For most people, the topic of alcohol usually concerns a drink at the bar or the rubbing alcohol in your medicine closet. However, alcohol also tends to be present in skincare products, which they shouldn’t. And it isn’t just one type of alcohol you need to be worried about. It’s important to know what fatty alcohol and harsh alcohols do and which should be avoided.

As the name implies, harsh alcohol is the type that you should stay away from when it comes to your skincare products. This type of alcohol contains properties that are antibacterial, which in some cases is good, but just not for the skin. As a result, harsh alcohols cause the skin to become extremely dry. Examples of the most common forms of harsh alcohols include rubbing alcohol and SD-alcohol 40. Because of its tendency to evaporate quickly, when contained in a skincare product, this causes the skin to become dry and irritated.

Fatty alcohols are actually the type you don’t need to worry about in your skincare. These particular fatty alcohols, namely propylene glycol and panthenol, possess the ability to enhance a skincare product’s moisturizing properties and operate as humectants, which allows the water to bind to the skin. Tocopherol also contains moisturizing properties as well as antioxidant properties, while stearyl alcohol works as an emulsifier and emollient.

The next time you go shopping for a skincare item and you see that a product is labeled “alcohol free,” this may not be 100% true. What the label means to say is that a particular skincare product does not contain any ethyl alcohol (harsh) but it may contain fatty alcohols, which are okay for use in skincare. Common fatty alcohols that are named as ingredients in skincare items that are alcohol free include: cetearyl alcohol, lanolin alcohol, cetyl alcohol, and stearyl alcohol.

Classifying certain alcohols is typically given based on chemical structure. There are many alcohols that many of us wouldn’t know were labeled as such. In fact there are hundreds of alcohols that work to benefit the skin and are able to operate in the form of antioxidants, emulsifiers, surfactants, solvents, and humectants.

Because some people try to use ethyl alcohol in a cosmetic product illegally for use as an alcoholic drink, it is often labeled as being “denatured,” which means it contains an added property that makes it unsafe for consumption. You may see some skincare products with ingredients that are labeled denatured, such as SD alcohol, SD alcohol 23-A, SD alcohol 40, or SD Alcohol 4-B. Alcohols are considered “drying” when they evaporate too quickly on the skin. This type of alcohol tends to have a chemical structure that has the fewest amounts of carbon atoms, which causes the rapid evaporation. Definitely not a plus for skin of any type.

In addition to ethyl alcohol as a huge “no-no” in skincare products, two other types of alcohol that you will never see on the label of ingredients are isopropyl and methyl alcohol. These are more examples of harsh alcohols that only serve to irritate and dry out the skin.

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