Learning About Lotions Part 2- Preservatives Continued

While there are several preservatives available now, the most important thing is that the preservative used works. When I made lotion the first few times, I just followed a basic recipe and didn't give much thought to inhospitable conditions for the preservative. Looking into them more now, there are various factors to consider. I've listed a few of them below.

1. Temperature
This one is an easy one to adjust for. Find out the temperature at which it's safe to add, and then during cool down, check the temperature and add the preservative when it's low enough. A few can withstand higher temperatures, so you might be able to add those to the water phase (possibly oil phase, though I don't recall seeing one that's added to the oil phase).

2. pH
This is one of my favorite considerations. You get to play with pH test strips or a fancy pH tester, though for now I'm sticking with the test strips. Preservatives seem to prefer acidic environments, though some will work at higher pH levels.

3. Reactions & Compatibilities
 You need to make sure your preservative won't react with another ingredient, leading to something like benzene in your lotion. You need to make sure it works with all ingredients, such as cationic/non-ionic/anionic surfactants and your emulsifier.

4. Light exposure
I've only seen this so far in reference to Tinosan, but if you use that preservative, you should make sure to avoid exposing the preservative to light, and you will need to test the final product if you use anything other than opaque bottles. Tinosan actually sounds fairly interesting since it contains silver citrate. I think that sounds pretty cool.

5. Benefits
Some of the natural preservatives offer benefits on top of preserving your product. For example, willow bark extract is a natural source of salicylic acid-like ingredients, so it can improve your skin.

6. Broad Spectrum
If the preservative used kills only one type of nasty (bacteria (gram positive and negative), yeast, fungus, or mold), you'll need to add another to kill the others.

7. Solubility
Usually you add preservatives to products that contain water, but you might add one to an oil-based scrub that will be exposed to water. In this case you need to find a preservative that is soluble in anhydrous solutions.

Learning about Lotions Part 1- Preservatives

I've started researching preservatives and other lotion ingredients, and soon I will start experimenting with making lotions again. I don't know if I'll sell lotions- it depends on how the experiments work out. I'll be writing about the various elements of lotions as I go. These are general thoughts, not in depth information on any one item. I find researching lotion making very exciting, and I want to share that knowledge with people who might not know what goes into making lotions. I think it's important to know what is going into the products you use, why they're there, and how they work.

I have made lotions and creams in the past, but I haven't made any to sell. If I were to sell any, I couldn't market my brand as preservative free, because there's no way I'm selling a lotion without something to keep it safe. Recently I've started to feel like calling Ivre de Fleurs a preservative brand is causing me to be a part of the scaremongering against preservatives, and I don't want that. I want to make products as naturally as I can, but I also don't want to be limited to using only ingredients that the average person can pronounce.

I'm starting with some natural preservatives in my experiments. It sounds like they don't work well for the most part, but maybe I can get them to work somehow. The ones I'm trying now are various fermentations and extracts, and some offer additional benefits beyond preserving. If they don't work, I'll start looking into other preservatives. A broad-spectrum preservative system is important to keep your water-based products free from bacteria, yeast, mold, and fungus out there. I've got a little kit to test for preservative efficacy, so I should be able to determine some things quickly, but then you have to make sure it works over time (no separating, no mold or fungus, no other nasty things). If I have a good recipe, I'd need to send it off for challenge testing, to make sure it's verified safe.

Parabens are one of the preservatives that you hear most often about, and usually not in a good way. Parabens are actually really good at preserving products, they are used at very small percentages, and I'm not convinced they'll lead me to a long and painful death. While a lot of people don't bother to check the labels of their beauty products, those that do often don't want parabens in them, so I'll be skipping them.

By the way, honeysuckle extract has a molecule that acts like a paraben. I've only read a little into it, and I'm not sure if it's effective as parabens are, but if you are avoiding parabens, you might want to add honeysuckle extract to your list of ingredients to avoid. Grapefruit seed extract might also have parabens in it- the parabens are being used to preserve the extract, and are then helping to preserve the final product. It seems like there's a lot of controversy on grapefruit seed extract, so I don't want to go there.

Formaldehyde donors are another type of preservative, but I haven't read too much into them yet. I have no plans to use them, but I'd still like to read up on them some more.

There are a few preservatives that can be listed as "parfum" or "fragrance" on a label. If a product claims to be preservative free but lists fragrance, they may or may not be using that fragrance to preserve the product. I've read of two- one that has a rosy scent, and another that's more vanilla/almond. I'm slightly confused as to why fragrance would be preferable to preservatives, but I guess it depends on why you're avoiding an ingredient.

Hydrosols

Lately I've been researching hydrosols- water that has been used to distill a plant for its essential oil. While they are usually a byproduct of essential oil distillation,  sometimes the distillation is done specifically for creating the hydrosol. They are often cheaper than the essential oil, perhaps always, but I haven't looked too much into it yet. The scent is lighter, and often quite different than the fragrance of the essential oil.

Witch hazel is one of the most common hydrosols, and you can often find it at your drugstore, mixed with 14% alcohol as a preservative. You can sometimes find rose or orange blossom waters in the baking section.

The problem with hydrosols is that since they do contain water, they can go bad. If you're buying small amounts for personal use, it's probably safe to keep it in your refrigerator and use them quickly.While looking into hydrosols, I also started looking into preservatives, since I wouldn't want to sell anything that could go bad easily. While I didn't want to use preservatives in my products at first, after doing some research, I've found some that I would be comfortable using in my products. If the tests turn out well, I might have some hydrosol products available for sale soon. There is also alcohol- a good amount of high proof alcohol also acts as a preservative (see witch hazel, above).

I have bought several small bottles of hydrosols, and while I plan on moving forward with using some of them, others were not so appealing. Yarrow is almost gag-inducing. There are also some fruit hydrosols out there, which can be used to create natural fragrances with strawberry, apple, and other fruity scents.