[Pharma]

Sorbitol sounds safer… If you ever sell products with sugar syrup, don’t sell to Europe during summer/fall or your customers will have a real hard time running from hungry wasps .

[Pharma]

@PhilGeis I’ve only zipped through your first recommendation and it looks really promising, certainly better than the others I’ve read so far. For my taste it could be a bit more in depth regarding single substance but that’s just me. I haven’t read the second one though… does it include ‘naturals’, alternative, and multifunctionals in more than a short paragraph like so many other books do?

As a scientist/researcher I can only shake my head (the urge to actually hit it against a wall is there as well… but that wouldn’t help either…) when reading ‘scientific’ cosmetic journals or publications of ‘clinical trials’ in things like ‘Journal of Cosmetic This or That’. Most are just awful… you likely get paid for publishing there and, honestly, one should get paid for reading them, too.

I think reading/zapping through C&T or Happi isn’t bad if it’s for staying up to date in who’s who and which trend and hype is rising or falling but they usually give no useful scientific insights or help with understanding mechanism on a deeper level.

[Pharma]

Bebalevis said:

…
Please note that I’m based in Switzerland at the moment, even if I follow mainly english-speaking communities because I feel more comfortable when researching in english.
…

If you’re fairly fluent in German, then the PTA Forum on the DAC/NRF site might be a place to look at. However, its focus is on pharmaceutical preparations (BTW German PTAs are usually better formulators than German pharmacists).

Me, I’m not in any professional cosmetics community (other than here)…

Regarding recommended lectures: THIS is one of the ‘must read’, one of the very few. Else, use ScienceDirect and PubMed… or a free mirror for pre-print publications if you can’t afford buying publications (most of which have unknown value just from reading the abstract, anyway). There aren’t many books with useful real-life details but just general knowledge and theoretical in depth studies regarding highly specific subjects. Hence, read tons of books (not only cosmetics and stay clear of cosmetic journals, they suck) and use your brain and experience to extrapolate to your specific task at hand .

Maybe go to trade shows such as in-cosmetics for networking?

PS Greetings from Zürich.

[Pharma]

I’m trying to formulate only with ‘naturals’ (in a broad and biased sense) but honestly, I struggle with natural gelling agents… xanthan is my basis but those acrylics make life so much easier. I can live without PEGs and even silicones (though there is no real replacement for silicone oils) but gelling agents if used in gel products and not just as emulsion stabilisers is hard. Naturals just don’t feel as nice as the synthetics. My focus ain’t on them so I’m absolutely no help which blend might do the trick for you, sorry.

[Pharma]

@Graillotion Should you go for that red fruit extract: a pinch copper peptide might help the colour to a deeper and more purple hue. The amount added would hence depend mostly on colour cause else, it’s all about pixie dust… well, to be honest, copper peptide (GHK-Cu) is one of the few peptides which actually penetrate skin (more or less sound scientific publications available in this regard; can’t comment on ‘real’ cosmetic values for healthy skin). Its antioxidant, anti-ageing, skin regenerating, and anti-inflammatory activities are totally in line with your eye cream.

[Pharma]

They don’t claim ‘organic certified’, they claim ‘organic beauty’ and, I’m sure, that kind of beauty is caused only by the organic ingredients, not the (chemical) excipients :smiley: .

[Pharma]

Welcome to the world of marketing and advertisement. Their job is to find a way how to dupe consumers whilst (barely) sticking to the law.

[Pharma]

The use of the expression ‘polarity’ is not super accurate and very cosmetic because cosmetic isn’t an exact science and often performed by people without or minimal education in natural science; it would be useless for most manufacturers if raw ingredient companies indicated Hansen solubility parameters and the like… pretty much the same reason why HLB is still in use and not HLD-NAC.

From a chemical point of view, triglycerides are esters (one glycerol and three fatty acids) as much as ester oils (aka liquid wax, one fatty acid with one fatty alcohol). Hydrocarbons don’t have heteroatoms and are therefore more lipophilic (and have no polarity) whilst silicone oils (standard dimethicone, not modified ones) are even more lipophilic with equally absent polarity. ‘True’ polarity comes with alcohols (such as your mentioned Guerbet alcohol) and amines and other electron donating and withrawing heteroatoms. True, esters and amides impart that too but the effect is marginal, non-miscibility comes rather from other solubility parameters than ‘polarity’. There’s also a difference between miscibility and solubility. As a rule of thumbs, equal mixes with equal. ‘Polarity’ in the way you refer to it does rather affect emulsion type (lyotropic liquid crystalline phases) or, in common cosmetic language, HLB requirement (or apparent HLB values).

[Pharma]

Why didn’t you just buy a bottle with your own money and filled up 5g? A job done at the speed of superman, if this isn’t worthy employee of the month and a pay raise LoL.

[Pharma]

PhilGeis said:

…These are low volume, high-priced commodities chemicals - all out of patent

Patentability is a strong driving force or rather an enormous hindrance if a product can’t be patented. Preservatives are traditionally simple small molecules. Usually, you can’t patent those because they are already known and/or patented (by someone else LoL). Fiding molecules which are new, which fit the idea of the public (only natural products), which aren’t pharmacologically/toxicologically active (better yet, they’re GRAS), cheap to produce, are highly stable and so on… it shrinks the space of the useful chemical universe enormously.

[Pharma]

If I (at the pharmacy = not neccessarily cosmetics but drugs, from OTC to presctiption over TCM etc.) outsource something to a contract manufacturer, we have to have a contract (it’s mandatory for both of us) which includes who is responsible for what, no loopeholes. General copy-paste formats can even be found online but most if not all contract manufacturers here in Switzerland carry their own. In case of a lawsuit, it’s fairly obvious who of us has to deal with it (it’s theoretically an either-or situation, never a both unsless there were several issues to sue over). A liability insurance is therefore in anyones own interest (and likely everyone has one, it’s Switzerland, we insure too much anyway but fortunately seldom have lawsuits).

[Pharma]

Perry said:

…
Has there ever been a chemical that developed a bad reputation but was then rehabilitated? I can’t think of any examples…

Not exactly a chemical… but Botox did that trick :pensive:

Else, you’re aboslutely right. It’s also very weird which articles find public resonance and which ones don’t. The original article about parabens was piss poor and nobody gave it any attention until someone somewhere… same goes for other scientific publications where there seems to be absolutely no correlation between impact factor, quality and scientific appreciation on one side and the effect on the ‘consumers’ world on the other. It doesn’t even have to do with fear (which certainly is a strong driving force) and sometimes takes one or two decades after publication to ‘hit the public’.

[Pharma]

None, there is none… unless you’re willing to add >20% ethanol to your products.

You could probably make a blend of different single ones so you end up with one single bottle containing ‘one’ preservative?

The best technique, especially in ‘natural’ (or alternative) formulations is a hurdle approach, which means many hurdles and not just one. The more ‘natural’ you go, the less broad spectrum the preservatives and ‘preservative alternatives’ tend to become. Formaldehyde, mercury, borax and so on don’t distinguish what they kill, they just kill. ‘Modern’ (many of which aren’t even new) alternatives however…

[Pharma]

Then you have three options:

A: Distillation (which isn’t easy)

B: Use a manufacturing process which doesn’t result in colour

C: Discard the gue and buy pure glycerin

[Pharma]

Azelaic acid is nearly insoluble in acid form (and inactive in its water soluble salt form) and salicylic acid is only sparingly soluble in water… what are the %?

For which reason do you add polysorbate 80? What’s the pH, how do you plan on keeping your product bug free?

[Pharma]

@Graillotion Do you have loa loa?

[Pharma]

But they are growing in number…

As a sales person, I don’t like most of them as clients, they suck. Sorry to say so! Knowing more about ingredients, doing research, and caring for something other than him/herself and beauty is actually a noble thing but it’s super hard to advise those folks because they think they know everything better. They use their smartphones to check labels when they could simply ask me (they usually ignore me completely although I might (most likely) know more than their stupid app and they’re usually not even willing to tell me what they actually try to figure out)… not trying to be cocky here but seriously… I could sometimes bash their heads against the wall and put their dumb phones up their A…

[Pharma]

@Pattsi It will be prescribed as usual:

- Proprietary drugs: Brand name of original, sometimes generic brand name, and less often active ingredient with % and galenic form

- Stuff which has to be made in a pharmacy: Super rare… usually active ingredient with %, the rest is up to the pharmacist or you give the doc a call and he/she tries to sound smarter than you but both know what’s really going on. There are actually a few rare cases, mostly old dermatologists from Germany, which really write a recipe (and you think that they could have done it easier by mentioning the reference work such as DMR, FH or DAB).

[Pharma]

That publication is easy to read things into it which aren’t there. The way I interprete it is that liquid crystal networks aka lamellar structures are problematic (especially for bacteria and/or levulinate/GMCY) and the preservation system (GMCY, levulinate and anisate) generally sucks regarding Aspergillus… One possible explanation why GMCY fails with lamellar networks might be that it tends to reduce viscosity stronger in these than in micellar structures.

[Pharma]

Not sure who but someone here on board mentioned in an older thread dehydroxanthan as better suited for hair care.

My wife has curly hair and recently got a new product to try out… it’s mainly water and dehydroxanthan. She likes it (it’s not her favourite, though) and it doesn’t flake.

[Pharma]

@Perry True that. However, cosmetics also upcycles and re-purposes other waste materials, not just from petrochemistry. Which is acutally great but maybe not exactly what consumers want to hear. Customer ‘Do you have any natural cosmetics?’. Me ‘Sure, we have fermented corn cubs, hydrolysed citrus peel, olive oil slurry, extracted rice husks… where are you going?’

There’s still a long way to go until we have bugs which can live off our waste and don’t need farm land nor additives (which are too often synthetic, like vitamins, or minerals dug out in mines). Depending on what you ferment, some farm land can actually be saved… but if we want to replace traditional chemistry, then nope… sadly not.

If those who want palm oil free knew that the alternative is often soy; just google ‘soy Amazon deforestation’… and that’s only one example out of thousands. You want to safe the planet? Support NRA or 10 g phenobarbital and then THIS. Bad joke aside, it’s really hard to decide what’s ‘good’ and ‘bad’ these days. What we know is that something has to change but too many would say A: not me and B: maybe later.

[Pharma]

Or check out THIS or THAT.

[Pharma]

Well… here in Switzerland, though we have some of the strictest regulations in some regards, pharmaceuticals still don’t need to list excipients but only actives (with amount). If you want to know more, you have to contact the manufacturers. Fortunately, this will change soon and several companies started to list all ingredients (maybe because they already have to if they want to sell to the EU). However, the list of possible excipients is rather short and includes only ingredients from the EU and CH pharmacopoeas.

[Pharma]

If you want to know if something is natural, there’s the Dictionary of Natural Products. It’s not law but THE reference work for scientists. Sure, one has to read the publications to know more about a given molecule.

The definition of natural is simple: Can be produced by living organisms in nature. This excludes petrol, which is obtained through physical and chemical processes over millions of years. Whether or not the substance you’re actually holding in your hands has been biosynthesised or obtained from petrochemicals is not part of the definition.

An issue we have is that the prices for goods from renewable resources are often higher than classic petrochemistry which leads to the point where carbon footprint of the former can exceed that of the latter by far and is used by petrochemistry to discredit greener alternatives. However, this shouldn’t keep us from turning to green chemistry and biotechnology simply for the fact that these produce less waste and impact nature less. Even better would be to reduce, reuse, and recylce (in that order). Like citric acid, ascorbic acid and xylite, to give just some examples, were obtained from petrol and later manufactured with enzymes and green chemistry and even fermentation usually by using waste products such as wood pulp. Most of food grades are ‘green’ whilst technical grades are sometimes still petrochemistry, however more often from renewable feedstock and enzymatic/green tech.

On the other hand, discussing the impact on nature with regard to cosmetics is hypocritical. Cosmetics aren’t needed, use up resources more urgently needed elsewhere, and are always wasteful and pollute our planted, no matter whether they’re pumped out of the earth or grown on fields where food or forest could otherwise grow.

I think it’s still nice to know how things are obtained but honestly, most people don’t want to know where their food and clothes come from, how they are made, and where the waste goes.

[Pharma]

Abdullah said:

@Pharma no problem. What should i search for in Google to get results about these?

Why don’t you want to search in PubMed or ScienceDirect? Anyway, maybe try THIS.