Episode 394 - Ingredients, hair growth, DIY and more

Perry Romanowski (0:00)

I am 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 cosmetic industry. This is episode 394 I'm your host, Perry Romanowski, and due to our travel schedules, this is going to be a solo episode today. Valerie will certainly be back with me next show. Well, all right, right now, I'm on the road coming to you from Sofia, Bulgaria. It's a lovely place here in Bulgaria. They've got mountains, even some snow still on it, and they've got lots of snails. They just come walking around during the day. It's very strange. And a lot of good food. And you know, apparently, they say they were the ones who invented Greek yogurt. Go figure. All right, well, I'm here for a conference that's put on by the Bulgarian Society of Cosmetic Chemists. You know, people all over the world really want to look and smell good. So I shouldn't be surprised that they're having a meeting here. Who knew that being a cosmetic chemist would involve so much world travel? I really like it. It's a lot of fun. I've gotten to see a lot of different places and more importantly, met a lot of interesting people in the area of cosmetic science. All right, enough with the chit chat. Let's get on to the regular show.

Since this is a solo show, I think it's just easiest for me to go through and just answer questions.

Anna (1:51)

Hi, Beauty Brains. My name is Anna and I recently started to listen to your podcast and I am hooked. From each episode, I learn new stuff I didn't know about, so keep up the good work. My question to you, I recently bought a new sunscreen from Beauty of Josie on. I love it and it works really well for me. But I was still curious about the ingredients list, as always, and I didn't see any well-known preservatives. Only ethylhexylglycerin was mentioned. Now, in Europe, ethylhexylglycerin is not listed as a preservative. Does it have the same effect as, for example, phenoxyethanol or parabens? Or does it need another preservative to keep the formula stable? Thank you so much and can't wait to hear your next episode.

Perry Romanowski (2:34)

Well, thanks, Anna. Let's see this beauty of Jossion. And I don't know why these companies make such a big deal about not using proper preservatives. I know the scares about parabens and formaldehyde donors has really scared off a lot of consumers, but boy, they really worked well as preservatives for systems. They were effective. They were cheap. They were safe, but they developed a bad reputation. And so now we've gone to these alternative preservatives, which I find a bit dubious. Well, let's see. First of all, this is a sun protection product, and it must be produced in Europe because it's not using the same kind of UV protectants that you get in the United States. We just have a lot fewer UV protectors that you can use as a formulator in the United States. Around the world, in Europe, in Asia, Australia, they have a lot more options for formulators. But, you know, as long as you're using sunscreen and it has SPF, you're safer than if you're not using sunscreen. But let's look at this product. What are they using? They're using it for the UVA protection. They get from the diethylaminohydroxybenzoate, and they have methylene bisbenzotriazolidotetra.

I don't even know why I'm reading these off here. Then for UV protection, they've got the ethylhexotriazone, diethylhexylbutaminotriazone, and then methyl bisbenzoyltriazoyltetra-methylbutylphenol.

That works for both UVA and UVB protection. Anyway, if this was the United States, they'd be using zinc oxide and octocinamide. But these are approved in the EU, which is what mainly is working, making this product work. All right, but you asked about the preservatives. Let's look at that. And you are correct. Ethylhexylglycerin is in there, and it's, you know, it's commonly called a preservative, but let's be frank, it's really more of a preservative booster. It's not a preservative on its own, but, you know, it's believed to enhance the effectiveness of some other antimicrobials. And so in that way, it can be part of a system to protect your formula from bacterial or other microbial growth. So what else do they have in there? It looks like they have 1,2-hexanediol, which is a humectant, and that also doubles as the preservative booster. It can help inhibit microbial growth, and that's especially effective against yeast and bacteria, which are some of the main concerns. And they have pentylene glycol too, another ingredient. You know, this one's multifunctional, but it can help to hydrate the skin, but it also can help preserve the product just by creating an environment in the formula that is a little more hostile to growth. But, you know, as they say from Jurassic Park, life finds a way, and so if you don't have a good preservative system, you know, it might lead to some contamination. There's some other stuff they include in here, some fermented extracts, which some people consider supportive of preventing microbial growth like lactobacillus, pumpkin ferment extract, they have soybean ferment extract, rice ferment, lactobacillus rice ferment extract, asparagus ferment, all these different ferments. You know, this is the area where people are trying to develop preservatives. And what they go to are these fermentation things of different kinds of extracts, which presumably there's a yeast that creates some antimicrobial ingredients while it's fermenting. It's a little bit dubious to me. So there really aren't any traditional preservatives in this formula, like parabens or phenoxyethanol. But in some systems, you know, these ingredients and this blend of ingredients can inhabit bad microbes. They're... These use of ferments are often part of this trend called biopreservation. And it's supposed to be gentler on your skin. Unfortunately, it's not as effective at killing microbes. So that can be a big problem. You know, I personally think that stuff they're using in this formula is not particularly good. And I wouldn't have a lot of faith that the product is going to be well preserved for a very long time. But obviously, the company feels different because they're selling it. And that's the formula they went with. You know, I would just say make sure you're going to use it. Just make sure you smell it each time before you use it. Because if it starts to smell kind of weird, that means microbial growth is happening. Unfortunately, that does not mean just that it always is going to smell weird when you have microbial growth happening. But that's one good indicator or the color of the thing changes. That's another good indicator. But I would say based on this ingredient list, I might worry a bit that it's going to be contaminated pretty quickly. I wish companies would stick with parabens and formaldehyde donors. But my concern when formulating is the safety of the product. Not everybody is concerned with that. And when I say safety of the product, I say it's more safe to have a product that is not going to be contaminated with bacteria and yeast than to have a product that might be contaminated, but it doesn't contain ingredients that people are more afraid of. And people are afraid of parabens for not any good proven reason. But in the cosmetic industry, we sell things through marketing. And just these lactobacillus ferments, they sell products, they look a little safer or a little less scary than something that has methylparaben in it, for example. Even though the methylparaben, in my view, is the safer product. All right, let's move on to the next question. This one comes to us from Chiara. And let's hear what Chiara has to say.