Are fragrance allergies all in your head? Episode 146

Perry Romanowski (0:01)

Hi, this is Perry, and you're listening to this new Chemist's Corner, Episode 46

Hello, and welcome to Chemist Corner, the show that will help make you a better cosmetic formulator. I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and I'm very happy you are listening. On today's show, we've got an interview with Kathleen Norris of the Formulator Sample Shop. This company will be of particular interest to the independent formulators out there, since they have a wide range of ingredients and service accounts of many different sizes.

But before we get into that, I thought we'd do a deep dive into the topic of raw materials. There are literally thousands of cosmetic raw materials that formulators can choose from, but did you know that each type of raw material can be broken down into three different categories? Let's talk about that.

If you go through the INCI dictionary, which is the ingredient dictionary that lists all of the ingredients you can use in cosmetic products, you're going to find that there are over 15,000 possible things to choose from. This seems like an amazing array of compounds, and it is. To learn every ingredient would be pretty difficult. Fortunately, there is a lot of overlap in how these ingredients are used in cosmetics. I used to be a biology major, and one of the things I liked best about that subject was that the area called cladistics, or taxonomy, if you like, cladistics is the study of grouping similar species together. So lizards and snakes are grouped together as reptiles, and cows and people are grouped together as mammals. Anyway, I thought there should be a similar classification system for cosmetic raw materials, and there wasn't. So I did a little brainstorming, and I put one together.

When you really look at all the cosmetic raw materials and why they are used in formulas, they can be grouped into just three main categories. Really, all of the ingredients used in cosmetics can be put into one of these three categories. These include functional ingredients, aesthetic modifier ingredients, and claims ingredients. Now, there is a little overlap, and of course, these categories can be divided up further, but as a chemistry student or formulator, it's really helpful to know these three main categories. Now, we can get a bit deeper in future podcasts, but let me explain just the main categories. We'll begin with the functional ingredients.

Functional cosmetic ingredients are the ones that actually have an effect on the body that the formulator is trying to achieve. You cannot make a successful, useful cosmetic product without including at least one functional ingredient. However, you could make an entire cosmetic using only functional ingredients. Vaseline has built a huge brand on a single functional cosmetic ingredient, that's petrolatum. Functional ingredients include things like cleansers, conditioning agents, color-rents fragrances, reactive ingredients, film formers, and drug actives. Every cosmetic you've ever used or made has at least one functional ingredient. Incidentally, functional ingredients are the ones that cosmetic chemists most want new raw material suppliers to make. The number of significantly different functional ingredients has not really increased in many years. I suppose it's because it's really hard to create really new functional ingredients.

Aesthetic modifiers. The most common and abundant type of cosmetic raw material is aesthetic modifiers. Now, these are ingredients which help to make the delivery of those functional ingredients more acceptable. They are the compounds that help the ingredients spread, dilute the ingredients, make them more stable, and improve the look and feel of the overall product. The subcategory of aesthetic modifiers includes solvents, thickeners, preservative, fragrances, pH adjusters, plasticizers, fillers, appearance modifiers, antioxidants, anti-irritants, and delivery systems. When you look at the ingredient list of most cosmetics, most of the ingredients are actually aesthetic modifiers. Since these ingredients don't have any functional benefit, formulators try to minimize the amount of the aesthetic modifiers that they use. This helps keep the cost down and simplifies production. However, these ingredients do play a crucial role in the creation and experience of using a personal care product, so it's important for the formulator to have a thorough knowledge of them and how to use them.

Finally, the claims ingredient. While people use cosmetics to improve the way their skin and hair looks and feels, this isn't the primary reason that people buy cosmetics. Consumers buy cosmetics because they like the story that the product tells. They like the packaging or the way that the product looks and smells, and to help support that marketing story and the claims that are be made about the product, formulators have to include claims ingredients. Claims ingredients, sometimes called fairy dust, are ingredients added to a formula at a low level for the primary purpose of getting to put that ingredient name on the label. This includes ingredients like natural extracts, vitamins, proteins, biotechnology, and even fanciful made up ingredient names. They are not put in the formulators to have really any measurable effect, and almost invariably, they don't. However, most consumers need a story to believe when they buy their cosmetics, and these ingredients help support that story. Brands that don't include claims ingredients are much less successful in the marketplace.