Skin Care Ingredients
Chemical Bath or Label Law Confusion?
Are you a label reader; do you look to the contents of skin care ingredients? Did you know there was such as a thing as a labeling law and what the criteria is for listing cosmetic or skin care ingredients? You might find this interesting if you care about such things.
Hydrolized Keratin
One of my daily activities is visiting various skin care forums learning about skin care and companies who produce them and this morning I clicked on a particular thread entitled Hydrolized Keratin under the topic “Skin Care Ingredients.” There was a rather large number of posts with conflicting information and opinions about this particular ingredient.
What I wanted to know was: is it safe or wise to use a particular lotion or cream that lists Hydrolized Keratin as one of the skin care ingredients listed on a product?
Sometime ago I learned that Keratin itself is a protein found naturally within skin, nails and hair for both humans and animals. The second thing I learned was that the hydrolized aspect refers to the standard processing of Keratin for the cosmetic industry and let me tell you, it is not a pretty thing. The rendering of this protein comes from boiling (my term) hooves and other animal parts.
With this information I fetched containers from my bathroom and discovered, oh horrors of horrors that my favorite creams lists this Hydrolized Keratin as a skin care ingredient! So why the confusion? My favorite skin care company states their products are safe enough to eat.
Labeling Law for Skin Care Ingredients
Let me share a very interesting fact about international labeling laws for skin care and general cosmetics and that is:
The International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI) is an international labeling law agency requiring that only approved names for ingredients are used on packaging. This helps you, reportedly, to understand what exactly is contained in the product. For example, all products using water must label it ‘Aqua’ under this law.
This is why the ingredients on Xtend-Life skin care products, for example, might have chemical sounding names. For instance, their Extrapone Nutgrass Root has the same INCI name as normal nutgrass, even though they’re entirely different products. The former is actually a special patented ingredient. The confusion then, for the consumer, is that it is impossible to know for certain, thanks to use of generic INCI labeling laws, when trying to determine that the ingredients really are as natural as they claim.
The Process Matters
Another example…and I’ll use another of Xtend-Life’s skin care ingredients is Cynergy TK. This ingredient is a combination of nutritional hydrolysed keratin and natural bio-active keratin, made from natural keratin fibre in New Zealand (coming from sheep’s wool). Cynergy itself is unique in the way that it stays bioactive (whereas most keratin ingredients lose their bioactivity through processing). This process indicates that it remains in its natural stable form.
Bottom line, what this means is that the ingredients listed in products might share names with chemical products, as is the case with my favorite company, Xtend-Life, whose skin care ingredients are all naturally derived – very reassuring to know… but the processing of an ingredient is an important factor as well. Thus, unfortunately, what you read is not always what you get. Ya gotta dig to get the true info. 
Rebe
Hey Dean,
I agree with the use of scientific/latin-based ingredients and the difficulties interpreting them vs the use of plain English such as Made From Earth offers.
Tho I am not familiar with the product line, I visited their website and give them lots of points for promoting companies such as Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and referencing EWG (read about Suncreen ingredients)…one of the top independent consumer researchers for healthy and safe products et al.
Although not personally a fan of firming serums, glad to know there is a healthy one that makes you feel good about applying it!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
Rebe
I like the Made from Earth website because they list all their ingredients in plain English. On the box every ingredient has the standard latin based name and the English explanation of it. For example, “butyrospermum parkii butter – shea butter”. Very convenient. Cause latin and me never really got along too well…
their face firming serum is amazing…feels healthy and organic, and alot less expensive than the other DMAE serums on the markets
Hi Laurel,
Rather typical that a gov’t agency designed to regulate a multi-billion dollar industry can say so much and do so little.
If we look at how some other countries better regulate ingredients in skin care and cosmetic products proven to be toxic or cancer causing, like Canada and UK, it certainly does boggle the mind why the FDA/US doesn’t do more to protect.
That’s why its up to us, the consumers, to become educated. There’s a an effective, grassroots cosmetic consumer group that has had made tremendous headway in bringing attention to those cosmetic / skincare manufacturing companies using toxic ingredients. Many have complied and made changes because those of us who ‘buy’ have our own power where it counts.
Thanks Laurel, for your thoughtful comments.
I was at a conference at Organic Expo East in Washington and I learned that in the FDA book of regulations thousands of pages long, there were about 20 pages dedicated to the laws concerning ingredients in cosmetics and skin care products.The Federal government leaves this to the individual companies who manufacture their products, so there is no regulation at all. To think the skin is our largest organ, where anything applied is absorbed into the body, and there is no regulation on the ingredients that go into the products that are used day after day for all the years of our lives, it is mind boggling. We need people like you to give us a heads up.thank you!