Medical expert of the article
New publications
Naturalness of cosmetics components
Last reviewed: 19.10.2021
All iLive content is medically reviewed or fact checked to ensure as much factual accuracy as possible.
We have strict sourcing guidelines and only link to reputable media sites, academic research institutions and, whenever possible, medically peer reviewed studies. Note that the numbers in parentheses ([1], [2], etc.) are clickable links to these studies.
If you feel that any of our content is inaccurate, out-of-date, or otherwise questionable, please select it and press Ctrl + Enter.
The safest and "natural" solvents are water and vegetable oils. However, if you use only them, then a huge amount of biologically active substances will go to the dump. This is unreasonable and uneconomical. Therefore, more effective solvents, such as alcohols, are used. In order for the extract to be more concentrated, and in order to reduce the amount of solvent, various solvent removal techniques are used (water evaporated, alcohol distilled, etc.). Now the most popular solvent is propylene glycol, which can simply be included in the formulation. Another method of extraction, gaining popularity, is supercritical extraction with carbon dioxide. Extraction is carried out by liquid carbon dioxide, which is then converted to carbon dioxide and volatilizes, leaving the isolated substances without any impurities of the solvent (so-called dry plant extracts).
Underestimate that plant extracts used in cosmetics are not always free from pesticides and herbicides. Of course, it is best that plants for cosmetics are collected in environmentally friendly (not polluted by industrial enterprises) areas. However, there are fewer and fewer such areas, and it is not easy to collect plants there. Therefore, gradually the most popular plants used for the production of cosmetics and food additives are moved to plantations. For example, in France, where overproduction of agricultural products is observed, many farmers switch to growing medicinal plants. Of course, according to the conditions, they must grow crops without the use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. But this rule is not always respected. In addition, plants growing in the suburbs of large cities can accumulate harmful substances contained in automobile exhausts, industrial emissions, etc. Therefore, the most responsible manufacturers of raw materials for cosmetics have their own laboratories, where they carefully check the quality of all plant extracts and, if necessary, conduct additional cleaning.
It is necessary to check even extracts obtained from environmentally friendly pensions to make sure that during the extraction process, the active components are lost. The most valuable are the standardized extracts of plants that contain the most important active components no less than the established level.
Inspection of raw materials slows down production and makes it more expensive, so the price of raw materials eventually increases. So, it is possible to organize such a check for some companies (not necessarily large, but stable and prosperous) Accordingly, one can expect that this expensive raw material will be bought either by the same stable and prosperous cosmetics firms or those companies for which the quality of cosmetics is priority task (for example, firms that produce professional cosmetics).