Why I heart parabens
By assistant editor Lucy Douglas
A few weeks ago, I went to an event called Science Behind Beauty. We get invited to lots of events, and there’s only so many evenings you want to spend working, but I jumped at this invitation, as it’s something I am very passionate about.
There is so much misinformation in the beauty industry. In this multi-billion pound market there are hundreds of brands all vying for our attention, and often they’ll push the limits of fact to win over a new customer. As a customer, being able to separate the facts from the well told and beautifully packaged fiction isn’t always easy, and when you’re trying to choose a product not just for your own skin but to build your business around, you need to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Luckily, there are some organisations in place to make sure cosmetics are safe and do what they say they do. The main one, the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA), was the host of the event I went to last month, where the aim was to help educate beauty journalists like me about the science behind cosmetic products and separate the facts from the fiction, so that we can then do the same for our readers.
Here are three of the skincare myths that event well and truly busted:
- Love parabens
This is something we’ve covered before in Professional Beauty, and it’s one of my biggest bugbears. More often than not these days, when you pick up a skincare product – professional or high street – it will says “paraben free” on the label. Parabens got a bad rep a few years ago, thanks to one very flawed study that linked them to breast cancer. The evidence was inconclusive and, in fact, parabens are no more likely to cause breast cancer than soya milk or the contraceptive pill, but that didn’t stand in the way of a good, sensationalist headline.
Parabens are (or were, I should say) in skincare for good reason. They are preservatives, meaning that they stop bacteria forming in your products. If manufacturers take the parabens out of their formulas, they have to put something else in instead, such as MI or MCI, preservatives that according to a recent estimate by the British Association of Dermatologists is causing a contact allergic reaction in 11% of patients. Not great odds.
If a rep is pitching you a product and tells you it doesn’t have parabens in it, find out what it uses instead as a preservative.
- “Nasties” means nothing
When I get a PR on the phone trying to promote a new product to me and they say, “It’s got none of the nasties in” I want to throw the phone out of the window. “Nasties” is a term that means absolutely nothing in cosmetic science. If somebody tells you their product contains “no nasties”, ask what that means? What are these nasties not in the product they’re trying to sell you? Do they mean no chemicals? Well sorry, but that’s total rubbish. Everything is a chemical. If by “no nasties” this sales rep is trying to tell you that the product is great for skin, push them on it. Ask them how? Sure, there may be “no nasties” but what IS in the product, and what benefits do those ingredients actually have?
- Natural does not equal good; Artificial does not equal bad
The natural skincare movement is huge, and there’s no doubt that Mother Nature has certainly given us some fantastic skincare ingredients. However she’s also given us some harmful ones. 4% of all chemical burns treated in Turkey, for instance, are caused by the application of herbs to the skin.
Now, by the time a product has been brought to market it has already gone through rigourous safety checks to make sure its ingredients aren’t going to cause you any harm. So whether it’s all natural or not, it isn’t going to give you a chemical burn. However just saying that something is natural doesn’t mean that it’s better, safer, or more effective that something that has artificial ingredients in. If that was true, we’d stop buying beauty products and head to the supermarket for nice, ripe avocado to slather all over our faces. Don’t just take it as red that a product must be kind to the skin because it has uses natural ingredients – ask what those ingredients are and what benefits they have for the skin, so you can assess whether they’re right for your clients.
