Naturals in Cosmetics & Personal Care Products

Cosmetics: these are articles (solids, semi-solids, liquids, powders) intended to be rubbed (e.g.,
toothpaste, facials, fairness creams), sprinkled (e.g. talc, eye shadow) or sprayed (e.g. perfumes,
deodorant), introduced in to (e.g. contact lenses, kajal) or otherwise applied to the human body for
cleansing (e.g. face wash, body wash), beautifying (lipsticks, nail polishes) and promotion of
attractiveness or altering the appearance.

Natural Ingredients: any plant (e.g. alove vera, neem) or minerals (e.g. titanium oxide, zinc oxide)
directly coming from the agriculture production or from physical methods like extraction, percolation,
decoction etc.

Classification of Naturals on the Basis of Source:

1. Herbal source

2. Minerals source

3. Animal source

Herbal source or botanicals plays a major role in the today’s world of cosmetics. As the people
becoming more aware towards their health, considering that all the natural or natural preparations or
herbs containing preparations are safer than the synthetic or organic preparations.

1. Herbal source: these are used as

I) Active ingredient

II) Excepient.

i) Herbs as active ingredient in:

a) Hair care products

• Shampoo: Soapnuts, Shikakai, Caryocar glabrum, Hibiscus, Heena.

• Anti dandruff Shampoos e.g. Neem, Ambla, Vernonia missurica, Tulsi.

 • Hair growth & thickners: Amla, Vanilla griffithii, Canarim oleosum, Seasame seed oil.

b) Skin care products.

• Facial/face wash: Rose water, Red sandal wood, Cone flower.

• Moisturizer: Alove vera, Honey, Sea Same Seed Oil

• Skin acne: Apricot Oil, Soya Bean Oil, Sea Same Oil, Walnut, Cone Flower.

• Sun cream: Almond Oil, Avocado Oil, Coconut Oil, Peanut Oil.

• Astringents: Honey, Pomegranate

• Fairness creams: Turmeric, Sandalwood Paste, Lotus, Saffron Paste.

• Oral care products: Anise, Cinnamon, Myrrh, Neem,Holy Basil.

• Anti aging preparations: Albizzia Lebbeck, Butea Superb, Emblica Officinalis,Rice Bran.

II) Naturals as excepients:

• Perfumes: Essential Oil, Anise Oil, Peppermint, Rose Oil, Lemon Grass Oil.

• Viscosity enhancers: Bees Wax, Paraffin.

• Body building: Agar, Gum Acacia.

• Thickeners: Coconut, Carica Papaya, Caminaria Digitata, Macrocryptis Pyrifera.

• Preservatives: Clove Oil, Coriander Oil.

• Gums: Gum tree, Gum Acacia.

• Colorants: Heena, Rhubarb, Safflower.

2. Minerals: They are widely used in cosmetics for their pearliness, coloring and bulk forming
properties.
 3. Minerals with their use:

i. Lipstick Pearlescence: Titniym Oxide, Mica, Focus Algin, Bromine Mannite, Iron Oxide.

ii. Antiperspirants: Aluminum Chloride, Aluminium Chloralhydrate.

4. Animal source: it includes milk, egg, placenta, hormones and bonepowder.

i. Milk: Mainly provide milk lipids, mik proteins, casin,

ii. Placenta: The extracts from it are useful in skin softening effect mainly contains blood proteins,
various enzymes etc.

iii. Egg: It is excellent moisturizer, good vehicle, and a good absorption property too. it is mainly
used in face creams, hair lotions and hair dressings.

Personal Care Products

There is a huge range of such products, they mainly includes

i. Bath products

ii. Eye cosmetics

iii. Hair care products

iv. Hair colorants

v. Lipsticks

vi. Nail care products

vii. Perfumes

viii. Shaving products

ix. Skin care products

x. Tooth paste
 Stability Problems with regard to Herbal Preparation.

1. Adulteration

Types of adulteration / substitution of herbal preparation

 Substitution with inferior commercial verities
 Adulteration by artificial manufactured substitutes
 Substitution by exhaust drugs
 Substitution by superficially similar but cheaper natural substances
 Adulteration by addition of worthless heavy material
 Addition of synthetic principles
 Usage of vegetative principles from same plant
2. Deterioration due to environmental factors:

There are many intrinsic factors which govern the growth and medicinal quality of herbs. This is largely
due to the change in their chemical constitution which often leads to change in their bioactivity. So
many factors relating to climate, altitude, rainfall, and other conditions responsible for growth of plant
with affected quality of herbal ingredients present in a particular species even if it is in a same country.
Due to these inherent variations, standardization will help control the quality. The major environmental
factors are:

(A)Primary factors

 Light

 Moisture/ Humidity

 Airic oxidation

(B)Secondary Factors

 Bacteria and molds

 Mites and nematode worms

 Insects and moths

 Coleopteran and beetles

Standardization of Herbal Preparation.
In order to produce quality products, it is essential that standardization and validation of botanical
materials and process is done and documented. It is an exceedingly complicated job to standardize
thousands of plant extracts with respect to their medicinal value and constituents. The quality in yester.
years was based on physical aspects of the plant material such as identification, colour, odour, size,
type, age, etc. Today, there is an additional requirement, of knowing the exact chemical composition of
the botanical raw material, along with the different physical tests. Standardization of natural products is
a complex task due to their heterogeneous composition, which is in the form of whole plant, parts or
extracts obtained there of. To ensure reproducible quality of herbal products, proper control of starting
material is utmost essential.

Factors influencing Quality of Botanicals

• Authentication of Name and Source of the herb

• Adulteration
• Phytochemical variation due to environmental factors.
• Inadequate knowledge of Active Principles.
• Lack of Reference Standards.
• Inadequate number of Official Monographs.
These factors are discussed below.

Authentication of Name and Source of the herb:

Majority of the herbs in India come from wild sources and are collected by poor, illiterate tribals
and local people, without any attention to botanical identification and authentication. Thus, the material
supplied is mostly adulterated, either intentionally or unintentionally. Each crude drug has different
names in vernacular languages and local trade occurs in these vernacular names only. Botanical/Latin
names are rarely used for these purposes.

Adulteration : The likelihood of adulteration of raw botanical material is very high. It could be
unintentional as there are many crude drugs which when fully dried look morphologically very similar
to each other. On the other hand, it could be deliberate, for example, unwanted foreign organic and
inorganic material may be added to increase weight. In such circumstances, it becomes mandatory to
resort to complete manual cleaning of raw material prior to processing.
 Phytochemial variations due to environmental factors :
There are many intrinsic factors which govern the growth and medicinal quality of herbs. This is
largely due to the change in their chemical constitution which often leads to change in their bioactivity.
Due to these inherent variations, standardization will help control the quality. The major environmental
factors are :

• Seasonal Changes
• Geographical variations
• Age of the plant at the time of the harvest
• Genetic factors (ploidy and variety)
• Edaphic factors (soil pH, soil composition, macro and micro- nutrients).
Inadequate knowledge of Active Principles : Each herb is a complex mixture of hundreds organic
compounds containing different types of secondary metabolites and mostly the active principle is not

Identified.

Lack of Reference Standards: Reference standards are required at two stages:

(1) Crude drug reference standard

(2) Active principle
Authentic reference standards, both for crude drug as well as for active principles not easy to obtain
for all the drugs, but Mill many Herbal Research Companies \ Laboratories are making efforts to
develop .1 library of standards of the phytochemical.
Inadequate Number of Official Monograph: There are hardly any pharmacopoeia available to the
natural product scientist foi guidance. Indian Herbal Pharmacopoeia The Indian Pharmacopoeia,
4th edition, 19%, Vol I and II, addendum 2003, has analytie-' monographs on very few medicinal
plant. Though Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of Indi. (Vol. 1-3) covers about 240 medicinal plant, but
the parameters are not adequate for export purposes.
Even though the problems encountered in the standardization of crude drugs are numerous, efforts
are on for obtaining quality products by different methods standardization. Some them are described
below.

1. Development of in-house Crude Drug References Standards: For the purpose of identification
of the crude drugs, it is best to possess the authentic reference standard that particular crude drug. This
 can be done by generating in-house reference standard for crude drugs. Fresh plants can be collected,
from right geographical locations, in the right season, at the right age. Its taxonomic identity' may be
verified, followed by preparation of herbarium sheets and documenting the relevant collection details.
Then they should be carefully collected, dried under controlled conditions and stored appropriately so
as to serve as reference standards.

2. TLC Finger Printing: Many of the crude drugs have look-alikes and it becomes
difficult to differentiate the genuine ones from the fake drugs after they are
powdered. This then necessitates the application of Thin layer Chromatography
(TLC). TLC is one of the easiest and cheapest tools available for phytochemical
analysis and is the method of choice for crude drug authentication. The TLC
fingerprint of the sample under test is compared with the TLC finger print of the
crude drug reference standard. Thus, availability of the crude drug reference
standard becomes very crucial for Quality Control.
3. Quantification of Markers/Actives: Markers are compounds unique to the
plant in question and are preferably present in 'detectable amounts' and can be
easily isolated. A marker compound can be quantified and the quantification can
be carried out by High Performance, Thin Layer Chromatography HPTLC is well
suited to obtain a detailed fingerprint of herbal extract or product. Such a
fingerprint comprise of scanning in UV light, fluorescence and photographic
images in ultraviolet light (254 nm and 366 nm) and occasionally in visible light
after derivatization. For plants where actives/ markers aiv not known,
phytochemical profiling of the category compounds can be carried out Plants
contain different categories of molecules, e.g., alkaloids, terpenoids, glycosides,
saponins, flavonoids, tannins, etc,. For the quantification of these categories of
compounds the gravimetric method can be adopted tor crude drugs.

4. Residual Analysis: One of the very important aspects of standardization is to

ensure the absence of objectionable amounts of pesticide residues, heavy metal
residues, organic solvent residues, mycotoxin residues and bioburden.
 5. Biological Standardization Methods: A bioassay called Brine Shrimp Lethality
Bioassay is being used as a routine biological quality control tool along with finger
printing.

Regulatory aspects: all cosmetic related products must have registration/approval certificate for sale.
Regulation and regulatory requirements varies from country to country. Each countries have their own
regulatory agency that controls the standards and quality of the cosmetics. In the United states,
regulating body is Food and Drug Administration, cosmetic products and their ingredients are not
subject to FDA regulation prior to their release in to the market. FDA comes in to play when found any
violation in Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and Fair Packaging and Labeling Act. In India, there
is Drug and Cosmetic Act 1945 to regulate the essential aspects regarding safety of cosmetic products.