Month: October 2010

Preservatives come in two main groups – the formaldehyde donors and the non-formaldehyde donors. Formaldehyde donors include DMDM hydantoin, diazolidinyl urea, imidiazolidinyl urea, and quaternium 15. Non-formaldehyde donors include everything else like phenoxyethanol and iodopropynyl butylcarbamate. The formaldehyde donors are more water soluble than oil soluble, and work by decomposing slowly over the life span...

So now that I’ve sold you on the need for preservatives, how exactly do they work? Preservatives inactivate the microorganisms in our products in a few different ways, but the primary way is to cause them cause some kind of chemical disruption that leads to death. They leak their internal fluids, they can’t maintain pH,...

Grapefruit seed extract (GSE) is derived from the seed and pulp of grapefruits, and it may contain many lovely things – anti-oxidants, flavonoids, Vitamin C, citric acid, phytosterols, and tocopherols – but it is NOT a preservative. It may behave as an anti-oxidant in our products, but it will not keep the beasties out of...

We use our preservatives to prevent little beasties from growing in our lotions…but what kinds of beasties want to live in our products? Gram positive bacteria: These are bacteria that turn dark blue or purple when Gram stained in the lab. They lack the outer membrane of the gram negative bacteria. This family includes staphylococcus,...