Triclosan – Why you should use it, and why it should be banned
In a recent post on antibacterial products I deliberately avoided talking about individual antibacterial ingredients. Most of them are interesting enough to deserve a post in their own right, and none...
View ArticleEDTA
EDTA turns up near the bottom of the ingredient lists of lots of different personal care products. You also see disodium EDTA and tetrasodium EDTA. For all intents and purposes these are the same –...
View ArticleREACH
I was at a conference about cosmetic regulations yesterday. As is often the case, some of the most interesting things I picked up in random conversations with people I might not otherwise ever meet....
View ArticlePalm Oil
A lot of people are concerned about palm oil production. Palm oil production has some serious environmental issues associated with it to do with sustainability and destruction of precious wildlife...
View ArticleAre Soaps Containing Triclosan Effective?
One of the Chemists’ Corner team made a very good point on Twitter. If antibacterial soaps, most of which contain triclosan, are effective then industry shouldn’t have any trouble demonstrating the...
View ArticleCosmetic Ingredients – Natural or Synthetic?
Since at least the nineties and arguably even before that, the trend has been towards making personal care products that are as natural as possible. The cosmetics business has gone green, both...
View ArticleWholefoods Banned Ingredient List
Whole Foods is a supermarket chain from America but which has global ambitions, including some stores in the UK. Its unique selling point is that it stocks natural and organic products. Speaking...
View ArticleCoco-glucoside
A lot of scientists are keen to point out that ‘safe’ and ‘natural’ don’t always go together. It is equally true that ‘synthetic’ and ‘toxic’ aren’t the same thing either. Another less obvious...
View ArticleDoing Green The Right Way
I am a big fan of being green. I’d love to see a lot more progress in that direction in the cosmetics industry and I am very happy to report on a company that according to a report in the … Continue...
View ArticleMicrobeads In Cosmetics
As a keen environmentalist I often find myself face palming when a cosmetic company picks up on a green issue. They often home in on things that aren’t particularly relevant and propose solutions...
View ArticleCyanide Containing Almonds Withdrawn From Whole Food Stores
I am indebted to my friend the LA Hobo (@thelahobo on Twitter) for drawing my attention to a recent action by the FDA ordering the recall of organic almonds on sale in Whole Foods stores in the United...
View ArticleIs Benzophenone A Risk To Reproductive Health?
Big corporations are run for profits and are not too scrupulous about how they seek them. We have seen tobacco companies ignore the health of smokers. Big chemical companies have pushed lead into...
View ArticleA Quick Guide To The Environmental Crisis
I give green personal care products a pretty rough time on this blog. I don’t have any problem doing this as a public service because so many of them basically aren’t very good. But it does run the...
View ArticleHow Do Organic Accreditations Actually Work?
There are dozens of organic certification schemes. The way most of the big ones work is that they certify a particular supplier and also have a schedule of the actual products covered by that...
View ArticleMicrobeads In Cosmetics Are Bad – But Plastic Is Everywhere
Christmas 2016 is over, and like a lot of people for me the next item on the agenda is getting rid of all the rubbish. I am particularly aware of it this year having read an article in the Biologist...
View ArticleThe Palm Tree – The Cosmetic Industry’s Base
Some things I write about seem quite important to me but somehow don’t really resonate with the people who read my blog. For example I wrote a post on palm oil which explained how the palm oil business...
View ArticleShould You Put Food In Cosmetics On A Hungry Planet?
Should food ingredients be used in cosmetics when the planet is already straining to feed nearly 8 billion people? This was the question posed by The Beauty Botanist, aka Jennifer Hirsch at a joint...
View ArticleWhat the Plastic Microbead Ban Means
I had imagined the UK’s much publicised microbead ban would be basically much like the legislation that is either already in force or well on the way around the world already. Despite all the recent...
View ArticleWhat Do All These Labels Mean?
We now live in a world where information is freely available in quantities much greater than we can possibly need. But information is not knowledge. Knowing facts isn’t much use without the knowledge...
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