Fresholi | Melting Pot Café

I've just joined the forum, so forgive me if this topic have already been covered!
I've  become a fun of natural home made cosmetics, and I'm a bit confused about the stability of my products. Some cosmetic makers say that there's no need for preservatives in creams and lotions provided you use grapefruit seed extract, or rosehip oil, tea tree, wheatgerm or honey, while others say that a we need a bacteria, yeasts and mould fungi preservative. Can someone help?

Also I noticed that Fresholi provides Ethox Preservative (Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin), but it's not recommended to use for natural formulations containing surfactants.

- What preservative would you use then, in that case?

- Are emulsifiers/dispersant considered "surfactants"? in practice can you use Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin with Polysorbate or Eluxe Pro?

Many thanks for your answers.

Hello and welcome  ;D
Rule of thumb is anything with water in it needs preservative. Bacteria and mould will grow very quickly without it and it can be dangerous. Some emulsifiers do contain surfactants for example steareth-21 does. I have used ethox in many creams with emulsifiers & cetyl and had absolutely no problems.

Welcome Sundhara!
Corrie, Should we explain to Sundhara that you are a good witch and that it is safe to take your advice? Just find it so funny looking at your new pic, and then reading the advice you're giving - have to admit (and don't take this the wrong way) but you don't look like someone I would ask for cosmetics advice at the moment!

Hello Sundhara,

Corrie's right (and you wouldn't get a Safety Assessment for creams/lotions without broad spectrum preservative - even so if the cream contains botanicals or an infusion then challenge testing would be required).

If you make more posts and get to junior status then you'll see more boards are available to you and you'll see more info.

Thank you so much for your email! it's very useful. I've recently become obsessed with soap making, experimenting in cosmetics and toiletries and essential oils. It just started because I wanted to make chemical free products for myself, but then there so much to know and to learn. So many products out there, and so much confusion!

But I'm getting there, slowly... and I think this forum will be very helpful.

Thank you so much again, and despite your picture I trust you  ;) After all I'm a witch too...

Hi and welcome.
Natural preservatives - always controversial!
There are some quite good alternative Parabens/Formaldehyde free preservatives that you can use for surfactant systems.

Welcome.  It is great fun here, you are sure to enjoy yourself.

I don't normally look like this Sundhara, just entering into the Halloween spirit  :mwaha:

Don't mind her, she does really. :mwaha:
Hi Sundhara from another newbie.
Anything that contains water or water based inredients deinetly needs a preservative.  There are a few companies in the states that sell without preserving, flaut many regulations and advocate the chemical free thing. Suffice to say they have been fined many times and for reasons unknown are still trading. Just goes to show the power of advertising. FYI, grapeseed extract will act as an anti-oxidant, as will vit. E and ROE, this is not the same as a preservative. Some grades of GSE also have triclosan in them. IMO,anything that has water and/or comes into contact with water should be preserved.

Eire

Hi Sundhara,

You do realise that you are the....


500th Member!!!!!    :trroll: :ddrumm: :trroll: :ddrumm:

A very warm welcome.  The ethos is fine for creams and lotions but not suitable for, say, liquid surfactant based soaps/shampoos etc...  Like many have said, if you have water in product you need a preservative (unless you keep it in the fridge and intend to use it within a week or so, depending on what it is).

We have had several discussions about preservatives around the forum so it might be worth going through some of the boards/threads, it could help answer some of your questions.

I look forward to chatting with you more around the boards  :)

Welcome Sundhara!  :buttrf:

500th member, wow!  :trroll: :joy: :ddrumm:

Hello and welcome!  (:hug:) Preservatives is always a fun topic ;) If you want to be as natural as possible you might be better of making anhydrous (without water) products.
Unfortunately there are many that sell water based products without preservatives here in the UK too, particularly well known 'beauty-editor loves' type brands so it can be confusing for both consumers and producers. Preservative free is not always safe!

There is a number of new 'natural' (or rather, naturally derived) preservatives disguised as fragrances but they are not permitted as preservatives by the Eu cosmetics directive. Also they require specialised knowledge to work with to cover all bacteria, yeast and fungi as a combination of additives is needed. They are not as yet available to home crafters (that I am aware of) which is a good thing due to the risks involved if the preservative system is not up to the job! . I'm only mentioning them in case you see a 'preservative-free' aqueous product with 'parfum' in the ingredients list as it is perfectly possible they are using one of these new multifunctional additives. Look out for japanese honeysuckle as well, it is a natural paraben ;)

Thanks sha, natural paraben, now you've got me curious. I so intended getting to bed before 2am. It annoys the heck out of me that something like a preservative can be hidden in the 'parfum', not cos I want an unpreserved product, but I would like the choice of which one.
Eire

Parabens occur naturally in many fruits and vegetables so as I understand many of the naturally derived natural preservatives contain these natural parabens. It is a good point about preferring to know exactly what is in a product and as producers, offering that information. It is ironic that customers who do not want preservatives will accept 'parfum' or 'fragrance' on an ingredients list (or the marketers think they will)  ???

Within all the hype around parabens, there is one that St.James's Hospital in Dublin has endorsed as safe (can't rem which one). They recommend deodorant stick (For.Liv) as it only contains this one paraben.
If the naturally occurring ones are used as a preserative, not chemically synthesised, is it stable for products with repeated exposure/use and contamination?

Eire

Sundhara welcome, i didnt want to say anything earlier because i thought the thread would be split into your introduction and the question and i didnt want to miss out on the welcome bit but all the same welcome, all i could possibly have said has been said and better than i would have said it. but i wanted to say that :

is not possible, as  EJ mentioned the more you post, the more you would see and come to agree that  Chemical free is more a myth than reality. i used to believe this too, in fact that was what got me started and interested in the first place. ;) now i try to make safe to use stuff as opposed to chemical free etc.

I must say that I was taken aback from everybody's warm welcome to this forum. And I'm very honored to be the 500th member!

Thank you to all of you for your postings, which are very helpful. I'd gathered that the need to use a preservative was imperative, it's just a matter of which and where.  ???

But I'll keep researching and I'm sure I'll get it right.

You will  ;)

Sorry for coming back to this topic... I've been researching around and I have a few more questions about preservatives:  :ideaw:

Looking at some ingredients in lotions I found out that many use flower water or aloe vera juice, without a preservative. Can you get away using these instead of water and avoid preservatives?
Also, does the use of a vacuum pump bottle preserve the product as it's not in contact with air?
Can a small amount of alcohol also act as a preservative?

This is not because I want to avoid chemicals at all costs, but I want to know what is safe and allowed.
I'm trying to find the right solution to make safe creams and lotions, but I'm still confused about what product to use as there are many with different names, all doing the same job. Most of them are a combination of  phenoxyethanol, ethylhexylglycerin, caprylyl glycol, iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, but which one is more suitable for what?  ???
Can anyone help? Thank you

A vacuum pump style does not preserve a product, but it does prevent contamination by user. The floral waters and aloe vera may already have preservative in them before being added to lotion, but without knowing what and how much, it cannot be reliably be used as a means of preserving a final product. The % of preservative is designed to preserve only the floral water/aloe vera, not a finished product.

Eire

I have PMed you in response to yours but wanted to agree with Eire.

Forgot to mention airless dispensers but these will help prevent nasties from entering the product from hands, air, etc. You'd still need a preservative in your end product even if you use airless dispensers.

Phenoxyethanol combined with ethylhexyl glycerin and or caprylyl glycol is (in my opinion) a really effective allrounder - not so good with high levels of surfactants, but perfect for creams and lotions. Good tolerance to pH and temperature - the phenoxyethanol component is the active ingredient - the others are there to increase the potency so you get a much better preservation than with just phenox alone. Caprylyl glycol can also give a slight improvement to the skin feel of the product (apparently!)

For anyone who doesn't know - Scott has qualifications to back up this statement (doesn't mean that he would not back other preservatives though)

I don't think I'm the only one who is confused about all the paraben/bad hype, am I? I do truly wish that it was possible to make fresh creams/lotions for quick use, and not put preservatives in them.  :-[

The preservative I use has caprylyl glycol in it and it does improve the feel of my cream when I compare it to the other preservatives I've tried.

That's good to know Corrie - thanks.

It is possible to do this Lujos, providing they are for your own use only - kept in the fridge I'm sure most emulsions would last quite a while - one of the commercial issues with preservation, is that the product can't be expected to be kept refridgerated.

Just checked my mayonaise bottle - no preservatives and they advise to keep refridgerated and use within 28 days - allowing for a safety factor of 50% I reckon about 6 weeks for home made emulsions stored in the same way - providing the ingredients were sterilised by the initial heating process.

Scott, why is it ok for mayo to be sold w/out preservative, but not creams and lotions? That makes no kind of sense to me at all, as you'd expect something edible to have MORE rules and regs?

Those are the rules - if you stated that your cosmetic should be kept refrigerated and used within a certain time then it could potentially be possible to do this - what about during transport though?  mayo is hemetically / vacuum sealed and once opened I suppose is used quickly.

This may sound daft but is some of this because you don't keep dipping your fingers in and out of the mayonaise like you do, say, with a face cream?