Does lip balm expire and other beauty questions – Episode 174

Perry Romanowski (0:00)

Hello, this is Perry and you're listening to The Beauty Brains.

Hello and welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real scientists answer your beauty questions and give you an insider's look at the beauty product industry. This is episode 174 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and with me today is hair color cosmetic chemist extraordinaire, Valerie George. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie George (0:32)

Hi, Perry. Hi, Beauty Brains.

Perry Romanowski (0:34)

On today's episode, we're going to be answering your beauty questions about why is the prescription azelaic acid so expensive? Do cosmetic products expire?

Is petroleum in skin products like aquaphor bad for you? And what's the difference between moisturizers and hydrators? Plus, we'll cover stories that we found interesting in the cosmetic industry. Should be a fun show, but first, we should say hello to Valerie. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie George (1:02)

Hi, Perry. How was your time in Florida?

Perry Romanowski (1:04)

You know, I had a lovely time in Florida. It's always nice to get out of the wintertime and into the sun of Florida.

I got to speak on the topic of clean beauty, which seems to be all the rage these days.

Valerie George (1:16)

Was the crowd receptive to it?

Perry Romanowski (1:18)

Yeah, yeah, they were. Did you know that the term clean beauty has overtaken the term natural cosmetics in terms of Google searches per month?

Valerie George (1:29)

Oh, that's really interesting.

Perry Romanowski (1:31)

Clean beauty is nice because it gives you the, you can use synthetics, right? So you get all the fear mongering of naturals, but still you can use synthetics.

Valerie George (1:39)

Well, what I like about it, and this is true to natural beauties to some extent, is clean beauty is really defined by the brand. So what do they define as clean?

What do they, you know, even natural define as natural? But I think that's sort of interesting that every brand can have their own take on what they allow and don't like about products.

Perry Romanowski (1:58)

Exactly. I mean, at some level, you can do that with natural, but people do have a sense of what natural already means, whereas clean, nobody really knows what clean means. So it can mean anything.

Valerie George (2:10)

Well, cool. I'm glad your talk was well-liked. I can't wait to hear it this fall in California.

Perry Romanowski (2:15)

That's right. I'll be there in September.

All right, shall we move on to Beauty News?

So here's a story that came across my desk. It was about microplastics being banned in the EU. In the story, the EU was proposing to ban microplastics in products like cosmetics, detergents, and agricultural products. The concern with the microplastics, of course, is that they will get into the environment and they mess with the waterways and have a negative impact on wildlife, and some people say even on people. The article stated that 36,000 tons of microplastics are released into the environment every year. Sure does sound like a lot of those little beads, right? Yikes. Then they go on to say that this ban is going to force the cosmetic industry to reformulate over 24,000 formulas, which sounds pretty high to me. I did not realize these microbeads were in that many formulas in the EU. And they also said that it would cost the sector more than 12 billion pounds a year in lost revenue, which that didn't seem right to me either.

Valerie George (3:26)

Well, is that lost revenue from not being able to sell the microplastic beads into these products or from the lost products themselves? Because I think people will still need the products, right?

Perry Romanowski (3:38)

What the industry was saying is that there's no good replacement for those plastic microbeads in the products. And so the EU is banning an ingredient without there being a substitute ingredient that they can use. The industry also goes on to further say that the ban is not good because there's no scientific evidence that the microplastics that are found out in the environment are coming from cosmetics.

I mean, I personally have no problem with this ban of these microplastics. I mean, they don't seem like a good idea to me anyway. And the thing is, I don't really think you get much of a benefit out of them. I know they're put in, say, exfoliating products, and I just think it's a gimmick. I don't think you really get much benefit from them. Maybe it's just me.

I've looked for evidence of them giving you a special extra benefit. I just haven't found it.

Valerie George (4:27)

Well, I think there's better exfoliants, first of all, at least for the skin. But in terms of how much marine pollution comes from microplastics in cosmetics, I think it's such a really small fragment. The one aspect about this proposed EU ban that I really like is that it actually goes past cosmetics and goes into detergents and agricultural products and pretty much things that enter the waterways. I like that because I think there are, for example, in toilet cleaners, microplastics that help keep your toilet clean. And I think those provide more of a source of pollution than cosmetics. And I think that information was actually substantiated. I went to a talk, I think it was Dr. Robert Lockhead.