Sanitization And SAFETY

Welcome to part four of my Introduction to Cosmetic series.  In this post I will go over the sanitary and safety measures, we as formulators have to follow

Sanitation is important for a number of reasons. One, to be hygienic, most of us are making stuff in our kitchen. No matter how clean you think your kitchen is, it is not clean enough. So the cleaner can get your kitchen the better! The second reason is we don't want the preservative to work extra hard. Cleaning your supplies will help the preservative not work as hard. The third reason is we do not want to introduce contaminants. Contaminants effect the shelf life of the product or in other word it's stability. Stability is how long a product can stay effective or stable

Sanitization Rules:

• Make sure all equipment has been thoroughly cleaned in the dishwasher (if the piece of equipment can go in there) or in a 5% bleach bath and laid out to dry. To make the dry time less you can spray the items with a high percentage of isopropyl alcohol. At least 70% would be fine.
• Paper towels are your best friend. Make sure to remove the outer layer each time you make something so, that you get the freshest layer. 
  • Paper towels are great for cleaning up colored cosmetic messes.
• ​Never cross-contaminate your pipettes. For each ingredient you need a separate pipette. 
• Same rule applies to spoons, popsicle sticks, spatulas (unless it is going into the same container with the same type of ingredients), or stirring rod. 
  • The example for the spatula would be after, you made your emulsion it does not matter the spatula that you use as it will blend in with the emulation.
• Make sure to wash your hands and wear gloves. This is especially important with color cosmetics, as some ingredients will stain the skin.
• Keep cosmetic equipment and ingredients away from food and kitchen equipment that comes in contact with food. Especially coffee grinders, stick blenders, regular blenders and measuring cups and spoons.
  • They should not be used for food in the kitchen.

A lot of these rules are common sense but, some time the laziness gets in the way. cough (speaking from experience ;) ) if you are new to making your own cosmetics, it is best to start now with these habits.
Safety
Safety Rules:

• If it your first time making a certain product, make sure to watch it carefully. Most blog include time increments to wait. Which is great for an estimate but, there is lots of variables to consider.
  • The climate you live, colder place take longer to heat but, faster to cool.
  • Warmer climates, melt ingredient faster but, are slower to cool.
  • The power of your stove or hot plate.
    • hot plates tend to heat really quickly and are very hot. So they are not the best option as it increase the chance of scorching your ingredients.
• Always wear a dust mask with any powder.
  • Powdered surfactants especially. 
• Make sure your hair is up, if it is long.
  • Your chemistry teacher is watching :/
• Always do a test patch of new products and ingredients to make sure that you are not allergic to them. It would suck to have to throw something away because you find out after you make a 200 gram batch that you can't use it.

These are all the rules that I can think of. let me know if you didn't know any of these or if you would like me to add some.
If you want to most up to date version of these posts. Find them on the Diamond Level Blog (link)

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