Mostly working for the formula
The antioxidants, entry by entry
On a large majority of the catalogue, almost always late on the label, and almost entirely graded at the site's calmest level. No annex of the Regulation reaches any of it. Read as a group, the entries show a class often present for the formula's sake rather than the reader's, which is not the story the front of a pack tends to tell.
- Entries in this class
- 17of 329
- Masks printing one
- 16073% of 219
- Reached by the Regulation
- 00 capped
- Typical place on a label
- 61%of the way down
Antioxidants interrupt oxidation inside the pack, keeping oils and other oxidisable material from turning rancid or changing colour before the product is used up.
That is the job this class does in a formula, which is not the same as what it does to skin. The second question is answered entry by entry, against a source we read - the grading rubric sets out how.
The short read
Tocopherol, hydroxyacetophenone, green tea, the vitamin C derivatives and bakuchiol all sit here, and they sit late on a label. Very little of an antioxidant is needed to keep the oils in a formula from going off, and the position is consistent with that rather than with a headline dose.
Where a grade here rises above the calmest level, it tends to be conditional rather than flat - on the acidity a formula needs, or on its being made up so as not to sensitise. The encyclopaedia records the condition rather than a verdict on the substance, and the entry is where it is set out.
The weight of cited evidence behind these entries varies far more than their grades do - the sources column below is the one that moves. Entries can share the site's calmest grade and rest on very different reading, which is the argument for opening the entry rather than trusting the class.
All 17 antioxidant entries
Widest reach first. The grade and the EU status are separate columns because they are separate questions: a capped Annex V preservative can be the calmest thing on a label, and an unrestricted plant extract can be the entry most worth reading. Every one of these entries has its own page, with the sources behind it.
- Well tolerated
- No meaningful concern for most people; irritation is possible but rare.
- Depends on you
- Genuinely relevant for some people, or depends on dose and pH.
| Entry | EU status | Masks | Sources | Place on a label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Well tolerated: TocopherolVitamin E | No specific restriction | 87 | 3 | 68% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Hydroxyacetophenone | No specific restriction | 67 | 6 | 60% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Camellia Sinensis (Green Tea) Leaf ExtractGreen tea | No specific restriction | 26 | 3 | 45% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Tocopheryl AcetateVitamin E acetate | No specific restriction | 21 | 1 | 48% down |
| Depends on you: Ascorbic AcidVitamin C | No specific restriction | 10 | 3 | 81% downusually below ≈1% |
| Depends on you: Rosmarinus Officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf ExtractRosemary leaf extract | No specific restriction | 10 | 2 | 63% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Ascorbyl Palmitate | No specific restriction | 9 | 2 | 69% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: UbiquinoneCoenzyme Q10 | No specific restriction | 6 | 4 | 44% down |
| Well tolerated: Glutathione | No specific restriction | 5 | 2 | 55% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Sodium Ascorbyl PhosphateStable vitamin C | No specific restriction | 5 | 2 | 45% down |
| Well tolerated: BakuchiolBakuchiol | No specific restriction | 3 | 2 | 41% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Tannic AcidTannin | No specific restriction | 3 | 0 | 94% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Vaccinium Myrtillus Fruit ExtractBilberry | No specific restriction | 3 | 0 | 41% down |
| Well tolerated: Ferulic Acid | No specific restriction | 1 | 2 | 68% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Oryza Sativa (Rice) Bran ExtractRice bran | No specific restriction | 1 | 0 | 77% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Palmitoyl Grape Seed Extract | No specific restriction | 1 | 0 | 44% down |
| Well tolerated: Resveratrol | No specific restriction | none | 1 | — |
1 of these entries are in no mask in this catalogue. They are documented for reference - EU-restricted substances kept so a reader knows what should not be on a label, and ingredients that turn up in skincare but not in these masks. The EU watchlist collects the restricted ones.
Where this class sits on a pack
An ingredient list is not in a random order. Article 19(1)(g) of Regulation (EC) 1223/2009 requires it to run “in descending order of weight of the ingredients at the time they are added”, and then allows everything under 1% to be listed “in any order” after the rest. So the top of a list is a statement about quantity and the bottom of it is not - which is the ≈1% line the Panel draws on every product page.
Counted across every appearance of this class in the catalogue, and measured as a fraction of each list’s own length so a 4-entry pack and an 81-entry pack count equally, the antioxidant entries sit a median 61% of the way down a list, and 81% of those appearances fall below the ≈1% line. Where that share is high, position has stopped telling a reader anything about how much is in the pack.
Every class in the encyclopaedia, side by side
The encyclopaedia sorts its entries into 24 classes and 10 have a page: a class needs 15 entries to carry one, below which a landing page is a re-headed filter view. “Other” is excluded whatever its size, because a bucket cannot be a landing page. Every figure here is counted across all 24, so any comparison in the copy above is scoped against a set you can see rather than against the ones that happened to ship.
| Class | Entries | Masks | Grades | EU-reached | Place on a label |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Humectant | 42 | 21598% | 41graded well tolerated1graded depends on you | 0 | 33% |
| Emollient | 41 | 12959% | 40graded well tolerated1graded depends on you | 1 | 36% |
| Preservative | 28 | 17881% | 14graded well tolerated2graded depends on you8graded worth knowing4graded avoid | 234 banned | 78% |
| Botanical | 25 | 12457% | 17graded well tolerated7graded depends on you1graded worth knowing | 0 | 50% |
| Emulsifier | 22 | 15671% | 22graded well tolerated | 0 | 51% |
| Thickener | 22 | 19790% | 22graded well tolerated | 1 | 55% |
| Essential oil | 21 | 2913% | 18graded depends on you3graded worth knowing | 8 | 79% |
| Fragrance | 19 | 13260% | 11graded depends on you6graded worth knowing2graded avoid | 192 banned | 88% |
| Antioxidant | 17 | 16073% | 15graded well tolerated2graded depends on you | 0 | 61% |
| Active | 16 | 12155% | 9graded well tolerated1graded depends on you5graded worth knowing1graded avoid | 71 banned | 46% |
| Exfoliantno page | 9 | 3616% | 3graded well tolerated6graded depends on you | 3 | 53% |
| pH adjusterno page | 9 | 14868% | 9graded well tolerated | 3 | 72% |
| Othernever a page | 9 | 7333% | 8graded well tolerated1graded avoid | 21 banned | 72% |
| Clay / mineralno page | 8 | 4621% | 7graded well tolerated1graded worth knowing | 7 | 17% |
| Fermentno page | 7 | 2612% | 7graded well tolerated | 0 | 38% |
| Film formerno page | 7 | 5927% | 7graded well tolerated | 0 | 64% |
| Solventno page | 6 | 21498% | 3graded well tolerated3graded depends on you | 0 | 6% |
| Colourantno page | 5 | 3817% | 4graded well tolerated1graded depends on you | 3 | 96% |
| Peptide / proteinno page | 5 | 3014% | 5graded well tolerated | 0 | 67% |
| Chelatorno page | 4 | 9845% | 4graded well tolerated | 0 | 77% |
| Siliconeno page | 4 | 157% | 3graded well tolerated1graded worth knowing | 1 | 25% |
| Surfactantno page | 2 | 52% | 2graded depends on you | 0 | 26% |
| UV filterno page | 1 | 42% | 1graded well tolerated | 1 | 35% |
| Occlusiveno page | 0 | 00% | — | 0 | — |
An entry has exactly one class, so the entries column sums to 329. The masks column does not sum to 219 and is not meant to - a single list prints entries from a great many classes at once.
Read another class
The other classes with a page
The class a mask mostly is
The humectants, entry by entry
42 entries · on 215 masks
Where the label names a plant
The emollients, entry by entry
41 entries · on 129 masks
Where a list means permission
The preservatives, entry by entry
28 entries · on 178 masks
Unrestricted, and not always calm
The botanicals, entry by entry
25 entries · on 124 masks
The invisible class
The emulsifiers, entry by entry
22 entries · on 156 masks
Texture, and nobody reads it
The thickeners, entry by entry
22 entries · on 197 masks
Small class, long list of cautions
The essential oils, entry by entry
21 entries · on 29 masks
The class the law knows entirely
The fragrance materials, entry by entry
19 entries · on 132 masks
Where a cap signals purpose
The actives, entry by entry
16 entries · on 121 masks
Every entry in this class has a page of its own in the ingredient encyclopaedia, where you can search any name off the back of a pack. To see the masks that print these names, and narrow them by price, format or what you want kept out, filter the full catalogue.
Nothing on this page is a paid placement and no link here is an affiliate link - see how this site is paid for.