When the preservative fails

2023 is coming to an end with all its ups and downs and good news and bad news.

Among bad news (or maybe good news depending on how you look at it) where the product recalls because of contamination.

The number of recalls is negligible compared to the number of product safely put on the market but each single bottle/jar of a contaminated product is one bottle too much.

These contamination cases come from established companies with state-of-the-art facilities, labs and a reliable GMP with almost fully automated procedures. It is not a backyard illegal workshop where the guy who stirs the mixer with the shovel accidentally forgets adding the preservative.

Most of these recalled products are preserved and have gone through intensive challenge tests and yet there are nasty microorganisms waiting for any opportunity to grow somewhere between the raw material procurement and the final filling and packaging station.

Contamination is a nightmare to any entrepreneur/formulator/company no matter how thick their monetary and legal padding is. As formulators and concept creators we are torn between the public demand for "preservative free" products and creating safe and stable formulations.

The fact is:

The science has miserably failed to communicate this simple message to the public that:

preservatives are no evil. They are there to protect the product and protect the consumer

As the scientist are locked in their labs and offices filing patents, running tests and writing articles that the public can not afford to have access to and can not understand and digest, the self-named experts have been writing fear-mongering blog post after blog post feeding the public with easy to understand and to digest lies about the chemicals in general and preservatives in particular. This has lead to the general public aversion toward preservatives and the "preservative free" as being one of the sexiest marketing claims. (to my shame I have to confess that we use this term for our self-preserving formulations to emphasize how cool and sexy they are).

So instead of informing the public about the necessity and safety of the preservatives (well not all preservatives), the industry stubbornly continues to use parabens and phenoxyethanol in some formulations while praising some "preservative-free" products often on the same shelves. (With preservative-free I mean the application of the non-preservative preservatives which open a backdoor for a preservative-free claim)

Sorry, I got distracted and meandered somehow.

Anyway the point is:

When even well established companies have contamination cases with meticulously tested formulations, where are we going head-over-heels with the refill trend?

The concept of refill and increasing the unit volume size to reduce waste is a brilliant idea on its own but how thoroughly have we considered all the stability and contamination aspects?

A 500 ml container is obviously 2 times more exposed to air-borne contaminants, moisture, dirty fingers and heat compared to a 250 ml container. Are we extrapolating the challenge and stability tests that are done for a certain container size and under certain application mode to bigger containers and refills without really having tested the outcome?

The chances of contamination are anyway higher as we are using more plant oils and extracts in our formulations and using milder preservatives (compared to that horrible phenoxyethanol of the formaldehyde releasers) and now we all want to have refill for these products and have the customer either refill her container at a retail station or purchase refill pouches and fill the original container again and again at home?

Well in that case you need to believe in a merciful god that keeps all contaminants at bay if you have not tested all the scenarios that lead to physical, chemical and microbial instability.

Wishing you a happy start in a fabulous and contaminant-free year