Cyclodextrin in bath salt?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Anstarx

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2019
Messages
412
Reaction score
1,066
Location
Cloud District
My friend asked me to make a batch of bath salt imitating the look of this:
20200108143648.jpg

This bath salt was imported from Japan was sold for 30 CNY every 30g pouch, which is about $4 USD for a tiny bag. Pretty expensiveif you ask me.
She doesn't want an exact copy, just a nice jar of bath salt that will turn bath water aqua-colored and smell of mint. I planned to just mix polysorbate 80, mint EO, and some colorant with coarse sea salt, maybe throw in some dried mint leaf while I'm at it. I then checked the ingredient list and found something I don't recognize: cyclodextrin.

The full ingredient list was: sodium chloride, cyclodextrin, titanium dioxide, PEG-6, PEG-32, mint essential oil, BG, mint leaf extract, parfum, glycine, glycerin, polysorbae 20, blue 1, yellow 4.

Cyclodextrin was second in the list so I believe it might be something important. From the Chinese name I thought it was some sort of starch but apparently not. I went researching but most things I can find are about its usage in food and drugs. It seemed can make drugs more soluble so maybe that's what it's for?

I think I'll go ahead and make bath salt my way, but would love to know more about this ingredient.
 
Last edited:
I haven’t worked with it, but looked around online to see what I could find on it. Cyclodextrine is produced from a starch and is used as a thickener and stabilizer. It is used to solubilize oils with water based liquids. An article I looked at mentioned using it to solubize CBD with a liquid. Food grade so used in medications.

Don’t know if this is worrisome or not, but Cyclodextrine is linked to hearing loss in a medical research study. I’m assuming when ingested and mixed with other compounds, but didn’t look at the article that closely. Hopefully, no one will be consuming this while soaking in the tub. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2017.00355/full

Perhaps other emulsifiers (Polysorbate 80, which you planned to use) would be semi-equivalent to using this? This would prevent the green mica or other colorant from ringing the bath tub with color when using, as I’m sure you already know.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top