Are they safer than their mass produced counterparts.I want to know in relation to:
1.Nail polish and nail polish remover
2.Deodarant(both solid and spray)
3.Mascara
4.Shampoo and Conditioner
5.Toothpaste and mouthwash
6.Hand and face creams
How do we know how safe homemade products are? Wouldn’t the variety of possible ingredients make that almost impossible to know? Commercially available cosmetics are tested for safety and effectiveness. Homemade cosmetics require no testing whatsoever.
Well, if you make the cosmetics out of foods or simpler cosmetics, those have likely need tested. And cosmetics don’t require a ton of testing. None if they are made of common cosmetic ingredients.
I think you need to look up old receipts (recipes) for cosmetics, toothpaste, etc. People used to use all sorts of fun ingredients, up to, and including, white lead and urine. Homemade soap was essentially lye and grease.
So, historically, it’s been kind of a crap shoot as to what you’re getting from home made products. Meanwhile, anything you buy at the grocery store has been used by several million people previously, often over the course of many decades. So assuming that the company doesn’t change its ingredients or get into shady manufacturing practices, you’ve got a lot of empirical evidence that their products won’t do much harm.
If you really want to play it safe, you could probably skip the nail polish and remover and mascara and possibly some of the other products, depending on the tolerance of your local social circle.
I once met a guy who was doing very well making and selling face cream, and this was before the internet. He was a senior chemist at a large company who had been made redundant. He worked in a large garden shed where he mixed up the simple, cheap ingredients that face cream is made from. He added a tiny amount of perfume and packed it in a nice glass jar. The jar was the most expensive part.
He had started making it when he saw what his wife was prepared to pay for the stuff. He persuaded her to try his and she told her friends… When I met him he was already employing two people to help make, pack and dispatch the stuff.
I wouldn’t say they are safe. When I was a teenager my grandmother made me this concoction to get rid of the freckles on my face. It had–I don’t know, dandelion, something called tansy, lemon juice I think. Old family recipe? Anyway, it was essentially a chemical peel. Burnt the crap out of my skin–like, instant 2nd-degree burn, blistering, peeling–and I have had larger pores on my face ever since then.
But it did get rid of my freckles.
So it didn’t kill me, but was it a safer alternative?
Every commercially produced product such as nail polish remover will have a Material Safety Data Sheet (pdf), “MSDS,” or now called a “SDS.” Listing its safety in 16 categories.
Your home remedy equivalent will be made up of several products that may well have their own MSDSs. Pay attention to the section 10, on reactivity.
I can’t imagine many people would like to use raspberry jam as fingernail polish.
Since you are in control of what you’re making, home cosmetics will be safer if you make them be safer and they won’t be if you don’t. It’s all on you and you alone.
You won’t know, of course, unless you do the actual research on the ingredients you’re using. MSDS sheets, as Slithy Tove suggests, are a good place to start and a good way to decide what sorts of issues you care about.
If your total knowledge on the subject comes from watching YouTube “how to” videos, then the safety of your home brew eye shadow will most likely be unknown.
As my grandmother used to say, “When money’s involved, don’t hope; know.”
Breaking Bad II?
Isn’t commercially produced soap essentially lye and grease? I mean, they haven’t changed the way they make soap, have they?
I was just rereading Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad. One essay was about attending the Pillsbury Bake Off. A contestant Ephron spoke with was wearing green nail polish.
Since this took place in the early 1970’s (or maybe the late 1960’s), green nail polish was noteworthy. The woman explained that she hadn’t bought nail polish that color (I suspect it wasn’t sold back then), but had mixed platinum nail polish with green food coloring.
I can’t imagine anyone using raspberry jam as nail polish, but mixing raspberry jelly with clear polish might actually work.
Safer HOW???
You appear to be operating on the assumption that these vague “commercial products” are in some way dangerous, and you’re hoping to minimize said danger. Well, it’s completely impossible to judge safety unless we know what the dangers ARE. Since, here in reality, most of us consider these products to be generally quite safe, we can’t guess what dangers, in your head, you’re hoping to address. DO fill us in.
Preservatives are there for a reason, ya know…
That said, I don’t think sticking your elbows in lemon halves will kill you.
There shouldn’t be any lye in the final product. It reacts chemically with the fatty acids to saponify then, making I’ve end of the molecule hydrophilic. That’s true for homemade soap, but commercial soap is legally more reliably produced.
The one time I made soap, there was some unreacted lye and fat left when I was done. But I was a kid. A careful adult can avoid that.
I have a friend who started a line of cosmetics/lotions/soaps/lip balm/whatever. Her goal, if I can put it into my own layman’s terms, is to create products with simple, natural ingredients that will work for people with sensitive skin. She points out that cosmetic ingredients don’t need FDA approval, and that there are a lot of products out there made in ways that she certainly wouldn’t do to save a few pennies per jar or whatever.
I know that she spends a GREAT deal of time researching and trying out ingredients, and I would bet that her products are truly fantastic…but since “home made” products can range from professional operations like my friend’s all the way to someone with no idea what they are doing, there’s really no way to say that they are safer as a rule. Too many unknowns.
The biggest problems I see with most DIY cosmetics is the lack of preservatives. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. The three biggest issues seem to be: people think Vitamin E is a preservative (it isn’t, it’s an antioxidant), that Grapefruit Seed Extract is a safe, natural preservative (it isn’t, it’s either (rarely) natural and not a preservative or it’s got a hazardous chemical preservative added to it), and that essential oils are preservatives (which, technically, they are antimicrobial, but only at concentrations which are too high to put on the skin safely.) There are NO safe, effective, natural preservatives for use in cosmetics. Not one.
Any homemade lotion type product (face cream, deodorant, shaving creme, etc.) should be refrigerated, unless you’re using an actual (synthetic) preservative in it, which you can indeed buy from soap and cosmetic supply shops on line.
Related, many tutorials for infused oils, and salves and lotions made from them, don’t have adequate safety methods, like cleaning your herbs of mold spores and bacteria before infusing and using heat methods to extract the herbs’ active ingredients. Many tell you to simply put herbs in a jar, pour oil over, cover and let sit in the sun for a few weeks. This can lead to contaminated oils, and contaminated products made from those oils.
Photosensitivity is another one. Citrus (like lemons) and some herbs and essential oils can cause both outright skin irritation or chemical burns, but they can also cause photosensitivity - an extreme reaction to sunlight which can result in blisters and burns worse than a normal sunburn. This is what lime juice can do to skin on a sunny day.
1.Nail polish and nail polish remover - never seen DIY recipes for these, so I don’t know. Preservatives in the polish are a must, though.
2.Deodarant(both solid and spray) - worst mistake I see here is people using too much baking soda, which strips the acid mantle from the skin and causes rashes and irritation in the armpit. With a good recipe though, homemade deodorant isn’t particularly dangerous.
3.Mascara - hell to the naw. Again, preservatives. Even commercial mascaras have trouble keeping bacteria out of the tube after use. Even a store bought mascara should be tossed after a few weeks (which, like, nobody does, not even me. But we should.)
4.Shampoo and Conditioner - fairly harmless, as long as you follow good manufacturing techniques and mind the warnings above r/t preservatives and safe infused oil techniques.
5.Toothpaste and mouthwash - some recipes for toothpaste call for silica or clay which can scratch the tooth enamel. Most lack fluoride, which is important for people in areas with low fluoride water to get from their toothpaste. An alcohol based DIY mouthwash is pretty darn safe, and good stuff. I use one myself. It’s hard to screw up a mouthwash.
6.Hand and face creams - see above re: preservatives and oil safety.