Mold in your cosmetics is a major health concern. It's a huge red flag because it can cause infections, allergic reactions and skin irritation. And somewhat worryingly and strangely, it seems to be becoming an increasingly more common issue in recent years, despite all the science that we have, with many well known brands issuing recalls and being slammed online by customers who bought moldy or contaminated products.
Today I want to explore a few things. I want to explore what makes mouldy cosmetics, what causes it, how it can be prevented, why this issue is steadily becoming a bigger and bigger problem in the beauty world. And mostly, I want to talk about parabens.
The fear of parabens. Why it's uncalled for, unjust, unfounded, and why clean beauty needs to stop, why it's wasting our money, and why it's putting us in danger, more danger than parabens ever could. But first of all, I guess a bit of housekeeping.
Let's talk about the cause of moldy cosmetics. Right? Mold thrives in humid, moist environments, which are common in beauty products like lotions, creams and serums.
Cosmetics need preservatives to prevent the growth of microbes like mold, yeast and bacteria. And if that product lacks enough preservatives or the right kind of preservatives, it's more likely to become contaminated, right? Product packaging can also play a huge part in the growth of mold.
Cosmetics in open jars or pots that require you to use your fingers dipping in and out are more prone to contamination. Once exposed to air, water, or bacteria from your hand hands. Microbes can grow if preservatives are inadequate in that product.
So it's important to make sure things like your hands are clean before you start applying your products, not running the dropper of a serum on your face. If not, you could be transferring bacteria from your skin into your products, increasing the likelihood of mold. And even the way you store your products can play a huge part in their shelf life.
Mold thrives in humid and moist environments like your bathroom. Probably not the best place to store your beauty products, although I do store some in there, to be honest with you. You should try and keep them in like a cool, dry area wherever you keep your pasta, you know, that kind of environment.
Try to keep them away from windowsills and radiators. You can, if you want, invest in a mini fridge if you want your products to last a little bit longer, potentially. And even if you do everything, all of the above, if you do the right thing for you and your cosmetics, you could still receive moldy or contaminated products.
If there's been an issue with, during the manufacturing process. Sorry. Or during transportation.
If the products are contaminated at the factory or stored in a hot warehouse or transported in a hot truck, then the products could already be spoiled before they even get to you. So you should be keeping it eye out for things like changes in color, a weird smell you didn't expect, a texture that doesn't look quite right. So be sure if you've ordered this online, for example, to always check the product pictures, check reviews and make sure that your product looks the way it should.
And bearing in mind that beauty products do have an expiration date, regardless of whether they have the right preservatives and are stored properly, they will eventually deteriorate, losing their effectiveness and possibly becoming slightly hazardous. Remember that story I talked about where that woman used a out of date spot treatment? I think it was like two years out of date and her face swelled up.
She got like a staph infection. You have to really be careful with them. Active ingredients will obviously degrade, losing their potency, and preservatives will slowly break down, allowing bacteria, mold and yeast to grow.
You know I'm not a clean beauty advocate. I actually think it's classist. I think it's full of bullsh*t.
I think it's anti science, but I respect people's right to want it. However, facts are facts and we need to talk about why the clean beauty movement has destroyed our cosmetics. The clean beauty movement has driven this demand for natural and preservative free products.
And although to some on the surface that may sound great, it can actually increase the likelihood of contamination. Natural products, especially those free from synthetic preservatives like parabens, often rely on less effective alternatives which may not fully protect against mold or bacteria. We're going to go through those preservatives actually.
Parabens have been widely used in cosmetics for decades, first being used around 100 years ago. But the clean beauty movement has vilified parabens due to some studies claiming that parabens can act like hormone estrogen, which is linked to breast cancer. However, these claims are based on a flawed, an inconclusive study, mostly carried out in rats and using ridiculously large amounts of parabens, I believe injected into the rats as well.
Because this is also not how we use parabens and it's not the amount of parabens we're exposed to on a daily basis either. This all started back in 2004 when a study was published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology which claimed that parabens had been found in breast tumors. The paper caught the eye of journalists at a wide range of media outlets who started writing articles about how parabens increase your risk of cancer.
However, the study didn't make that conclusion at all, like, at all. But all the journalists, they didn't care. They got their juicy headline and they ran with it.
Who cares when they could just make money from it, right? And even if they read the study, they wouldn't be able to understand what the paper was all about anyway, seeing as they weren't scientists. The lead author of the study even came out shortly after all this drama and all this fear mongering, saying that the aim of the study was not to imply that parabens cause breast cancer at all.
They were just trying to work out whether parabens can be measured in human breast tissue. And it sounds like the study wasn't even done properly anyway. Several other scientists widely criticized this study, calling out multiple oversights in the way it was conducted, including pointing out that the sample size was way too small and that there was no way to tell if the parabens had come from beauty products or from other sources.
In the years since the study was carried out, more and more scientists have openly pointed out the constant flaws in the study, eventually causing the lead author of the study to state that she agrees. You can't come to the conclusion that parabens in beauty products are linked to breast cancer. Despite this confirmation from the person who actually performed performed the study and wrote the paper, clean, "clean" beauty brands decided to ignore all of this and just cling to the idea that parabens are harmful.
The absence of allegedly dangerous parabens was a great way to market their clean and natural beauty brands. Why give all that up just because parabens weren't actually dangerous when they are selling product through fear? The risk of parabens affecting estrogen and causing cancer has clearly been blown massively out of proportion.
In an article by Allure, Dr Timothy Rebeck, a professor of cancer prevention at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said, "If you're worried about cancer, there are many lifestyle changes you can make to mitigate your risk, and removing parabens is probably not one of them.
" Even Cancer Research UK confirms that on their website sorry, that parabens do not cause cancer and that despite these small studies in rats, there is no good evidence linking parabens to breast cancer in humans at all. A sentiment the FDA shares with their website stating, "Safety questions about the use of parabens in cosmetics center around parabens potential to act like estrogen, a hormone that can be associated with the development of breast cancer. Studies have shown however, that parabens has significantly less estrogenic activity than the body's naturally occurring estrogen.
" I'm going to say estrogen and estrogen. I, I just keep going between the two. One's British, one's American.
"Parabens have not been shown to be harmful as used in cosmetics where they are present only in very small amounts. " They finish by saying. So, although it's widely agreed that parabens do not have hormone mimicking properties, it's not proven that effect they have on our hormones actually lead to anything that harm us whatsoever.
Experts point out that if you're going to take this kind of approach that anything that mimics estrogen is dangerous. Then you have to include things like soybeans, flax seeds, garlic, peaches, broccoli, cabbage and many, many other things that are healthy. This fear mongering becomes even more ridiculous when you consider the paraben quantities used in cosmetic products are so incredibly low when compared to the parabens used in the studies.
The anti paraben campaign has been successful though, as we can tell. And now a large portion of consumers, the majority even, have bought into the idea that parabens are bad for us. Despite not really knowing what parabens actually are.
Consumers have been tricked into thinking that paraben free products are somehow safer and cleaner. Parabens are highly effective at preventing microbial growth and have been used for decades in cosmetics, as I mentioned. They're effective, highly effective preservatives.
And the clean beauty and natural skincare community is doing nothing but misleading people into using more expensive and less effective alternatives. The clean beauty trend in its push for natural ingredients often fails to consider that natural doesn't necessarily mean safe. So let's have a look at some of the paraben alternatives.
Right. A lot of these paraben free formulations often rely on alternative preservatives which unfortunately just don't seem to work as well. Let's take a look at some of the most common alternatives, right.
What they're good for and what they're maybe not so good for. One of the most popular and probably most well known is phenoxyethanol. It's well known and well used because it's effective against bacteria and fungi and it's relatively stable.
It's found in the vast majority of paraben free products. But although it's considered safe at low concentrations under 1%, phenoxyethanol can be irritating for the skin, particularly for sensitive skin. Some studies suggest it can cause allergic reactions, contact dermatitis and even neurotoxic effects at higher concentrations.
It's also not as broad spectrum as parabens, meaning it may not actually protect against all types of bacteria and fungi, potentially leading to quicker spoilage and contamination. Sodium Benzoate. Another commonly used preservative in natural products, particularly in conjunction with other preservatives, it's considered a safer and milder option, especially for sensitive skin again.
However, the effectiveness of Sodium Benzoate is highly dependent on pH levels, meaning that it works best in acidic formulations with a pH of below 4. It's less effective in products with a higher pH, which can limit its usage. Ethylhexylglycerin.
Ex. . .
exhylhecly. . .
glycerin? No, Ethylhexylglycerin is often used as like a preservative booster, it can enhance the antimicrobial efficacy of other preservatives and is seen as a more skin friendly option. It also offers mild moisturizing properties.
However, by itself it isn't strong enough to protect a product fully and usually needs to be combined with other preservatives such as phenoxy ethanol. And despite its skin friendly image, it can also cause skin irritation or allergic reactions in some individuals, especially at higher concentrations. You're probably starting to see a patch pattern here, right?
Whilst paraben alternatives can offer protection against some possible contaminants, they don't provide the same wide range of protection as parabens. And they're far more likely to cause skin irritation or allergic reactions, especially in the amounts necessary to be effective. Parabens are much less likely to cause irritation in the concentration that they are needed to be effective in cosmetics.
So in their attempts to apparently protect their customers from allegedly harmful parabens, clean beauty brands are actually exposing them to ingredients that have a higher chance of causing contact dermatitis, allergic reactions and skin barrier disruption. Because these alternatives are less effective at preventing microbial growth, consumers using products with weak preservative systems may also be at greater risk of encountering contaminated products. Paraben alternatives also often have shorter shelf lives than parabens.
This means the products using these alternatives are more prone to going bad quickly, which increases the risk of contamination. For consumers, this can mean buying a product that looks, smell and performs differently in just a matter of months after opening. So to compensate for the reduced efficacy of these alternatives, formulators often need to combine several different preservatives to create a stable product.
This can make the product formulation complex and may increase the likelihood of ingredient interactions or sensitivities. In some cases, these combinations can still fall short of the level of protection offered by a single paraben based system. Paraben alternatives are often expensive, way more expensive than parabens, which can often increase the cost of production and increase the cost cost of your product.
So you are paying more for a product that might irritate you more that you're going to have for about three to six months instead of 12. But perhaps the most concerning aspect of these paraben alternatives is that they remain relatively untested in comparison to parabens which have been around for a century. Let's do some case studies.
Notable product recalls and mold issues, and these are mainly seen in clean beauty brands of course, unsurprisingly. Herbivore Botanicals probably being the most notable out of all the brands. One that truly went viral was back in 2019 with their Pink Cloud Cream which was recalled after multiple reports of mold growth.
Customers began noticing changes in smell, texture and visible mold in the product which led to its recall. Herbivore Botanicals also had another product recall. There, is it like their Blue Tansy or something.
It was a mask or a cream. People were opening it and it was going green. It had black mold spores in the bottom of it.
It looked like algae. These were brand new products that already had mold in them when they were purchased. In 2023, Soft Services took to Instagram to ask customers to stop using and discard their Theroplush after they received mold complaints from customers.
Kosas best selling Revealer Concealer I think it's called, came under fire for growing mold and smelling like crusty feet, according to some. In response to the allegations, the brand directed customers and members of the press to a product FAQ section of its website, saying on social media, "We use safe effective preservatives and antimicrobial stabilizers which prevent against mold, yeast and percentage and pathogens. " Now this is a very good example of an expensive product that went moldy very quickly because of its chosen preservative system.
A lot of people noticed that the influencers talking about this mold contamination, their products were probably just out of date, like they're passed their shelf life which was only six months because you really don't expect your products to go off in six months. In 2024, Suntegrity Skincare announced a voluntary recall of its Suntegrity Impeccable Skin Sunscreen Foundation. According to the brand's recall announcement, they say higher than acceptable levels of a type of mold called aspergillus sydowii were found in some tubes of their tinted sunscreen.
Mold and bacterial contamination can pose significant health risks, as we know. But a lot of clean beauty brands seem happy to let their customers take that risk. Using contaminated products could just lead to mild skin irritation.
If you're lucky. If you're lucky. But if you happen to have any cuts or other openings on your skin, it can lead to more serious skin infections.
And this is particularly concerning when it seems like so many people don't even know what they're looking for when it comes to contaminated products, most contaminations are too small to see. So if you're waiting until you see mold or fuzz on your products, then it's probably already too late. Those are evidence of very high levels of micro probes.
If your products look separated or runnier than usual and they smell a bit funny, these are early signs of contamination. The fear of parabens, fueled by misinformation, has led to the rise of these less effective alternatives. Not because parabens are actually bad for you, but because it's good marketing for the clean beauty brands.
They don't really care. They just want money. Ironically, the quest for natural and clean formulations has actually led to products that spoil faster, become contaminated more easily, and cause irritation or even serious infections.
And on top of that, you're often expected to pay higher premium prices for the privilege. It's important to remember that the brands pushing the clean beauty idea aren't doing this from the goodness of their own hearts. They're doing it because they want your money, and they're willing to let you think that you're getting a safer product, healthier product, even if it's not true.
And as long as it gets you to buy their products, they do not care. Everyone's worried about big pharma taking your money. Big pharma want your money, and the best way to do that is to create effective products that you're going to use over and over and over.
Unlike the clean beauty movement, who sell within instant fear until something bad happens to you. In an article by Allure, cosmetic chemist Kelly Dobos says that, "Clean beauty has really taken a stance of parabens are bad and marketed their products as safer. And I don't think that's necessarily true because we're seeing failures of their preservative systems.
Parabens have really been maligned by misinformation, and this misinformation has been wielded as really good marketing by beauty brands. " Cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski agrees, saying that, "Fear marketing is really effective. You can make your marketing story that you don't have parabens and you could advertise that your product is safer than anyone else.
That doesn't make it true. " Slowly more people seem to be recognizing that parabens aren't as bad as we've been led to believe. And thankfully some organizations are starting to put a stop to some of the questionable marketing claims made by clean beauty companies.
For example, the EU bought in new regulations a few years ago banning paraben free labeling on beauty products as this implies that parabens are harmful, which is misleading to consumers who are made to believe that paraben free products are better than the products of the competitors who use parabens. I'm getting out of breath talking about this. But just because an ingredient is natural, we know that doesn't mean it's good or healthy or safe.
And the contamination issues seen in so many clean beauty products makes it clear that something needs to change. More robust preservation systems are needed to protect consumers, whether the clean beauty movement wants it or not. Maybe it's time for parabens to make a bit of a come back.
