[Pharma]

Ah, LuxGlide N350… that looks like it could work. I’ll add that to my ‘to try list’. Thanks!

[Pharma]

@chemicalmatt What’s the issue with propanediol in w/o? Are other diols better or even worse? That’s beyond the horizon of knowledge & experience .

Some manufacturers and theory say that polymers are actually a good thing (catchword Geltrap). However, it highly depends on the inner surface charge and the polymer’s charge as well as the amount polymer:interface -> failure is probably more likely than success if one simply guesses the amount of polymer to add.

[Pharma]

I haven’t. Science has a nice explanation why substituting silicones with non-silicones (especially esters, for Easter bunny’s sake!) for anti-soaping is virtually impossible unless large enough amounts of oils are used to kill the emulsifier’s capacity (i.e. breaking the emulsion). Sure, pure hydrocarbons such as Cetiol Ultimate or squalane will do a better job than isoamyl laurate but it’s like trying to replace simethicone (1-2 pills) against flatulence with olive oil. Replacing it with essential oils does work though this is also due to pharmacological actions and not just the anti-soaping effect. In theory, one should give essential oils a try . Other potential substances to try can be ethanol, hydrophobic silica, and ethylene bis stearamide. However, all these won’t feel like silicones and given that cosmetics is more about feel than action…

[Pharma]

Combine the different scents with different colours too. Scientifically proven that the placebo effect will be fortified. No joking! There’s even cosmetic literature available regarding colours (for marketing, target user group, and perceived/believed effects).

If you add oils, quaternary ammonium compounds, or volatile silicones will change the final product, wet and dry and ‘after-feel’; as a pure example, for dry hair, damaged hair, and frizz, respectively. Combine, say, an ester oil with traces of argan oil, a QAC with honeyquat, and a silicone with err… whatever sounds nicer and more natural than silicone LoL.

[Pharma]

@PhilGeis Good to know! P. aeruginosa is a really nasty bug especially in the shower with all the aerosol and the main reason why many eye drops have to be used within 1 month after opening! Although ‘only’ an opportunistic human pathogen, for those who do get an infection… Ouch!

[Pharma]

Define ‘good’ and ‘natural’.

If you’re looking for something really natural: lecithin

If you look for smarter options, check out Evonik/Dr. Straetmans: Dermofeel PGPR, Isolan GPS, Isolan PDI, Isolan GO 33, or Isolan GI 34. Obviously, these often work best in combinations for example with Dermofeel GO soft, Dermofeel PO, or other lipophilic (poly-) glyceryl esters.

[Pharma]

What exactly is that supposed to be? Are the lacking % supposed to be preservatives and perfume?

I can tell you what it’s not:

A: o/w emulsion: no appropriate emulsifier

B: w/o emulsion: no appropriate everything

C: Stearate cream: no base, not enough stearate

D : Cold cream: not enough wax

[Pharma]

At a such low inclusion rate, maybe the one point to consider, apart from an at best mild effect on spreading and finishing touch, is reduced soaping .

[Pharma]

Depends. Unless someone actually measured penetration of your three ingredients using said three penetration enhancers, there is no way telling whether or not they work. The issue with penetration enhancers (especially solvents like DMI and ethoxydiglycol) is that they may actually increase too much or even decrease penetration. If you look at scientific literature, using penetration enhancers can lead to seemingly great disappearance of the ‘active’ from skin surface but just bind it in the top layer or transport it into the blood stream. In either case, the intended action of your three constituents will be toast.

Apart from that:

- Low pH will already help with skin penetration of acidic actives (ascorbic and ferulic acid) whilst penetration of tocopherol won’t change between acidic and neutral conditions. Given that your solvents aren’t pH active, there will be no difference in penetration from a simple logic point of view.

- Tetrahydropiperine might just be another hype. There is one publication (from the patent holders) and their data on skin don’t convince me. Found it also on the Cayman Chemicals HP with a reference to skin penetration. Piperine is a gastrointestinal absorption enhancer for some compounds with still unknown modes of action. However, the postulated ones of piperine, unlike mentioned in said publication, have nothing to do with skin absorption. The only exception I know of is that for heat sensation (THP is about 6 times hotter than piperine) which causes increased blood flow. Whether or not chemical modification would prevent or even increase penetration enhancement remains to be demonstrated properly. Meaning, there is no neat answer to your question without proper measurements.

[Pharma]

pH 5 is limit and you’d need quite a bit. Salicylic acid works best below pH ~4. You might get away with it in blends. However, I lack any experience/knowledge in that regard.

[Pharma]

A laptop with Excel (my own template), Word, PDF and the like. My template isn’t useful for someone else… I should really learn how to program VBA.

A lab book (= a chaotic bunch of loose papers scribbled full of ideas and observations even myself can’t decipher after a few months) are just something I learned and had to do (mostly because these hold up in court whilst electronic documents might be altered too easily).

[Pharma]

Pharma industry does test under different conditions, high as well as low humidity (water vapour can go either way), in the final packaging as well as before and under different conditions/setups.

But then again, it all depends on the questions you want to have answered. If it’s about physical stability of an emulsion, you may as well just heat a ‘test tube’ and/or use a centrifuge. From my understanding, chemical stability isn’t really tested in cosmetics, just colour changes (and microbial growth). As long as you don’t have an anhydrous or highly hygroscopic product, water vapour permeation through the packaging won’t, in most cases, have a noticeable impact. However, air within the container (headspace) and therefore air permeability of the packaging, the product/air interface, and the depth (max distance from interface) of the product will. Depending on the product you test, light will also be a factor you’d have to consider but you probably won’t test for that with a standard oven.

Bottom line is: Don’t ask what others do/think and duplicate but ask what YOU want to see/prove and plan your tests accordingly.

[Pharma]

These won’t work. You’d need something like nanoparticles, liposomes or other microencapsulating ‘shuttles’ for that job.

Solvents and co. only work with low molecular weight molecules.

[Pharma]

It means that the probability for the treatment being identical with placebo is quite small. Whether or not the statistical test used to obtain that p-value was the right one and whether or not the threshold of α=5% indicates a significant difference between the two groups remains questionable.

Furthermore, even a very small p-value can be regarded as insignificant, for example when the confidence interval of the treatment group is so large that it encloses the placebo group.

You have to read and understand a publication to be able to tell if there really is a difference. It’s all too easy to cheat with statistics.

[Pharma]

Sponge said:

…It’s just micronized and suspended?

Yep. Usually not even micronised but just suspended.

[Pharma]

Best to always add one .

[Pharma]

Correct, a chelate helps.

[Pharma]

Depends on manufacturing and refining process. Apart from that, about as (un-)likely.

[Pharma]

@Microformulation I couldn’t have said it better 😉 .

[Pharma]

@Bill_Toge True on a mathematical scale though I’d suppose it’d feel nearly as bad bathing in it than it would feel bathing in an equimolar potassium hydroxide solution. What I meant with ‘invented by mother nature’ is ‘produced by living organisms’ and arginine is the one I know which probably holds the lead. BTW it falls just half a pK unit short of guanidine. I wouldn’t phrase this ‘that strong a base’ but rather ‘a slightly weaker base’ .

Brushing my teeth with it… I’m now seriously doubting if that’s such a good idea without something else in the toothpaste to ‘take off the edge’… Maybe/probably/likely it’s really arginine bicarbonate which is actually added??? Gosh… @devo2 contact a manufacturer such as Colgate and ask them (and/or get the SDS or other specs)! I’ve never measured the pH of a commercial toothpaste but I kinda can’t imagine it being in the 13th.

[Pharma]

Depends on your facility, your capital, your definition of ‘sanitize’, how clean the bottles are…

If they have dirt in them, use a dishwasher with a bottle-adapter, also comes industrial sized.

If they have a problem with microbes: ethylene oxide and gamma-radiation come to mind.

[Pharma]

L-Arginine would be perfect, it’s the form which naturally occurs. Given that only very few pure amino acids are sold as racemates (synthetic mixture of L- and D-), I don’t explicitly add the L- in front of amino acids because it’s, in most cases, self-evident that this is the form we’re talking about .

Regarding arginine bicarbonate, that’s also a salt… but if you look at toothpaste labels and scientific literature, arginine and arginine bicarbonate are equally used. From a safety-point of view, bicarbonate will be more gentle. Now that I think about it: I’m not even fully convinced that some brands truly use arginine free base as stated on the label but rather bicarbonate. Arginine free base is one of the strongest bases mother nature has invented. You’d have to measure pH of your product and try out first, before you sell it! Try finding some more data on which form to use would be what I’d do… maybe contact one of the big brands and ask what they really add?

Maybe the bodybuilding versions would work too, I honestly don’t know. Though there is zip evidence/publication but just reasons why these forms are likely less active.

Nope, I don’t make toothpastes, I simply know a bit more than what I’ve officially studied .

[Pharma]

I don’t know about TerraCycle… maybe finding some sort of package which could be used in the consumers household as an upcycled or re-purposed product before, ultimately, ending in a landfill?

@Perry’s note regarding progressive deterioration of the raw material after each cycle: True. Although, with a very few exceptions, only plain PET and HDPE packagings are recycled. Compound materials and other ‘mid and low value’ plastics such as LDPE, PP, PS, PU or PC are currently not recyclable for economical purposes. Regulations preventing recycling: There’s for example subsidies which are paid for recycling like in the UK: Say you’ve got a ton of mixed plastics and manage to recycle 50% of it so you get subsidies for 500 kg recycled material. If you export all of it (which was easily possible till 2018) to China, you get subsidies for 1 ton. In China, a bit over 50% was recycled, the rest was dumped, burnt, or lost and forgotten. On the other hand, you now have 500 kg of medium quality plastic pellets costing as much as 1 ton of pure virgin pellets ‘directly from the oil well’.
Apart from that: PE, PP and PS are not esters or the like but pure hydrocarbons. So far, these can not efficiently be broken down into reusable monomers, not by enzymes, not chemically.

Regarding bacteria digesting the modern world: No, they won’t because they will not be brought into nature. Purified enzymes like those commonly used in washing detergents will be used. Sure, you shouldn’t use those for synthetic clothes :smiley: . However, the enzymes I’ve heard of are far from usable and require serious remodelling… they need to be about 100 to 1’000 times faster to become useful.

[Pharma]

RedCoast said:

…Do you think algae oil-based plastic packaging is the best viable option?…

Difficult to say. Likely it’s better to focus on reuse and reduce until the recycle part has been sorted out. It might be necessary to rethink the whole strategy and start producing materials & consumer goods which are easier to recycle and better degradable. Chemical and/or microbial/enzymatic recycling strategies may become helpful too. As long as we don’t have a viable strategy how we want to get out that mess…

Staying away from plastics would, in theory, be the best solution (and maybe the only one) but it’s simply not possible. Increasing the costs for virgin plastic would be another though the low crude oil price and heavy lobbying of the oil industry makes this impossible too. There is, as of now, not much reasonable we could do apart from everyone reusing, reducing, and rethinking his/her way of living in a throwaway society.

[Pharma]

Uppss…

- Err, yes, clove, not clover. Sorry for the misspelling. We call these two plants by completely different names (Nägeli and Chlee, respectively) and late at night… Clove EO has a quite distinctive smell but works great for toothache.

- Potassium carbonate is maybe only available as pharmaceutical grade or chemical raw material. Super unlikely to find a cosmetic grade because, I reckon, nobody use it in cosmetics.

- Arginine is an amino acid and, as free base, a quite alkaline substance too (you could for example use it instead of soda lye to neutralise carbomers or neutralise acids on the teeth after eating). Nowadays, it’s +/- readily available as free base cosmetic grade or ‘raw chemical’. Food grade is way more common (found in body-building shops) but they usually sell it in salt form such as HCl, alpha-ketoglutarate, or malate. These salts will not cut it because they are neutral, very water soluble, and will likely not work regarding dentin, too.

Can you order from abroad or have a ‘contact in China’ (they usually ship worldwide)? As said, Chinese products aren’t always bad. They produce an awful lot of chemicals for the rest of the globe simply because they can do it for a fraction of $$ the rest of us could. Hence, every mayor pharma company buys their APIs there… and so, some key antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals are produces solely in China (India would be second place but has more quality & adulteration issues).