I recently chatted all things skincare with Simon Hill on his podcast The Proof for about three and a half hours. You can listen to the first part on sunscreen here and the second part on skincare, clean beauty, haircare… basically everything else – here. The Proof is a great listen if you’re looking for deep dives on pretty much …
There’s been a lot of fearmongering about chemical sunscreens. There were scary-sounding new stories – sunscreen absorbing into blood, killing coral reefs, zinc oxide being toxic, benzene in sunscreens… Related Post: Top 7 Sunscreen and SPF Myths I’ve covered most of these before, and they’re largely just the media taking things out of context and sensationalising them, partly for views, …
There’s been another beauty product recall because of benzene. This time it’s dry shampoos produced by Unilever, including products from; Dove TRESemmé TIGI Suave I’ve talked about benzene contamination in products before, specifically sunscreen. It’s a very similar situation this time. The key points: Benzene is not intentionally added to products. Rather, it’s a trace contaminant that’s accidentally found its …
Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of questions from students and teachers about investigations and demonstrations related to cosmetics that could be done in class or for independent research projects, with limited equipment access. Here are some chemistry-heavy suggestions that might be helpful. Saponification, soaps, detergents Different oils used for saponification have different fatty acid profiles – how does …
I’m pretty lazy with my haircare and I’m bad at sticking to routines. But I also bleached my hair so I could play with pretty colours, which dramatically increased the effort involved to keep my hair looking decent. So in the last few years I’ve been trying out a lot of haircare hacks – these are the ones that’ve changed …
Here’s a myth I’ve been seeing around skincare communities: that you have to use a special cleanser to remove water-resistant sunscreen. For example: “Keep in mind that most of these sunscreen actives are also oil-soluble (only dissolves in oil, not water), which gives sunscreens their water-proof and sweat-proof properties. Therefore, in order to completely remove sunscreen, you have to use …
Here’s part 2 of me discussing people’s unpopular opinions about skincare, and beauty in general – this time we’re talking about: 0:24 Paraben-free was pushed so products would go bad faster 3:46 Everyone gets Botox secretly and pretends it’s skincare 6:28 You can use non-essential products / people get nerdy about skincare and makeup as a way to feel less …
There’s a sort of industry secret with mineral sunscreens: a lot of them contain unregulated chemical sunscreens. Which isn’t always a big problem… but it also kind of is. Today we’re talking about inactive ingredients in sunscreens that aren’t really inactive. The video is here, keep scrolling for the text version…. SPF boosters It’s not that easy to make a sunscreen. It …