OldPerry
Forum Replies Created
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Alcohol would normally be Ethanol. It should not be used to refer to isopropyl alcohol.
So, there are a few possibilities.
1. They don’t understand the labeling rules and made a mistake. They already list Alcohol Denat which is also Ethanol (but with a denaturing additive) so listing more Alcohol that is added is redundant and not needed.
2. They misunderstand the labeling rules & made a mistake. This is a situation where one of their other raw materials is sold to them with alcohol as the solvent. Normally, you would list that too but since alcohol is already listed they didn’t need to.
3. They made a typo. They meant it to be isopropyl alcohol (or benzyl or some other alcohol) but forgot the isopropyl (or other) part.
If it is a proper ingredient and I had to guess based on where it is located, I’d say it’s Benzyl Alcohol. But the most likely is they made mistake #1 listed above.
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@Jusme - at the moment we do not have a hair care specific course (although we are working on it).
In our main course, there is one module dedicated to hair care. But the other modules of Raw Materials, Testing, and Product Development also cover important concepts in hair care.
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@LaurieMoser - the process of creating these chemicals involves a fractionation process. The way that this works is you take coconut oil and you heat it above its melting point to make it a liquid.
Now, coconut oil is made up of a variety of different chemicals, mostly the fatty acids, caprylic acid C -8:0 (8%), capric acid, C-10:0,(7%), lauric acid C-12:0, (49%), myristic acid C-14:0(8%), palmitic acid C-16:0 (8%), stearic acid C-18:0 (2%), oleic acid C-18:1 (6%) and 2% of C-18:2 linoleic acid.
Each of these have a different melting point. So, as the system cools, you remove the solids that are formed. Then you’re left with things that are liquid at a lower temperature like Capric acid and Caprylic acid.
To make Coco Caprylate/Caprate, you then take that liquid and chemically react it further to make whatever derivative you want.
But the question is, are there any salicylates left in the liquid after the fractionation process?
The main salicylates include Sodium Salicylate and Salicylic Acid. Both of these have melting points > 200C. So, most likely they are some of the first solids that are removed from the system. It’s unlikely any of them would be present in the final material.
Having said that, it also depends on how thoroughly the company does the fractionation process.
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@LaurieMoser - In considering this further, I haven’t been able to find any good evidence that Coconut Oil contains any Salicylates. Perhaps the entire coconut might contain them but I don’t think the oil does.
Here is the best chemical breakdown of the composition of coconut oil that I could find.
None of the components listed are salicylates. And since Salicylates are water soluble (not oil soluble) this would make sense.
While Google is helpful for some things there is also a lot of misinformation posted on the Internet. The Paleoskincare website should not be looked at as a definitive source. They make the claim that coconut is high in salicylates (and maybe it is) but they provide no sources that would support that claim. None of the other websites that come up on the first page SERPs for “coconut oil + salicylates” are reliable, science sources either.
I did a Google Scholar search (this searches through peer reviewed, scientific literature) of “coconut oil composition salicylate” and didn’t find anything.
The good news is that it’s unlikely that ingredients comprised of coconut oil, like Coco Caprylate/Caprate represent a salicylate risk to you.
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This is a good question. I think it depends on how the ingredients are made but if they start with fractionated coconut oil, I think that would eliminate the salicylates during the synthesis. But I’m not 100% certain. Perhaps someone else who better knows the synthesis process to make coco caprylate/caprate will weigh in.
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@LaurieMoser - welcome to the forum! We look forward to seeing your questions and participation.
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@GeorgeBenson - I concur Polysorbate 20 or 80. I also use Oleth - 40
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Oxygenated water? lol
https://conaturalintl.com/products/oxygen-water -
@geekchic - you might try a cationic polymer like Polyquaternium 7 or a Guar.
Thanks!
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@grapefruit22 - tea tree is not approved for acne treatment so it hasn’t been proven in clinical testing to work. Warming extracts, that would happen if you put 100% glycerin on skin and exposed it to water. Film forming…ok, other things form films more efficiently & for less money. Mattifying, ok.
I guess the point is not that extracts do nothing (although most don’t), it’s that there are superior, less expensive options.
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Thanks! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions
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Thanks! Yes, our courses were designed for people who want to know how to make cosmetics the way they are made in the cosmetic industry.
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“I feel like I and my clients are getting great results“
Great! This is the whole point of cosmetic products. But whether people feel they get great results tells us nothing about whether a formula is working or not. People easily fool themselves. If you spent lots of money on a product, most people will instinctively believe that it works better. It could be the exact same product but our brains are programmed to believe higher cost means it’s better. On a blinded basis this can be shown to be false.
If you want to really learn formulating, you have to understand that most of what you “know” about skin care is inaccurate. Beyond moisturizing and exfoliation, there isn’t much we can do for skin with topical treatments. And on a blinded basis people really aren’t good at noticing differences.
Once you commit yourself to really wanting to know what is provably true, then you can start to discover what things really make a difference. And when you discover that raw material suppliers are marketers who make up stories to sell ingredients, you’ll be better equipped to know what ingredients matter and which ones don’t.
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@wannabe - Thanks for your comments. It’s great to hear different perspectives.
Just a few comments in response to yours…
“As for the extracts, they too have so many different benefits, so combining to make a more comprehensive product“
This is where a lack of understanding of ingredients can steer you wrong. Extracts really don’t do anything. In fact, most of the extracts you buy are mostly glycerin, propylene glycol, or water. There’s only a tiny amount of any plant material in them. In fact, if the company who supplied them just made brown colored water, you would have no way of knowing. They truly are useless ingredients in terms of performance. They are GREAT for building a story around & they help sell products.
But I would be willing to bet that if I took your formulas and replaced all the extracts with a solution of brown water, you would not be able to tell a difference.
“…as far as antioxidants, I thought that combinations improved that performance of each other.“
You have to understand why antioxidants are used and what they are doing in a formula. In a formula or on the skin surface, certain molecules might develop into a free radical. This just means it has a lone electron. It’s an unstable situation and can cause a bunch of other chemical reactions that can damage skin. An antioxidant is able to interact with these free radicals and stop the chemical reactions. Having multiple antioxidants is not going help in topically applied products. It’s simply a story marketers tell to sell product. It doesn’t actually happen.
“Focusing on actives and ingredients that fall in the 1-2 safety (ewg).“
The EWG is not a reliable source of information. Their rating system is just a fairy tale and tells you next to nothing about whether an ingredient is safe or not. They do a good job of looking official but they are not professional toxicologists or have any special ability to rate ingredients. A better source is https://cir-safety.org
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I haven’t used it but whenever I hear about a new technology a few questions occur to me.
1. What problem is it solving? We already have antioxidants. Why would we need another?
2. Is it less expensive? Does it work better? It is easier to formulate with?
3. What is a compelling reason to use this new material rather than the existing technologies?
I don’t know the answers, but I suspect that this ingredient simply solves a problem that has already been solved but does it in a more expensive, more complicated way.
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Thanks for all the great replies!
@ngarayeva001 - From a professional standpoint the reality is that you don’t actually want to be a minimalist at the start of a project. This is specifically because you know that after a product is on the market for a year or so, the Marketing / Purchasing department is going to ask you to make the formula less expensive.
If you spend all your time optimizing up front, you won’t have any “cost savings” opportunities later down the road. So, I often advise new formulators that they shouldn’t try to optimize formulas up front.
I’d also add that the process you describe does not really violate the “minimalism” philosophy. Using 2 humectants to offset the stickiness of Glycerin is just smart formulating.
The things that make no sense to me is when someone does something like putting in 5 different natural oils that all have essentially the same fatty acid distribution. Or putting in 3 different antioxidants or using multiple plant extracts.
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@ozgirl - I think fairy dust ingredients are fine as long as they are used at the appropriate levels. When I see Panthenol listed at 2% I just SMH.
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The answer depends on where you are selling your products but in the US there is no specific requirement to do any testing.
HOWEVER, it is illegal to make false claims about your product.
This means that if you are going to make a claim you need to be prepared to defend the truth of your claim in a court of law. Whenever you make any claim answer the question “If I’m sued how will I prove what I’m saying is true?”
If your defense is your own opinion, you will lose. So, you better have some kind of well-designed study, preferably independently done, that demonstrates you aren’t lying.
I personally think $10,000 for a test like this is pretty high, but I don’t conduct tests for a living.
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Looks like foam to me.
Put it in an oven to warm it up and see if it disappears in a couple hours. If it does, it was foam. If not, it is separation.
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@Microformulation - and all ingredients are considered unsafe depending on the exposure concentration and route.
It is illegal in the US and around the world to sell unsafe cosmetic products. If a company is using a raw material, they are using it in a manner that is considered safe.
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Yes, it’s safe for hair.
A pH that low will open up more options for effective preservatives. You still need a preservation system. -
No, not all CAPBs are created equal. But this doesn’t apply just to CAPB. It applies to ALL ingredients.
If you are trying to make a high quality product, you need to qualify every source of any material you use. Just because a formula worked with one source of surfactant or salt or water…that doesn’t mean you can just substitute any other source in there.
Professional organizations would do side-by-side stability and performance testing of any alternative ingredient source used.
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Simple. They just put a tiny amount of the oil in the formula and it washes down the drain without having much negative impact. The avocado oil is only added to tell a marketing story. If they didn’t put it in the product would not work any differently. This happens all the time in the industry.
There are ingredients in your formula that are also not really doing anything & if you removed them it wouldn’t make a difference (e.g. the Apple cider vinegar, charcoal, etc). But it would be hard for you to believe that.When you believe ingredients do something you’ll be more likely to see an effect. This is a phenomenon known as the Halo Effect. If you really want to know if ingredients are having an effect you can only know for sure through controlled, blinded studies.
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Anything you do to stabilize the oils further will necessarily make it so they rinse down the drain more readily. The only reason you get any deposition of the oils now is because they aren’t suspended properly in the formula.
So, you can choose to have a “stabilized” formula, or one that performs the way your formula works now.
You have to understand you are trying to do two opposite things in one product. You’re trying to get the shampoo to remove oils and deposit oils at the same time. This doesn’t work.
If you like the way the shampoo leaves your hair, I suggest you don’t change anything. Any change will change the performance.
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The whole point of shampoo is to remove oils. So, when you put oils in the formula you simply tie up the cleansing surfactants and make the shampoo less effective.
Additionally, the surfactants in a shampoo are not designed to emulsify and suspend oils for a long time.
So, if you want a stabilized formula get rid of all the oils (most of phase
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