I can't stand Lush. I think their business practices are dishonest at best, dangerous at worst. They are either lying about not having preservatives in their products, or they really are leaving them out of products that require them. I read the article you linked to and I'm not convinced, especially regarding essential oils as preservatives. It has been proven via preservative efficacy testing that tea tree oil completely loses its antimicrobial properties when added to skin care products at usual usage rates. So I'm not convinced that essential oils will preserve things. I think it is irresponsible for them to promote fear of certain ingredients just to make a buck.@Quanta I'm so frustrated with companies like LUSH slamming preservatives and claiming to add fresh fruit to their products. It just sends such a dangerous message to consumers that both of these things are totally normal in your beauty products. I did find this article which was pretty interesting as to how they might be able to do it.
I went and read the ingredients of some of their lotions and creams on their website, and some have water or a water-based substance (like "oat milk") as the first ingredient. I don't think there can be enough other ingredients in it to make the water content low enough to not be hospitable to microorganisms. And all of their products are in lidded pots, nothing in a pump or squeeze bottle, so people are putting their fingers in it which is the best way to introduce microorganisms.
I compared ingredients on one of their products ("Dream Cream") that comes in two versions, one with parabens and one that is "self preserving". Neither has what I would consider a good emulsifier, but that is beside the point. In the "self preserving" one, they rearranged ingredients and left out the parabens. They left in the ingredients that are very difficult to preserve, being oat milk and rose water. Oat milk is still the first ingredient, although rose water is now the third.
They have an ingredient information page for each ingredient they use, so I looked at the pages for the two parabens they use, and they say they use less than half the maximum limit. In hard to preserve things like this cream I think they really should be using more than that, or at least use it with something like phenoxyethanol. I'm glad that they use parabens in at least some of their products, but my real issue is the fact that they offer a "self-preserving" version at all, which to me seems to be feeding people's fear of "chemicals".
I don't think there is. Maybe bring it up with forum staff and ask for at least a stickied thread somewhere.You know what would be awesome is if there was a place on the SMF where we could put articles and research papers that we run across like a learning library. So if I was curious about different studies on preservatives I could look through user submitted documentation. Is there a place on here that already exists? I did a search but maybe i'm using the wrong lookup terms.
I have never been a fan of Dr Mercola. I went to his website and saw what he's charging for his special cottonballs. Who does he think he's kidding? I'll keep buying my reasonably cheap, unreasonably huge boxes of Q-Tips from Costco, thanks.This is unrelated to paraffin but at the bottom of the article I just linked is a really good example of fear mongering by someone out to make a buck and is exactly the kind of content that causes confusion and harm.