Group items tagged

for a little throwback but with a new twist - nanoparticles in cosmetics. how the plastic packaging of cosmetics with new materials can help protect + preserve the cosmetics it contains. 

This may seem a little random, but after reading all of these articles, it's a bit unnerving to think that we let preservatives sit on our faces all day long, gathering into our pores and clogging them. From reading this article the word 'inorganic' and 'plastic' stood out to me the most since these are unnatural products that block pores.

I agree with you, Amanda, that thinking about all the stuff in our cosmetics seems "unnerving". Ignorance is bliss, but now that we are more educated about the chemistry behind cosmetics, its seems really weird to be putting all these strange chemicals on our face. When I read the labels on my products, I used to just think, "wow look at all those chemicals with long names" but now I recognize them and think, "There are pthalates and sodium lauryl sulfates, and all those other dangerous compounds in my shampoo?????"

maybe we should look at the chemistry behind simvastatin - how it can penetrate the skin? after that it's a lot of biology 

That could be a really cool blog post Andrew- makeup that is actually beneficial to your skin. I know there are some concealers that not only cover acne but actually contain ingredients that help heal it! I'm sure there are lots of other products like that.

A lot of commercials say that their product will help clear skin, but how many actually do? And what do they use to do it?

Anti-aging cosmetics might be a good topic, but once again, as long as we don't stray too far into biology and stay focused on the chemistry of the topic. 

I was actually trying to find an article on the chemical processes behind anti-aging cremes the other day but I haven't found a good one yet. You are definitely right though, I think anti-aging cosmetics could be a really interesting topic to look into especially to see if these cosmetics actually can produce significant results.

Yeah it seems as though there isn't really one certain chemical process that prevents all types of aging, but rather there are a bunch. I wrote an article about antioxidants, but another widespread one seems to be alpha hydroxy acids AHAs

This site explains all the basics of the chemistry behind cosmetics, such as lotions, moisturizers, chapsticks, etc.

we should pick something that interests us from this site, and go from there, because our topic is really broad, and I feel like right now, we are all over the place.

This article says that scientists have found evidence that a model who used a great deal of cosmetics (concealer, foundation, corrective makeup) in her career are to blame for the birth defects to her son, (the phthalates in most of the cosmetics). Maybe we can find more articles that result in someone suffering defects due to phthalates.

It would be interesting if makeup companies were forced to be transparent about the long term effects of their products. I mean are companies even thinking of that kind of thing when they make their products? Do they do long term tests? or do they just test to make sure that their products don't cause damage over the short period of time they are actually used? After working on this blog for a couple months, I'm realizing that I am a very ignorant consumer: I just use products without really considering how safe they are for me. I always thought that FDA approved meant that a product was safe so it's a little scary realizing that that actually isn't the case.

It's true that companies should test their products for long term effects, however, realistically, that would be VERY expensive, and by then that product may not be "hottest thing out there." An idea could be that we could look into the business aspect of producing cosmetics. For example, the costs in getting the materials together, testing it, marketing, etc.

This is an easy to read, interesting blog post about the usage of worlds like "hypo-allergenic" and "non-comedogenic" on cosmetics, and what it actually means chemically for products to be labelled with those words. This kind of addresses what we were talking about on the simvastatin article, about cosmetics that can help clear skin Things that are non-comedogenic do not necessarily clear skin, but they do not cause acne. We could start there, looking at chemical compounds in cosmetics that can cause acne and that don't cause acne and then look into how to treat it.  

Here is one organization fighting animal testing. It is interesting that they point our that animal testing is still used even though it supplies results that are not always applicable to humans. I think this could be a really interesting blog topic!

If worse come to worst, we can always relate how an animal absorbs the cosmetics' chemicals differently than humans do (relating it back to chemistry).

true true so this covers the whole "relating to other fields" topic. and animal chemistry (is there such a thing?) is definitely worth looking at.

The more chemistry-ish side to cosmetics. Very helpful..

This article is from 2006. Although a bit dated, it is still worth reading. It poses the possibility of health risks of nano-cosmetics which we know gold colloids utilize. 

Interesting article about causes of skin allergies from WebMD. Looks like fragrances can play a big part in allergies and it also looks like there are some things that you can do to prevent these allergic reactions.

Interesting - but we have to be careful not to stray into the biology of allergies when explaining why they occur.

Article on easier way to make acrylic acid polymers which, after I looked it up, is actually used in a lot of cosmetic products. This may be relevant to what we're studying now because it mentions emulsifying agents (connected to colloids). 

yeah when I was reading articles a lot of the time they mentioned emulsions and colloids and stuff like that. We could definitely talk about that. Also, maybe we could talk about foams and aerosols too. I sense some future blog posts! :D

Do you think people should be concerned - or it's just the media sensationalizing another possible harmful effect that in fact we have no reason to worry about?

I think that pretty much all chemicals can be dangerous at high enough doses or long enough exposure. Like our blog post about sodium lauryl sulfate in shampoos, the harmful effects described about SLS are only true if you continuously marinate your scalp in it for 24 hours. In this experiment, they had to expose tadpoles to the chemical for 10 days in a row to get some sort of effect. I think we are fine for now :)

I like the idea of talking about research ethics in one of our blog posts, especially since I think there are a lot of people who don't really know what tests the products they use go through before they are put on the shelves. Here is a list I found of companies who apparently use animal testing. http://vidacompassion.org/main/list/company.html

Another article - this time more recent. This shows just how much nano-chemistry is prevalent in today's world of cosmetics that they are now making it mandatory in the EU to label products as "nano" to inform the consumer about the possible health risk. 

interesting to look at the chemistry of green science especially in the field of cosmetics

Andrew - what do you find interesting about this article?

this is the article I talked about before about the email chain with the myth of sodium lauryl sulfate and cancer

So it looks like it's actually really important to check our sources and make sure that we are looking at information that is actually based on scientific experiment and not just hearsay. We should probably also cross check information to make sure that it appears in multiple places on the internet as opposed to using just one, non-reliable source.

I agree that we should double check where we are getting our information from. But it may also be a cool idea to compare what people think they know about a product and the actual data. We can see how far off people are from the truth and if the myths and rumors are even remotely close to what is really going on, chemically.

really helpful guide to arbutin, the most common skin lightener

Wait this is a great article because it really explains the detailed structure of arbutin as well as how it works to lighten skin. The alpha vs beta aspect could also potentially be interesting to expand upon.

From what I understand by reading it, the glucose added onto the hydroquinone makes it safer. There was also a mention of 'anti-cancer activity' on melanoma cells. This can definitely be expanded upon since it is something so different from everything else researched.

This page helps explain the chemistry behind colors

*beetles not beatles. Haha we don't want crushed brit bands in our cosmetics :) yeah that's a really interesting page. I think I just spent the last 10 minutes scrolling through all the things and picking out the ones that I recognized from the back of food wrappers. But I wish they would put what color the additive is, so you can see what colors go into your products. But maybe they didn't put the color because it changes based on the chemistry of the item that it's going into? that could be interesting to look into...

haha sorry about that typo :) oh and I'm pretty sure I found a page that lists what color it is. Let me see if I can find it again.