Can sunless tanners be organic? Episode 226

Perry Romanowski (0:00)

Hi, I'm Perry, and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Hello, and welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the beauty product industry. This is episode 226 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is Valerie George. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie George (0:30)

Hi, Perry.

Perry Romanowski (0:32)

Well, Valerie, on today's show, we're going to be answering questions about whether glycerin is bad for curly hair, whether encapsulated ingredients make the products work better, if scalp exfoliators work, whether beauty companies can hide allergens in their products, and what is the difference between organic DHA and non-organic DHA products?

Valerie George (0:58)

Oh, some great questions.

Perry Romanowski (0:59)

Yeah, yeah, lots of questions. Plus, we're going to cover some beauty science news. But first, as always, I like to chat with Valerie. So how's it going, Valerie?

Valerie George (1:09)

It's going good. It's going good, everything's great.

Perry Romanowski (1:13)

Well, that's good, because last time you were a little off, and you were working a lot. You're still working a lot, I guess.

Valerie George (1:20)

Oh, still working a lot. In LA, we have this weather system called June Gloom.

And it basically means that in the morning, the sky will be cloudy and overcast, maybe a little precipitation.

Precipitation being a loose term is kind of like just damp air, basically. But that's considered rain in California. And in the afternoon by 1 p.m. it burns off to reveal a sunny sky. And I always get like headaches during June Gloom, so it's kind of like, bleh. But tomorrow's July 1st, so hopefully it's gone.

Perry Romanowski (1:52)

You know, it's almost halfway through. Today, I did 181 push-ups.

I'm on this, I don't know if I tell you about this goal. I start at the beginning of the year. I do one push-up every single day, one extra a day. So January 1st, you do one, then you do two the next day, and today I did 181

Valerie George (2:13)

Right, because today's the 181st day of the year.

Perry Romanowski (2:16)

It is, although we don't like to date our podcasts like that because not people know.

Valerie George (2:22)

Yeah, well, you know, you can cut that out if you want. But I only know what day of the year it is because that's how we do our batch coding system for our hair color production.

Perry Romanowski (2:32)

Oh, really? So somebody could take a product and look at it, and there's going to be, what, 181 on there, and they'll know that was made in late June?

Valerie George (2:40)

Yep. Well, if they know the Julian dating system, then yes.

Perry Romanowski (2:46)

Julian datings, that's different from the Gregorian dating system?

Valerie George (2:49)

Yeah, I think it's called the Julian calendar system. Yeah, something like that. But yeah, so if people know the code, they could know that. That's actually how we know what day and what shift it was. There's some other numbers with it that's part of the coding, but that's how we know when to go back and look at our records.

Perry Romanowski (3:04)

It's interesting, at Alberto, when I was working there, we had the same sort of coding system. So if you knew the date, you could look at the date code stamp and figure out the day of the year it was produced and what time. So we had three shifts, first, second, third shift, and you could tell which shift it was produced on to.

Valerie George (3:25)

Yeah, so I don't know if we've ever actually talked batch codes on the podcast before. I know we've talked about, there's an app you can use, and you could put the batch code in and get an expiration date out of it, maybe. But so a batch code is something that's required on all products manufactured in the US and it's usually ink jetted with a little printer onto the bottle. It's usually on the bottom. Most brands try to get it out of the way. If it's a tube, it's in the reverse of the crimp, or it could be printed just anywhere on the tube.

But this is, so a manufacturer has traceability for products. So if you have an adverse reaction, or there's mold in your product, or just anything happens, you can contact the manufacturer, give them this ink-jeted code, or code that's embossed into the packaging, and they can trace it back to what day was it made, what shift was it made on, even what tank was it made on, what line was it made on. There's lots of things.