Alpha Keri Shower & Bath Oil ingredients (Explained) (2025)

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Alcohol Free

Sunscreen: Oxybenzone

Mineral Oil (Paraffinum Liquidum)

The famous or maybe rather infamous mineral oil. The clear oily liquid that is the "cheap by-product" of refining crude oil and the one that gets a lot of heat for its poor provenance. It is a very controversial ingredient with pros and cons and plenty of mythsaround it. So let us see them:

The pros of mineral oil
Trust us, if something is used for more than 100 years in cosmeticproducts, it hasadvantages. Chemically speaking, cosmetic grade mineral oil is a complex mixture ofhighly refined saturated hydrocarbons with C15-50 chain length.It is not merely a "by-product" but rather a specifically isolated part of petroleum that is very pure and inert.

It is a great emollient and moisturizer working mainly by occlusivity.Occlusivity is one of the basic mechanisms of how moisturizers work and it means that mineral oilsits on top of the skin and hinders so-called trans-epidermal water loss, i.e water evaporating out of your skin. When compared to heavy-duty plant oil, extra virgin coconut oil, the two of them were equally efficient and safe as moisturizers in treating xerosis, a skin condition connected to very dry skin.

PEG-4 Dilaurate

What-it-does: emulsifying

Lanolin Oil

Oxybenzone - icky

A chemical sunscreen agent that absorbs UVB and short UVA rays (280-350nm) with its peak protection at 288 nm. Unlike many other chemical sunscreens, it ishighly stable but its UV absorbing abilities are weakso it alwayshas to be combined with other sunscreen agents for proper protection. More often than not, it's used as aphotostabilizer rather than a proper sunscreen agent as it can protect formulas nicely from UV damage.

Regarding safety, BP-3 is somewhatcontroversial. First, its molecules are small (228 Da) and very lipophilic (oil loving) and these properties result in very goodabsorption. The problem is that you want sunscreens on the top of your skin and not in your bloodstream, so for BP-3 this is a problem. In fact, it absorbs so well that 4 hours after application of a sunscreen product with BP-3,it can be detected in urine.

Fragrance - icky

Exactly what it sounds: nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. Fragrance in the US and parfum in the EU is a generic term on the ingredient list that is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average (but it can have as much as 200 components!).

If you are someone who likes to know what you put on your face then fragrance is not your best friend - there's no way to know what’s really in it.