OldPerry
Forum Replies Created
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You have to use a Carbomer grade that is compatible with anionic surfactants. Carbomer EDT 2020 worked for me to make a clear system.
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My critique is that you have too many oils. I embrace a “minimalist” formulating philosophy and try to minimize the number of ingredients used.
This has a number of benefits including…1. Reduced chance of negative consumer skin reaction
2. Reduced chance of experiencing an ingredient supply problem
3. Reduced chance of instability
4. Reduced chance of ingredient contamination
5. Reduced cost
6. Makes production easier
7. More environmentally friendly and sustainable
8. Less land use required to grown ingredients used for cosmeticsAlso, why would you add 2 ingredients that have the same function (Oat Kernel oil and bisabolol)?
I wonder, would you even be able to tell a difference if you left one of the oils out? If you can’t tell a difference between two formulas, you should make the one that has fewer ingredients.
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The FDA (and FTC) continue to have no definition for the term “natural”.
See this article. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/natural-cosmetics-products-without-clear-definition
Now, that might make you think that you could just pick any ingredient and call yourself natural. However, in the US people file lawsuits and look to make money off of companies that are engaging in what they believe are deceptive marketing practices. So, while the FDA doesn’t define “natural”, there is a legal risk if you just use any old ingredient and call yourself natural.
The bottom line is that if you are going to call yourself natural, no matter what you use you’ll need to be prepared to defend your marketing practices in court. If any cationic you use requires some petroleum derived ingredient to make it, someone could argue that it is not natural.
I personally would argue that since the supernatural doesn’t exist, everything is natural, but most courts would not find that compelling.
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Well, the answer to that question is complicated because it depends on how you want to use the answer. It also depends on what you mean by the word “cleansing.”
Method 1 : If you want to know how your formula compares to another formula under controlled conditions, you first have to set up some model that simulates “dirty skin.” For this you need a substrate. This could be real skin of living human volunteers, cadaver skin, pig skin, plastic, etc. You also need a mixture that simulates dirt. Most simple would be vegetable oil or some other shorter chain oil. You place the dirt on a defined section of the substrate, then follow some specific protocol for washing which keeps constant the amount of water, time rubbing, amount of product, water temperature, rinsing time, etc. Then you collect the rinse water and somehow measure the amount of oil that comes off. That gives you a measure of how effective your product is for cleaning.
Of course, you have to repeat this a number of times and see how well you can reproduce the results, but that’s the idea.
Remember that this is only a simulation of cleaning because real skin is dirty in different ways. Also actual skin varies from person to person.
Method 2 : Now, if you just want to know how well people think your product cleans their skin, you give them your product, ask them to use it, and then rate how well they thought it worked. You can also give them a control product if you want to know how it compares to a specific formula.
This doesn’t necessarily tell you how well the product cleans but it does tell you whether consumers think it cleans better than something else. And in terms of getting people to buy your product, it is probably the more useful information.
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@domicanica - You have to understand raw material suppliers are in the business of getting you to use more of their product. You can’t always trust the ingredient levels they suggest because they have an incentive to make you use more than you actually need.
The first body wash formula I worked on had an AMS of around 10%. Not that it necessarily had great foam but it was accepted in the marketplace and was effective.
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Glycerin and propanediol will like reduce foam, so take those out.
You also have a very high % of surfactants. You could probably cut it in half.But is there a product on the market that uses the surfactants you are using and has a nice foam? You’ll want to compare yourself to that product, not to products that foam using sulfates.
When you limit your choices, you have to limit your expectations.
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It depends on what you are trying to accomplish but the proven, go-to oil in the industry is Mineral Oil.
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I think that depends on the specific surfactants used.
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@Henry - by far the biggest factor involved in removing color from the hair is water. When you get hair wet, it swells and some of the dye molecules leak out and get washed away. There isn’t really much measurable difference between shampoos. Lots of companies pretend there is though.
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A few answers
2. Yes. Carbomer is a thickener & if you want a formula thicker than water that’s one option.
3. Conditioning shampoos contain some type of conditioning ingredient that gets left behind during the shampoo process. Typically, a silicone like Dimethicone and a cationic polymer like Polyquaternium 10
4. Marketing.
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The EU has banned animal testing since 2013. So, cruelty-free claims as applied to the EU are just a marketing gimmick.
The only companies who would be doing animal testing would be those using new technology or those that also have a pharmaceutical section of their business. For the vast majority of cosmetic companies, animal testing just isn’t done. Which is also why cosmetic products haven’t really changed significantly in over 30 years.
But if there is a new material that someone wants to use in a cosmetic product, for some aspects of safety there are not animal testing alternatives. You can see the list of validated animal testing alternatives as accepted by the EU. What this also shows is that for things like Aquatic bioaccumulation, Genotoxicity, Repeated Dose Toxicity, and Toxicokinetics there are no animal free alternatives.
I would add that cruelty-free does not mean free from cruelty. What it means is that the products weren’t directly animal tested. ANY company that uses plant based ingredients has been involved in directly killing animals (mice, rabbits, insects, etc). Numerous animals are killed during plowing, planting and harvesting of plants. They might not view this killing as cruel but I don’t see any difference.
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@Learntounlearn - Sorry about that. My web guy moved some things around and all the links to discussions got changed in a very subtle way.
If you want to go to the previous discussion that you bookmarked, you need to add a “/#/” in the link.
For example, if the link was this…
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/discussion/comment/56166
You’ll need to change it to this…
https://chemistscorner.com/cosmeticsciencetalk/#/discussion/comment/56166
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That would be my guess too.
Certainly, they don’t have 1% Citric Acid.
They likely have >1% Sodium Chloride. -
If you make it properly, it shouldn’t have a lot of suds.
If you mix too much air in it, the amount of time will vary depending on what else is in the formula. For example, if you use salt as your thickening system, it shouldn’t take too long. But if you have a polymeric thickener, it may take a lot longer. -
Perhaps I’m not understanding your question.
Are you asking which company invented a molecule?I assumed you had a raw material but didn’t know who manufactured it. My answer was telling you one way to identify the manufacturer of a specific sample.
Perhaps, reword your question? What exactly are you trying to figure out?
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Get a sample from each of them with the Certificate of Analysis. Then conduct a study on each sample to see if there is some characteristic that is different about one over any of the others.
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Carbomer is used to thicken up hair gels.
Styling polymers like PVP are used to hold hair in place.I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “the gum effect”
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Find something with a different density. Usually that’s done with a silicone. Do you have an example product on the market you can link to?
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Increased eye stinging perhaps?
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“If NIH would look into Indian and Chinese studies rather than relying on only American studies, there might be somethings other than just a belief.“
@Pattsi - NIH does grant funding to foreign researchers so if a research group from China of India had a suitable study, the NIH would consider them.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/who-is-eligible.htm It is not just a problem of Americans not looking at other systems of knowledge. It is because there is a fundamental flaw with these systems.
1. Ayurveda - Is based on non-existent energies called vata, pitta and kapha. This is pre-scientific superstition. You can’t test how well something that is made up works.
2. TCM - Is based on the unproven, non-scientific concepts of qi, meridians, and acupuncture points. It is little more than superstition.
And there are numerous studies that have looked at treatments from these systems. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/traditional-chinese-medicine-what-you-need-to-know
I agree people need to be humble. We need to be humble enough to accept when something we wish to be true turns out not to be true.
Many people wish that putting plant extracts on their skin will provide some exceptional benefit. But the evidence shows us that this is largely false.
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I’ll just leave this here.
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/ayurveda-ancient-superstition-not-ancient-wisdom/If you want to know whether an ingredient has measurable benefits, then you have to look at what has been scientifically studied.
If you already believe an ingredient has benefits, then there is no reason to study further. Just see what Ayurveda books have to say and follow that.
The fact that scientific theories & ideas get shown to be wrong is a feature of the system not a bug. In that way, old, outdated ideas get discarded for newer, more reliable knowledge.
This is the biggest problem with ancient ideas like Ayurveda or TCM. They are a belief system, they are not a system of reliable knowledge. They have no way of discarding bad ideas like Bloodletter (which is a feature of Ayurveda).
I agree people should be open minded. We should also be skeptical and humble about what we can really know. Much of what we think we know is probably wrong in some way. But we know a lot more than the ancients.
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@Pharma - Perhaps I could have been a bit more precise in my words to convey better what I meant because you developed a mistaken impression of my meaning. Yes, I would agree with this… “only with controlled studies (by preference double-blind and placebo controlled) and identification of the active principle and it’s molecular target can one be scientifically fairly certain that it does or does not work better than no (or placebo, respectively) treatment.”
I don’t disagree that there are things in plant extracts that are eventually studied and shown to work. And that there are things that passed double blind placebo controls and later failed. I don’t fully understand what that has to do with anything I wrote.You’ve also misread (or misinterpreted what I wrote) when I wrote “…it isn’t noticeably harmful“. I wasn’t claiming that it was not harmful. I was just saying it wasn’t going to immediately kill you.
“If thousands of people do something for a very long time, then chances are high that it actually works“ - I disagree. People are easily fooled & often maintain behaviors for irrational reasons. Millions of people have been praying to God for thousands of years. That doesn’t mean God ever actually answers, that prayer works or that God even exists.
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“Asians have been using DIY beauty since forever…and this has really proven to work since decades.”
Just because people have been doing something forever doesn’t mean that it really works. The only thing it really means is that it isn’t noticeably harmful. Only by doing controlled studies can you demonstrate that something that people have been doing forever actually works.
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EDTA is the time tested king of chelators in the cosmetic industry.
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I wouldn’t use BTMS-50 in a leave-in conditioner. That would be too heavy on the hair in my opinion. But certainly not more than 1%. Probably less.