What’s in a Name? Making Sense of Ingredient Decks for Personal Care Products to Safeguard Your Health Part 2?
There are some clues that can help you navigate the vast sea of ingredients out there today. Most synthetic ingredients have “chemical” sounding names rather than botanical sounding names. That makes sense since synthetic ingredients are made from chemicals in a lab. Ingredients that are 3 or 4 letter capitalized acronyms like TEA, DEA, EDTA, and PEG or ingredients that have a number attached to them like quaternium-7, 15, 31, 60, etc. are always synthetic. Names ending in “ate” like sulfate, acetate, palmitate, sarcosinate, or phthalate are usually synthetic too.
Even something as innocuous as hydrolyzed animal protein is potentially very toxic due to its ability to readily transform into a nitrosamine. Nitrosamines are a class of compounds that are by-products of chemical reactions between certain ingredients (referred to as nitrosating agents) and nitrogen compounds, which are apparently quite prevalent in cosmetics manufacturing. About 80% of the 120 or so that have been studied were found to be carcinogenic. Often, the conditions under which cosmetics are stored and raw materials prepared can lead to nitrosamine “contamination.”
It can sometimes be hard to distinguish between a botanical and a chemical name in the case where the botanical name of a plant-based ingredient is derived from the underlying chemical composition or structure (usually referred to as the chemotype) of the plant. For example, the term methyl salicylate sounds a little suspect. On the one hand it describes the aromatic compound found in essential oils of wintergreen or sweet birch, on the other hand it can also be produced synthetically. There’s really no way to know for sure unless the manufacturer lists it as an essential oil or a component of an essential oil. Likewise, a common ingredient like glycerin or glycerol can be produced synthetically from propylene alcohol or derived naturally from vegetable oils. Usually natural product manufacturers will list glycerin as vegetable glycerin or glycerin (derived from vegetable source), but if they don’t then there’s no way to know by simply reading the label.
May 27th, 2010 at 7:14 am
nice blog for safe guard care products.good information of aromatheraphy.