As Alchemilla customers know, we are a natural skin care manufacturer with a huge social/environmental/health conscience combined with the fundamental goal of creating truly exquisite, shelf-safe, health-safe, toxin-free products that do what they say they will do.  We also endeavour to educate readers of our blog and visitors to our website as much as possible about cosmetics ingredients, especially those ingredients we use in Alchemilla products, and ultimately promote a common sense approach to safe skin care.

For every piece of factual, scientific based data available however, there seems to be at least 10 ‘experts’ who in their blogs claim toxicity or harmfulness of the every ingredient natural skin care manufacturers add to their products to ensure they are safe as well as effective.  Popular spotlighted ingredients are the preservatives, which are paramount to ensuring one can safely store a product on the shelf for a reasonable period of time without fear of microbial contamination. We’ve even found a blog that deliberately quotes an FDA’s warning out of context in order to, it appears, begin a culture of fear around phenoxyethanol, a popular preservative in natural skin care products.

With the huge and seemingly growing amount of unsubstantiated information found online, it was refreshing for us recently then, to have come upon a website (personalcaretruth.com) developed by a group of individuals who have been researching personal care ingredients for decades.  The group is dedicated to delivering actual facts about cosmetics ingredients, and to challenge the scare tactics of fear mongerers who it appears would have consumers believe that almost anything that isn’t a plant is harmful to your health.  With real scientific data, the goal of personalcaretruth.com is to clear up many misconceptions about ingredients, particularly in respect to how they are used (topically) and how they are found within the context of a finished product (ie. often in tiny proportions).

Although we have regularly endorsed excellent resources for ingredient safety information and refer to these often in our own research, we have had to contend with a lot of the data being from assessments made of ingredients at 100% concentration, or from a consideration that an ingredient may or may not have been possibly contaminated with something else.  In addition, almost every cosmetic ingredient MSDS (material safety data sheet) has warnings which can sometimes seem alarming.  Again, however, MSDS information is for a 100% concentration of the ingredient, and even simple Sunflower or Hazelnut Oils, in accordance with their respective MSDS’s, require safety goggles and have specific First Aid measures in case they get into contact with the skin!

Additionally, within an actual skin care product, many ingredients that are approved for use but aren’t ‘natural’ in the strictest sense or do have some potential for irritation at high percentages, are found in extremely minute proportions (eg. citric acid, an important pH buffer, or potassium sorbate, a food grade preservative). In fact these ingredients are in some Alchemilla products, but often at less than .05%).  At such tiny concentrations, even ingredients considered irritating have very little potential of doing harm to the end user. 

It would be an understatement, then, to announce how very pleased we were to finally come across personalcaretruth.com, whose focus is on providing scientifically backed information about personal care ingredients within the context of the products in which they are found.

One might argue that the personalcaretruth.com group is not unbiased because one or two of their founders have their own skin care manufacturing business.  A fair charge, but would it not also be fair then to question who is behind many of the alarmist ingredient toxicity claims on the other side of the fence?  Are they unbiased? 

A quick online search will find many of the claims and warnings are from brand manufacturers themselves, or even consumer advocate organizations (within which have founding members who own their own brand of personal care products).  If nothing else, personalcaretruth.com is potentially the first of many online equalizers to come, and a welcome one at that.  It is, after all, becoming increasingly confusing for the conscientious consumer to figure out what is and isn’t safe to put on their bodies, and more often than not they tend to believe the first thing they read about an ingredient (which is often accompanied by no scientific backing whatsoever).

In the end, common sense must prevail.  If one really wants to get a level-headed answer on the question of cosmetics ingredient safety, it really boils down to ensuring that whatever data one bases a conclusion upon, it must come from the most unbiased source possible, who has proper scientific resources to adequately study the ingredient as it is meant to be used in skin care (topically (ie. externally), often in tiny concentrations).  As much as we’re not happy with the FDA’s inability to fully regulate the personal care industry and what this has meant for the unaware consumer, it is one of the most reliable sources available for exact data. Another is the cosmetics ingredient review board and, although there has been argument that this group is not completely unbiased, they have undertaken a lot of research and re-research of the ingredients for which they report and provide an excellent guideline.

Ingredient alarmism seems to have ‘gone viral’ and I often ask myself “why has this happened?”  Certainly, with the information now available to us, it makes perfect sense that we cannot afford NOT to check ingredient lists and do our own research.  I do often question however, what’s in it for ingredient alarmists and remind myself that any individual or company can hide behind a blog.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that unsubstantiated ingredient toxicity claims keep independent businesses so busy defending their formulations, as well as trying to figure out how to create a shelf-safe product without the use of an adequate preservative, and checking and re-checking their research, that they finish up with very little time to do what they originally intended – create safe, natural, effective beauty products!?  Hmm, alarmism sounds like a good strategy for gaining, or maintaining, the competitive edge!

To this end, we at Alchemilla do hereby pledge, in order to not add to consumer confusion, we will continue to only discuss toxic or irritating ingredients on the Alchemilla blog when we can point to adequate scientific references that substantiate our conclusions!