Good Chemistry

“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…”

J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997)

 

I wonder what sort of chemical goop features in this turquoise concoction. Thanks to maya picture at freedigitalphotos.net.

It was in conversations with my older sister, who studied Chemistry at university, that I first became seriously aware of the suggestion that an awful lot of the chemical goop in modern cosmetic products is not exactly what most of us would feel comfortable slathering over ourselves if we knew what it really consisted of, and the notion of writing a blog post about the issue has been hanging about in the back of my brain for some time. As fortune would have it, said older sister is staying with me this weekend, and has kindly agreed to lend her chemical expertise to make this post as accurate and informative as possible.

So with that, I’ll hand over to her for a quick tour of some common ingredients that, although they probably don’t have sinister magical properties capable of bewitching the mind and ensnaring the senses, are nevertheless dubious enough that you may wish to avoid them when choosing a lovely new shampoo in the hallowed aisles of Boots. 

Hello, I am Anne’s sister, and since studying Chemistry have become very interested in the dodgy chemicals that are used in cosmetics, and in searching out ethical, organic, and otherwise non-sinister cosmetic products. The below is my take on certain chemicals, which is based on a certain degree of research; however, these ingredients have been deemed safe for use in cosmetics, so if you do use them there is no need to fear for your ongoing safety!

1) Sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS/SDS)/sodium laureth sulphate (SLES)¹

SLS (or SDS) and SLES are similarly structured chemical compounds, and their function is as soap or detergent. They are very commonly used in shampoo (as well as various other cosmetic products) because they lather well, and they remove oils. However, they are classified as irritants. I used SLS regularly in labs at university – because I made a lot of bubbles for my research project!² I found that when it got on my hands, it dried the skin out to the point where it was cracking. While I used a greater concentration of SLS than you would find in your shampoo, it demonstrates the irritant nature of what is considered a harmless ingredient. Our skin does not actually benefit from the removal of oils – because this causes dry skin but also stimulates extra oil production to compensate, so you fluctuate between being dry and then being more oily than you otherwise would be – and I find that my scalp gets dandruff-y when I use shampoo with SLS/SLES in it.

2) Alcohol

There is a notable distinction between different types of alcohols that are found in cosmetics. Normally the word ‘alcohol’ on its own refers to ethanol, which is what is found in the alcohol that you drink (because if you drank methanol, it would turn to formaldehyde inside you and pickle your innards!).³ Ethanol (or anything that appears in an ingredients list as ‘alcohol’ or ‘alcohol denat’⁴) is very drying on the skin, and skin does need oil to be healthy! As above, this has the negative result of very dry skin and then excessively oily skin, as well as exacerbating conditions like eczema and psoriasis. If you buy products with alcohol in, generally alcohols such as cetearyl alcohol and cetyl alcohol are better because they are ‘fattier’ – they are obtained from plants and are generally considered more beneficial.

3) Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA)

EDTA is an acid used widely in industry. However, it is also used in medicine and cosmetics. It is used to stabilise products because it binds well to chemicals and can reduce reactivity; without it, products may ‘go off’ more quickly. It is a low-level irritant. While this has been classed as safe for use in cosmetics because the dosage isn’t high enough to be toxic, alternatives for it may be a good idea because it takes a long time to degrade and is therefore not beneficial to the environment.

4) ‘Fragrance’ or ‘Parfum’

This is often listed on the ingredients lists of cosmetic products, but the problem is, it doesn’t really mean anything (it just means ‘smell’). Therefore the fragrance used in the product could be made from anything, and there is no way of finding out without contacting the manufacturer, which most of us aren’t keen to do when we’ve just nipped out for a new shower gel. Generally, if a product specifies what it is that causes its scent (for example, rose oil or other scented oils) then it is a safer bet than if it just says ‘fragrance’.

5) Petrol (Petrolatum, Paraffinum liquidum, Mineral Oil, Petroleum Jelly)

I was perturbed the first time I saw petrol (or one of its derivatives) in cosmetics, specifically Vaseline. It certainly sounds concerning to be putting car fuel on your face. However, cosmetic-grade petrol products do go through a very thorough purification process. Nonetheless, there is still always a small chance that some toxins (including carcinogenic toxins) could make it into the final product, and even if this is not the case, products such as petroleum jelly form a barrier between your skin and the atmosphere. This has been used in wound care to protect the wound from infection, but as regards something like a lip balm, shielding your skin from moisture is not actually going to hydrate your lips. My personal experience of petrol-based lip products is that they are not as moisturising as wax-based ones.

6) Miscellaneous

There are plenty of other chemicals which might be worth avoiding in cosmetics. There are some that have been classified as safe, but at the same time some studies suggest otherwise, and no clear conclusion has yet been reached. Some companies avoid putting parabens in their products for this reason (chemicals such as methylparaben and propylparaben), and there are other chemicals such as phthalates which I have not mentioned in detail here because they are already being phased out of most cosmetics due to the health risks.

I like using cosmetics with oils in (for example, coconut oil, rosehip oil, and jojoba oil among many, many others) because our skin likes the nourishment it gets from these. Some oils are more comedogenic (pore clogging) than others, and I generally just check the internet to find the ratings.⁵ 

Some brands that the two of us have used and liked, and at least some of whose products do not contain the above ingredients are: Faith in Nature, Dr Organic, Good Things, Pai, Burt’s Bees, Giovanni 2chic, Lush Cosmetics, Avalon Organics, Green People, Lily Lolo, and Oakwood Soaperie (although as regards this last one, you can find similar soap workshops all over the place; just have a browse of a good local gift shop!). Your best bet for tracking down most of these brands is either a well-stocked health food shop or that boundless repository we like to call the Internet.

Footnotes 

¹ Technically ‘sulphate’ is now officially spelled ‘sulfate’, but I will not yield to this linguistic monstrosity. 

² This video illustrates more or less what is involved in making bubbles for a Chemistry thesis, although with slightly less actual synthesis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ASVgO9U6k. 

³ If you do ever accidentally ingest methanol, the best remedy is to immediately chug a large quantity of some very highly-concentrated alcoholic spirit, which will overpower the methanol. So you’ll be pickled, but at least you won’t be pickled. 

⁴ Alcohol denat. means ‘denatured alcohol’, and essentially this means cosmetics grade rather than food grade. 

⁵ A good list is available here, https://www.beneficialbotanicals.com/facts-figures/comedogenic-rating.html, although there are other, similar lists about, and it’s always good to cross-reference.

Marks of Honour

“The whole house was alight in minutes. There was just no time … I managed to get Emelia out through a window, just. She still wakes up yelling. And the way that people stare at her…”

Wolfblood S4 E1, ‘Captivity’ (2015)

 

Presumably Matei got Emelia to safety before the blaze reached such a stage as this.

Wolfblood is one of those excellent CBBC dramas I’m always enthusing about, and it has thus far had a four-series run. Series Four did a pretty good job of navigating the tricky situation of a new location and almost entirely new cast while maintaining the premise that made the programme so enjoyable in the first place, namely that a bunch of teenagers with the ability to turn into wolves have to hide the fact from the increasingly vigilant society around them.¹ The thrilling conclusion of the final episode then saw the premise completely destroyed as – spoiler alert – our heroes deliberately revealed their lycanthropy to an assembled press conference, leaving the world in shock and me rather pessimistic that the programme’s quality would continue into Series Five, due to be broadcast at some point early next year. Still, I’ll always be able to console myself with the few dozen episodes that already exist.

One of the principal cast members introduced in Series Four was Emelia Covaci, a tweenaged wolfblood whose parents had, some time previously, died in a fire at the family home. Emelia herself had only managed to avoid the same fate thanks to the efforts of her older brother Matei, who managed to bundle her out of the building to safety, though not before Emelia suffered severe burns including to one side of her face. The fact that Emelia is bullied on account of her disfigurement is one of the first aspects of her story that the scripting sets up for us – in a fashion that, I have to say, feels a little contrived at times, but nevertheless, the narrative purpose of all this becomes abundantly clear a little later on in the series, when Emelia meets a ‘wild’ wolfblood named Meinir.

‘Wild’ wolfbloods are those who refuse to integrate into human society, instead leading a hunter-gatherer-style existence, moving in packs around the remotest bits of countryside they can find. Emelia is rather taken with this idea, particularly when Meinir, catching side of the burnt side of her face, tells her, “In the wild, that is a mark of honour. You are a cerddwyr tan.”

Emelia, nonplussed by the Welsh, asks, “A what?”

“A fire walker,” translates Meinir. “Our pack has a legend: thousands of years ago, a powerful wolfblood who mastered her fear of-”

At this point we get a comic interruption from another character, and never do find out the details of the legend, but it seems a safe bet that that sentence was going to end ‘fire’. As far as a wolfblood is concerned, there is nothing more dangerous or terrifying than fire. The fact pops up in numerous tiny ways over the course of the programme; of particular poignancy here is the fact that, at the end of the last series, Meinir was forcibly turned human by means of a special serum, and one way the man who did it proved that she was no longer a wolfblood was by having her carry a flaming torch into a cell where he was holding a number of other wolfbloods captive. They all shrank from the flames in abject fear, but Meinir was unafraid – only desperately sad at the loss of her wolf.

So Meinir’s point is that Emelia bears a mark of having been through the most fearful sort of peril imaginable and survived – conquered it. It’s a status for which she has the utmost respect. When the two manage to resume their conversation, Emelia asks with cautious hopefulness, “Would they stare at me in the wild?”

Meinir almost chuckles. “They would envy you, cerddwyr tan.”

Later in the series, Emelia decides to join the wild pack. It’s not very hard to see why. Her schoolmates and other humans saw the evidence of her injury as a flaw, a marredness, a disruption of the normal and acceptable. They saw her as less than she would have been otherwise because of it. The wild pack, by contrast, see the evidence of her injury as a mark of honour, proof of extraordinary achievement. Far from marring her, it actually thrusts her status up a few levels; it makes her more than she would be otherwise.

So we have these two possible outlooks on the significance of evidence of injury. Which is the more appropriate to bring to the table as concerns the following couple of verses from towards the end of the twentieth chapter of the gospel of John?

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.²

Yup, it’s the event that Thomas is just about to get himself a bad rep for doubting – but we needn’t go into that. The point is, Jesus shows up and shows his disciples the injuries exacted upon him during his crucifixion, and they are absolutely delighted. Jesus is alive. And the fact that he still bears the marks of having been put to death is but proof that yes, that really happened, but he came out the other side. He conquered it. Jesus’ hands and side testify to the foe he has faced and defeated – and it’s a foe worse even than fire is to a wolfblood: death itself, the result of the unimpeachable wrath of God against every injustice, rebellion, and evil of the human heart. That’s what Jesus has overcome. We’re going to have to side with the wild pack on this one: such injuries cannot be flaws, cannot render Jesus less than. They can only be marks of honour.

It’s worth pausing to consider that this is Jesus’ resurrection body we’re talking about here. This is not the same version of him that was killed – the (necessarily) perishable version – but the risen, imperishable version. And that mean’s it’s the version that’s going to exist for eternity. Jesus is the firstfruits of the new creation process: when that process is rolled out to the public and we see our Lord face-to-face, he is going to have the marks of his crucifixion in his hands and his side, just as the disciples saw them in John 20, forever. If those marks were in any way detrimental to Jesus’ perfection, how would it be possible for him to bear them in his risen, imperishable form? On the contrary, they testify to his perfection; they ornament it – because the very zenith of Jesus’ demonstration of his perfection was, indeed remains, his crucifixion. His love for sinners, his obedience to the Father, his willingness to give of himself even until nothing remained to give – all were tested to the limit and proved sufficient for the task at hand, despite the fact that the task at hand involved unimaginable agonies worse than anything else in all existence.

Go and read Revelation Chapter 5. I was going to quote it here, but every bit of it is so integral to what I’m trying to say and the quotation was getting a little unwieldy, so just go and read it. Seriously, just open another tab and stick the reference into the Bible Gateway search engine if you don’t have a paper Bible handy.³ The Lamb is Jesus (in case that wasn’t obvious) and the reason he’s worthy to open the scroll – and to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing – is because he was slain and ransomed a people for God. Plus, John as narrator specifies that the Lamb looks as though he has been slain: the visual evidence of his worthiness is to be displayed, not concealed. And we, brothers and sisters, are going to spend the whole of eternity praising him for the worthiness to which that evidence testifies.⁴

Emelia’s mark of honour actually starts to look a bit lame by comparison even allowing all due room for the fact that she’s a fictional character and a child and, you know, not God. She didn’t actually master her fear of fire like the wolfblood in the legend; she just sat about helplessly and then got rescued. Matei is surely the one more deserving of the mark of honour here – and yet Emelia got it. She is treated, among people who actually understand the issues at hand at least, as one who deserves respect for having conquered the most fearful thing ever, despite the fact that her role in the situation was entirely passive. There’s definitely another analogy there, but if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you to comb through the niceties of it by yourself.

Footnotes

¹ Consequently, the beginning of Series 4 isn’t the worst place ever to start watching, and it happens to be available on iPlayer currently: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b03b5gpv.

² Here’s the whole chapter for you: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+20&version=ESVUK.

³ Or, if you prefer, use the following link: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev+5&version=ESVUK.

⁴ Also worth checking out on this point is the following John Piper podcast on the way the cross shapes Jesus’ present role as our advocate before the Father: http://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-is-christ-my-advocate-if-his-saving-work-is-finished.