Cosmetic Ingredients: Parabens

How many times have you been told not to buy cosmetic products that contains parabens? I’ve been told quite some times and today I had a product in my hands on which it actually said it didn’t have parabens in it. 

It really got me wondering all of a sudden: what the hell are parabens and why are they so bad? So I went to do some research on the internet out of curiosity (I just needed to know haha) and I found out a whole bunch of stuff.  That means I’ll be giving you all the deeds on parabens in this article.

What are parabens?

Paraben is a term for a class of chemicals, so that means there are several different types of parabens. The most commonly used parabens are: Methylparaben, propylparaben, ethylparaben and butylparaben. 

Now this is gonna be a bit more difficult, but if you’re interested in chemical talk then read on, else just jump to 'Why are they used?'.

Parabens are a group of benzoic acid related substances. They are alkyl esters of para-or 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, and sodium salts of these esters.

I know this probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, so I’ll try to explain it the best I can. Alkyls are chemical compounds that only consist of the elements carbon (for example the air you breathe out contains carbon and oxygen) and hydrogen (water for example is hydrogen combined with oxygen). Esters are something that result from combining an acid with an alcohol.

So what ‘alkyl esters of para-or 4-hydroxybenzoic acid’ means is that a substance with carbon and hydrogyn results from mixing a type of benzoic acid with alchohol and that substance is called a paraben. And for the sodium salt part, well it just means that sometimes just the salt of the esters we talked about are used in theproducts. 

And what makes up all these different types of parabens is how many carbon atoms it contains: 1 = methyl, 2 = ethyl, 3= propyl, 4 = butyl. Pfff.. well that was it for the difficult part haha, up to something way easier!

Why are they used?

Parabens are used because they are great preservatives in many formulas. They’re mostly used for killing fungus and bacterias. And another great aspect is that they’re pretty cheap. So what they do is making it able for the cosmetic products that you use to last those many months.

In what are they used?

Almost any cosmetic product you can think of: Shampoo, moisturizers, shaving gel, toothpaste, make-up, deodorants and go on. But they are actually used in a lot more things, even in food and medication. BTW not all the same parabens are used for all products, but if you want to go that deep we’d have to talk more in terms of chemicals and I’d rather spare you that and me for that matter.

Why are parabens considered bad?

Allergies

Not everyone considers them bad, so many people disagree with it and they have studies to back them up. But they’re also many, many studies saying that parabens are indeed bad.

Parabens can cause allergic reactions for people with sensitive skin, it may lead to skin irritation, rosacea and dermatitis.

Reaction to sun exposure

There are also studies that indicate that when the UVB in sunlight might react with methylparaben , so if you have methylparaben applied on the skin it can rapid skin aging and can lead to DNA damage.

Breast cancer

Parabens have been associated with breast cancer. That is some scary stuff, ain’t it? Parabens have been detected in several breast cancers in a study. But there is also another reason to why it’s linked to breast cancer, parabens can mimic estrogen and that is a hormone known to play a role in the development of breast cancers. You might have heard the rumor somewhere that deodorants can cause breast cancer. Well, don’t be too sure that it’s just a rumor, because it actually might be true. The parabens found in breast cancer often got there through the skin, so that might mean deodorant may be to blame. Though scientists are not completely sure if that really is indeed the cause of breast cancer, they are currently still doing research.