DECEMBER 2015 • Vol. 21 No. 10
New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists
www.nyscc.org
Back to Basics – Cosmetic Raw Materials … by Perry Romanowski
T
here are many ways to look at raw materials, but I prefer to categorize them by their purpose in the formula. Using this approach there are only three primary categories of cosmetic raw materials. These include functional ingredients, aesthetic modifiers, and claims ingredients. That's it, just three types of ingredients! Of the more than 15,000 raw materials available for cosmetics, they each fall into one of these three categories. Now, there is some overlap and these categories can be divided up further, but as a chemistry student or formulator, it’s helpful to know these main categories. The idea to look at cosmetic ingredients like this was inspired by the work biologists do in cladistics—the practice of grouping organisms based on similar characteristics. I was a biology major and always found it helpful to think about different animals and plants in terms of how they were related to each other. I thought the same would be helpful in learning cosmetic raw materials. In this article we'll focus on functional raw materials, but before doing that let's cover the basic definition of each of the three main categories.
Functional Ingredients These are ingredients put into formulations to have an effect on the appearance or the feel of the consumer's skin or hair. You cannot make a useful cosmetic product without including at least one functional ingredient. But you could make an entire cosmetic product using just one functional ingredient, so in that way functional ingredients are unique. A good example of a single ingredient cosmetic is a product like Vaseline petroleum jelly. It is a huge brand and the primary product is a tub of a single functional ingredient cosmetic (Petrolatum). (Continued on page 2)
N Y S C C
S O C I A L
M E D I A
P A R T Y
DECEMBER 10 • STAGE 48, NEW YORK, NY
(Info Page 8)