In many of today's skin products, even the most seemingly benign ones made by "handcrafted artisans", you will find a few ingredients that may cause one to scratch their head in confusion. Words like "dimethicone" and "propylene glycol" and "phenoxyethanol" are commonplace on an ingredients listing for products primarily crafted using a pre-made lotion or soap base ... products claiming to be "natural" or "naturally crafted", but are not actually good for the skin you love to live in.
Dimethicone is a silicon based polymer. Simply put, it’s a silicon oil, man-made in the laboratory and used in personal care products as an anti-foaming agent, skin protectant, and skin or hair conditioner. And while it is an FDA-approved ingredient for use in lotions and other skin products, listing it as a "low level risk", for me, this is not a good ingredient to be using in your daily skin care. Like petroleum products, silicone oils can actually make dry skin worse over time. Instead of sinking into your skin and nourishing it from the inside out, like healthy ingredients do, it forms a sort of plastic-like barrier on the outside of skin.
Furthermore, that artificial coating on the outside of skin causes several issues:
* It traps everything under it—including bacteria, sebum, and impurities—which could lead to increased breakouts and blackheads
* The coating action actually prevents the skin from performing its normal activities—like sweating, temperature regulating, sloughing off dead skin cells, etc.
* Prolonged exposure to dimethicone can actually increase skin irritation, due to the coating property and because dimethicone is listed as a possible skin and eye irritant
* Those with sensitive or reactive skin are at risk of an allergic reaction to dimethicone
* On top of all this, dimethicone is a non-biodegradable chemical—bad for the environment
Phenoxyethanol is a man-made, synthetic preservative and while it is considered a safe alternative to parabens, this chemical has been restricted in Japan and the EU because of its potential mutagenic effects. Sadly, though they are effective against bugs, it seems most synthetic preservatives carry some health risks—especially since we are exposed to them everyday in several products.
Propylene Glycol is a form of mineral oil, an alcohol produced by fermentation of yeast and carbohydrates. In the skin and hair, propylene glycol works as a humescent, which causes retention of moisture content of skin or cosmetic products by preventing the escape of moisture or water. The Material Safety Data Sheet warns users to avoid skin contact with propylene glycol as this strong skin irritant can cause liver abnormalities and kidney damage. When used in body products, propylene glycol is what gives lotions their "slip" and their "moisturizing" properties ... leading to various known health effects, such as eye irritation, skin irritation, skin drying, defatting (dissolving natural fats).
The Face and Body Lotions made by Raison Éthique contain none of those ingredients ... in fact, our ingredients list is quite minimal. We use Vitamin E as a preservative and raw, organic beeswax as our "slipping" agent. Our ingredients do double duty as actual food ... and we don't have a single ingredient requiring a chemistry degree, hiding toward the bottom of the list in really small print.
In the very beginning, we thought about taking short-cuts - buying some of those fancy, pre-made lotion or shampoo bases that we could simply add scent to and slap our name on it ... but that's not really the type of product we want our customers to use ... and it's certainly not the type of product we want to sell.
And so ... we do it the old fashioned way ... we make our lotions by hand ... using temperature and beeswax to emulsify our products and vitamin e to preserve them. It takes a little longer ... but the end result is a product of which we can be proud ... with no synthetic additives undoing the benefits all the other ingredients provide to the human body.
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