance.
Why is it effective? They have Glycerin, Shea Butter and emollients. That’s pretty much all the functional ingredients you need in a moisturizing cream.
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Is this the bill you are talking about?
https://toxicfreefuture.org/washington-state/campaign-washington-ban-toxic-cosmetics/
Honestly, I don’t see how they are going to be able to police it.
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They most likely use encapsulation for the retinol. Then just put it in the wax. Since consumers really can’t tell if it works or not, it’s just a claims ingredient.
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I agree. That’s a pretty good starting point.
Although you might want to look at the fatty acid distribution of all the oils and then pick one (maybe not even one currently in the formula) that overlaps better.
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Based on that logic, since you are (or were) a seller of fragrance free products, shouldn’t your opinion be similarly dismissed? Wouldn’t your salary be harmed if the opposite of what you claim is true?
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I don’t think this problem of misinformation and fearmongering will go away until consumers get smarter. People have to stop taking advertising seriously. If they assume that everyone in the industry is out to trick them, they will be better off financially.
Industry is in no position to do “consumer education.” The cosmetic industry is based on selling “hope in a bottle” and that is what consumers want to buy. Nobody really wins when consumers are better educated. Instead, the real winning comes when brands are able to miseducate consumers. Drunk Elephant convinced people they need to avoid 6 types of ingredients and in less than 10 years they built an $845 million company!
If consumers were educated and interested in buying products that worked at reasonable prices, they would be buying Suave or Equate or all the other store brands that work just as well as the super expensive products at a fraction of the price. But that is not what consumers want & that isn’t what industry wants either.
An honest, science-based approach to communication by brands might work for some niche brand, but you’re never going to grow a billion dollar brand telling people the truth.
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The choice of an “alternative” preservative is similar to the choice of which worldwide regulations you follow. The EU is generally more strict that the US. So, big companies who sell products in both the US and the EU will just follow the EU regulations because they figure it will cover both the US and EU. Whereas if they just followed the US regs, they might run afoul of the EU regs.
So, if you chose an alternative preservative, the vast number of people who don’t care will still buy your product. But the small number of people who do care will also buy your product. Ergo, if you want to appeal to the most number of consumers, then picking an alternative preservative makes some sense. That way you alienate no one.
However, the problem is that the alternative preservatives actually cause problems because they don’t work particularly well. And no one wants to buy a microbial contaminated product!
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Sure, the fragrance can cause separation. Also, if you have high electrolyte levels that can break the carbomer structure and cause separation.
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There is no need to delete the post. Good luck on your project!
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Rosemary oil?
Shampoos are meant to clean hair. Putting oil on your hair is exactly the opposite of cleaning hair. -
Decyl glucoside was given the dubious award of “Allergen of the Year” in 2017. It is certainly not an allergy free ingredient!
Just one other important point - Decyl Glucoside is not “natural”. There are no plants or animals that naturally produce decyl glucoside. It is a synthetic molecule dreamed up by clever, human chemists. Some natural standards may recognize it as “natural” and indeed it may be derived from natural ingredients, but it, just like pretty much all cosmetics, is not “all natural”. It’s a synthetic chemical creation.