What are anti-oxidants and preservatives?
In order to understand what anti-oxidants and preservatives are for, and how they should be used, it is important to first “digest” a few preliminary concepts. First of all, there is a lot of misleading, and often deliberately wrong information being circulated among natural skin care makers. Creating truly natural, skin friendly cosmetics requires a long and complex learning curve, (which goes well beyond the common habit of “posting a question to the mailing list”), together with a more responsible approach to selecting all the ingredients for handmade skin care. Leaving out synthetic preservatives, and then maybe adding synthetic fragrances “because my customers want a peach scented lotion”, doesn’t automatically guarantee being in the position to affirm that this product is “completely natural and therefore more skin friendly”. Rather, it is not uncommon to find that the skin un-friendliness of some commercial (and handmade) products is directly related to the use of inappropriate
