Why Does Your Hair Look Better at the Beach? Plus Co-Washing - episode 434

The Beauty Brains

In this episode, cosmetic chemists Valerie and Perry discuss the science behind trending beauty ingredients and product categories. They eva

Key takeaways

• Beef tallow can act as an effective moisturizer but lacks scientific evidence for anti-aging or acne treatment.
• PFAS are used in cosmetics to improve texture and water resistance, though they face increasing international regulation.

Main topics

• Beef tallow in skincare
• PFAS in beauty products

Notable quotes

N equals one.

Conclusion

The episode provides a critical, science-based perspective on navigati

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, I'm Valerie and you're listening to The Beauty Brains. Welcome to The Beauty Brains, a show where real cosmetic chemists answer your beauty product questions and give you an insider's look at the cosmetic industry. This is episode 434. I'm your host, Valerie George, and with me today is Perry Romanowski. Hi, Perry. Hey, Speaker 2 (0:27) Valerie, another palindromic number episode. I Speaker 1 (0:30) was gonna say that. I should have not given you the opportunity. On today's show, we're going to cover lots of questions, including are mineral sunscreens from Japan effective? What do we think of Brookschild's hair care line? What's the deal with hair story new wash? How does it work? Does a person's hair really behave better at the beach? Should you try out Vita Reset supplements for skin? And how should swimmers take care of their hair? But first, inane chit chat. Speaker 2 (1:00) Valerie, you got a big trip to Australia coming. Speaker 1 (1:03) That's right. Next week, I depart for IFSCC, which is the International Federation of Society of Cosmetic Chemists, their annual congress held in Perth, Australia. So I know we have a lot of Australian Beauty Brains fans. I will be there. Speaker 2 (1:18) Yeah. So if you can get to the other side of the continent, because I think most people live in like Sydney or Melbourne. So that side and Perth is on the other side. Speaker 1 (1:29) That's right. I have quite a bit of travel and BBC is coming with me. Oh, my. And Mr. Cosmetic Chemist. Sure. But we have to go to L.A. We fly direct out of L.A. to Sydney. And then we fly, I think it's like another five hours to Perth. Australia is as wide as the United States. So it's like flying from L.A. to Boston. Speaker 2 (1:49) Yeah. It's a big place. I was looking at flights from Chicago to get there. It's like 30-hour traveling. Speaker 1 (1:58) Yeah, it's going to be a long day. And guess who gets to sit with Baby C? Speaker 2 (2:04) You? Yep, me. Now I'm curious, Baby C, do you have to get an extra seat for Baby C? Or do you just hold him on your lap? Speaker 1 (2:15) No, he's still under two, so he flies on lap for free. I will be interested to know if we get questioned how old he is. He'll have his passport with him, but a lot of people think Baby C is already two because he's a very big baby. Speaker 2 (2:31) Ah. So babies essentially are just carry-on luggage then? Speaker 1 (2:37) Exactly. I'm going to pop them up top and close the door. Well, Speaker 2 (2:41) that's fine. Just Speaker 1 (2:42) kidding. Well, Speaker 2 (2:43) I'm actually going to Toronto. I'm speaking at a conference there next week. So that'll be fun. Speaker 1 (2:50) What are you speaking on? Oh, the impact of AI Speaker 2 (2:53) on cosmetic formulating. So just, you know, all the advances there and well, you know, the pluses and minuses are there and we'll see how it affects things. Are Speaker 1 (3:05) you going to do anything else while you're there? I mean, that's another country. Toronto's close. It Speaker 2 (3:10) is close. I've been to Canada, but I always do like to see Niagara Falls. So maybe I'll take a little side trip to Niagara Falls. Speaker 1 (3:19) I love Niagara Falls. I'm from the north and we used to go there all the time. It was just a couple hour drive. I love it. Speaker 2 (3:25) It's a very cool, natural thing to see. Speaker 2 (3:34) Valerie, the LA Times, your old newspaper of record, had an article about does beef tallow work in skin care? And then there was a whole article examining the growing trend of using beef or bison tallow as a natural facial moisturizer. According to them, you know, tallow contains fatty acids that can form this heavy water loss reducing layer on the skin, but... In the article, they said experts explained that the composition is not identical to human sebum and that trace vitamins are not comparable to properly formulated skincare actives. And then the author did this whole bit where she tried these tallow balms for a couple of weeks and produced some sort of, according to her, a noticeable glow. But, Speaker 1 (4:22) you Speaker 2 (4:23) know, the test... Speaker 1 (4:25) A Speaker 2 (4:25) couple of week test is not going to tell you whether skin care is going to give you anti-aging or anything. Speaker 1 (4:30) N equals one. Speaker 2 (4:31) Right. But overall, the article concluded that tallow can moisturize, but the stronger claims about preventing wrinkles and treating acne are not supported by good evidence, which, you know, it was very surprising to me that tallow made a comeback. It was around in the industry when I started, but back in the late 1990s. When there was mad cow disease, it was all over the news. The industry pretty much moved away from animal ingredients. And also, you know, animal cruelty and cruelty freeze started to pick up then too. And so the industry kind of moved away. I'm a little surprised that it's coming back. Speaker 1 (5:10) Well, what goes around comes around. Everything's cyclical. So from that perspective, I'm not surprised. But... You know, it's just coming around again. It'll go away. People will forget about it. You know, I have tried some tallow creams. I like a heavy, older-feeling, occlusive cream. And to me, that's just what it is. They feel a little bit older. Speaker 2 (5:31) And Speaker 1 (5:31) the trend today, or at least what consumers are shopping for, is really the opposite. And a lot of that's driven by K-beauty. These light textures, meltable creams that just kind of disappear into your skin. They feel velvety. silky, cocoony, and beef tallow is just an older feeling type cream when you're using it. Speaker 2 (5:54) Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really work better than I'd say a good old petrolatum or mineral oil or, you know, a well-formulated cream, but it's a fine enough ingredient. It's been used in the industry forever. In fact, they used to use it to make soap pretty regularly. It's one of those also upcycled ingredients because, you know, when you're making hamburgers and steak, there's a little bit left over, right? And that gets turned into tallow and it gets turned into other products. A Speaker 1 (6:28) lot of conditioning agents and detergents, meaning surfactants, still come from tallow chemistry. Now, because of the vegan requirements, not many are used in personal care anymore. They're probably used in other industries. Speaker 2 (6:43) Right. Yeah, so it's good to see that we're not wasting, I mean, it would be good if, I guess, we got away from eating animals. You know, philosophically, I am a vegetarian. I just don't live that way. But it would be nice if the world went that way. It would be easier to live that way. Speaker 1 (7:01) What a conundrum. Speaker 2 (7:02) It is. So I agree with you. It's a decent agreement. It's not some miracle treatment. And, you know, if you find it... unseemly to use animal derived products, then you don't want to use it. But some people don't mind it and it's a good enough ingredient, but not that anything else couldn't replace it, but there you go. Speaker 1 (7:23) Now, you know what can be replaced? PFAS. New York Times Wirecutter also had an article, what you need to know about PFAS in your beauty products. Oh yeah. Do you know what PFAS are? Speaker 2 (7:36) They call it the forever chemicals, right? Polyfluoroalkyl substances or something like that. Speaker 1 (7:46) Perfluoroalkyl substances. Yeah. I think that's what it stands for. Speaker 2 (7:50) They call it forever chemicals because they don't break down in the environment. Very readily. I mean, eventually they do break down, but it takes a long time for them to break down. And forever, maybe it's like the lifetime of a human, so they call it forever, but it's not really forever. Speaker 1 (8:08) Well, the article did a nice job of explaining what they are. And they're used in personal care, sometimes as sub-ingredients. You might not even know they're there. Sometimes PFAS have been used to stabilize peptides. But they're often intentionally added to cosmetics to improve smoothness, shine, texture. water resistance and long wear. And even those self-foaming masks that are very popular in K-beauty where they start to bubble on your face, like little pop rocks, those even, that actually is a PFAS material Speaker 2 (8:42) that's Speaker 1 (8:43) added. And so products you would find these in are those fun face masks, but also mascara, foundation, eyeshadow, lipstick. And because of the negative perception, the use definitely is declining. But the concern of PFAS is that they can accumulate not just in the environment, but in people, and they have been associated with health problems. But the challenge is scientists still lack adequate exposure and toxicity information for many of the PFAS, so no bueno. Now, makeup is not considered a major source of overall PFAS exposure compared to food that's been contaminated with it or even drinking water. So if your cosmetic does have a PFAS, don't panic, don't throw everything away. I think you should still be fine to use it. Speaker 2 (9:34) Yeah, no, I think this is certainly a legitimate pollution concern. But as far as it being unsafe for consumers to use, that's not a lot of good evidence there. There's, you know, whenever I hear it, like it's associated with, I mean, that just means we have weak evidence. I mean, you could... Usually when they associate stuff like that, they take rats and they fill them with 10,000 times as much exposure that a human would ever get through a route that humans wouldn't get, and then they find some problems. I think that's exaggerated, and there's just not a lot of good evidence that these are harmful to humans, especially in the levels that you get exposed to in cosmetics. But there is certainly an environmental issue. You know, we've got lots of environmental issues. I don't know. They are certainly effective for making things waterproof. And, you know, your mascaras are not going to work as well if they have to replace them with PFAS or ingredients that don't work as well as these. Speaker 1 (10:41) Or maybe other materials that just have the same challenge. Now, I think PFAS and cosmetics will be a short-lived problem because they are being restricted on a state-by-state level and on an international level. And they'll go away. So one, not many people are using them. Two, the people that are, they're not going to be using them much longer. But the thing to note is just because you see the word floor, F-L-U-O-R, on your ingredient list for your product doesn't mean you have a PFAS. That's a common misconception. The definition of a PFAS is a molecule that has a fully fluorinated carbon atom. Just the presence of fluorine on its own doesn't make it a PFAS. So look for things like perfluoro or polyfluoro. That will tell you potentially that material is a PFAS, but just don't assume. Speaker 2 (11:36) Yeah. I will say in my formulating work, we didn't really use, I was doing hair care, so we didn't really use PFAS in anything. We did have one leave-in conditioner called, we had this ingredient called Base C, which I think was some sort of fluorinated surfactant. But I don't even think, since it wasn't a polymer, so I don't think that was even, would even qualify as a PFAS. Speaker 1 (12:06) I've only encountered it on two occasions. One, it was a part of a peptide that we were using, and it was used to stabilize the peptide, so it actually wasn't even part of the inky. We had to find it by looking at the composition and impurities for the raw material. So it was when we did a regulatory deep dive, and the