The invisible class
The emulsifiers, entry by entry
The class that does the most work for the least attention. It is printed on a great many of these masks, it is the reason a cream is a cream rather than two layers, and there is very little to report about it. Read as a group, the entries are uniform to the point of dullness - and the dullness is the finding.
- Entries in this class
- 22of 329
- Masks printing one
- 15671% of 219
- Reached by the Regulation
- 00 capped
- Typical place on a label
- 51%of the way down
Emulsifiers lower the tension between oil and water so the two stay in one mixture instead of separating out in the pack.
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
Every entry here is graded at the site's calmest level, and no annex of the Regulation reaches any of them. Both columns below say the same thing all the way down, which only a few classes in the encyclopaedia manage.
The members are the glyceryl and polyglyceryl esters, lecithin, the polysorbates and the sorbitans, and they sit around the middle of a label. Something that works at the boundary between two phases does not need to be near the top of a list to do it.
Having nothing to report is worth reporting. This is the stretch of a long ingredient list where the encyclopaedia has nothing to flag, and saying so is the point: a list is frightening mostly where it is unexplained.
All 22 emulsifier 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.
| Entry | EU status | Masks | Sources | Place on a label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Well tolerated: Glyceryl Stearate | No specific restriction | 42 | 0 | 33% down |
| Well tolerated: Polyglyceryl-10 Laurate | No specific restriction | 37 | 0 | 51% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Hydrogenated Lecithin | No specific restriction | 25 | 0 | 68% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Glyceryl Stearate Citrate | No specific restriction | 21 | 0 | 24% down |
| Well tolerated: Stearic Acid | No specific restriction | 19 | 0 | 60% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Sodium Stearoyl Glutamate | No specific restriction | 15 | 1 | 53% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Glyceryl Caprylate | No specific restriction | 14 | 0 | 62% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Polysorbate 20 | No specific restriction | 14 | 3 | 53% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: LecithinLecithin | No specific restriction | 11 | 0 | 63% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: PEG-60 Hydrogenated Castor Oil | No specific restriction | 11 | 1 | 43% down |
| Well tolerated: Polyglyceryl-10 Myristate | No specific restriction | 9 | 0 | 76% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Polysorbate 60 | No specific restriction | 9 | 2 | 69% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Sorbitan Isostearate | No specific restriction | 9 | 0 | 79% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Cetearyl OlivateOlive-derived emulsifier | No specific restriction | 7 | 0 | 39% down |
| Well tolerated: PEG-100 Stearate | No specific restriction | 7 | 0 | 44% down |
| Well tolerated: Sorbitan Olivate | No specific restriction | 7 | 0 | 53% down |
| Well tolerated: Potassium Cetyl Phosphate | No specific restriction | 6 | 0 | 54% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil | No specific restriction | 5 | 4 | 27% down |
| Well tolerated: Polyglyceryl-6 Laurate | No specific restriction | 3 | 0 | 62% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Polyglyceryl-3 Distearate | No specific restriction | 2 | 0 | 41% down |
| Well tolerated: Polysorbate 80 | No specific restriction | 2 | 2 | 56% downusually below ≈1% |
| Well tolerated: Sorbitan Oleate | No specific restriction | 2 | 0 | 68% downusually below ≈1% |
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 emulsifier entries sit a median 51% of the way down a list, and 50% 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
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
Mostly working for the formula
The antioxidants, entry by entry
17 entries · on 160 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.
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