Parabens

I found an interesting article on the internet regarding Parabens. Quite surprising that good old Nivea Cream is now free from Parabens but the article also throws up some very good points regarding the whole issue. What are we going to do when consumers no longer accept Parabens at all, even though the majority is perfectly safe and has been protecting consumers from eye infections and MRSA for years? While mould is an easy thing to spot in a cream (the black or green spots tend to be a dead give-away), bacteria are very good at hiding, they are just too damn small to be spotted. But they can have devastating effects on your health, blindness being the least of your worries here.

Now, if every consumer would only ever use cream with extremely clean fingers and use every pot of cream within the stated use-by-date, things wouldn't be of a big concern, as there are other preservatives which are just effective and are not called Parabens. But what happens if you buy this really expensive pot of cream and use it really frugally to make it last longer and then you end up having half the pot left when the use-by-date (more importantly the open-jar-date) has passed. Do you throw it away, or do you keep using it, thinking all will be well and this is just a silly date they print on to make you buy more?

I am lucky that I don't really have to think about preservatives yet, as none of my products need any (hence me being able to state quite clearly that all of our products are paraben-free). I am considering adding some preservative to my sugar scrubs, just because people could be introducing water and therefore bacteria to them, but I don't need to go heavy handed and as it is only a precaution, I can easily go paraben-free. But I am working on a line of face creams and body lotions and I am really wondering what to do. Paraben-Free is all the rage, so do I jump on the bandwagon and use something that may be free of Parabens, but may require a lot more of something else or may have a shorter shelf-life and trust everyone to throw away unused products after the use-by-date has expired?

A lot of natural preservative are irritants to a large number of people (this was a main reason for developing Parabens in the first place), going preservative free in a product that contains water or fruit extracts is way too dangerous, although some companies have done just that (and have consumers complaining about mouldy creams - just lucky they cannot see all the bacteria crawling around). Would you sacrifice valuable space in the fridge for all your cosmetics and make sure you put them back after each use, even late at night? I think that space is much better served by filling it with some wine or beer and keep the creams and lotions where they belong, in the bathroom.

So, what are the alternatives? I think this article sums it up perfectly, yes there are alternatives and some companies try to dupe us by using Japanese Honeysuckle (INCI: Lonicera Caprifolium Extract – a natural paraben, virtually identical to synthetic parabens and products should not be labelled paraben-free if they use this) or one of the new preservatives which have the INCI name “parfum”, but are these really any better ? And what happens if a couple of years down the line someone decides to scare consumers about those?
I am all for natural things and less chemicals (hence me starting my company in the first place), but not everything that’s natural is good for you and not every chemical is bad, otherwise we would all go in the woods and rub poison ivy all over us…