With a supercharged formula of 2% salicylic acid, the breakout blocker serum unclogs blocked pores, while putting a stop to future breakouts.
Uploaded by: drkeshikasri on
Ingredients overview
Water, Propylene Glycol, Niacinamide, Salicylic Acid, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Phenoxyethanol, Sodium Hydroxide, Sodium Hyaluronate, Fragrance, Epilobium Angustifolium Flower/Leaf/Stem Extract, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate, Coumarin, Limonene, Linalool
Read more on how to read an ingredient list >>
Highlights
#alcohol-free
Alcohol Free
Key Ingredients
Anti-acne: Niacinamide, Salicylic Acid
Cell-communicating ingredient: Niacinamide
Exfoliant: Salicylic Acid
Skin brightening: Niacinamide
Skin-identical ingredient: Sodium Hyaluronate
Soothing: Salicylic Acid
Other Ingredients
Buffering: Sodium Hydroxide
Emulsifying: PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil
Moisturizer/humectant: Propylene Glycol, Niacinamide, Sodium Hyaluronate
Perfuming: Fragrance, Coumarin, Limonene, Linalool
Preservative: Salicylic Acid, Phenoxyethanol, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate
Solvent: Water, Propylene Glycol, Limonene
Surfactant/cleansing: PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil
Skim through
| Ingredient name | what-it-does | irr., com. | ID-Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water | solvent | ||
| Propylene Glycol | moisturizer/humectant, solvent | 0, 0 | |
| Niacinamide | cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant | superstar | |
| Salicylic Acid | exfoliant, anti-acne, soothing, preservative | superstar | |
| PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil | emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing | ||
| Phenoxyethanol | preservative | ||
| Sodium Hydroxide | buffering | ||
| Sodium Hyaluronate | skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | 0, 0 | goodie |
| Fragrance | perfuming | icky | |
| Epilobium Angustifolium Flower/Leaf/Stem Extract | |||
| Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate | preservative | ||
| Coumarin | perfuming | icky | |
| Limonene | perfuming, solvent | icky | |
| Linalool | perfuming | icky |
Acnesquad 2% Salicylic Acid Serum For Blackheads & Whiteheads
Ingredients explainedWater
Also-called: Aqua | What-it-does: solvent
Good old water, aka H2O. The most common skincare ingredient of all. You can usually find it right in the very first spot of the ingredient list, meaning it’s the biggest thing out of all the stuff that makes up the product.
It’s mainly a solvent for ingredients that do not like to dissolve in oils but rather in water.
Once inside the skin, it hydrates, but not from the outside - putting pure water on the skin (hello long baths!) is drying.
One more thing: the water used in cosmetics is purified and deionized (it means that almost all of the mineral ions inside it is removed). Like this, the products can stay more stable over time.
Propylene Glycol
What-it-does: moisturizer/humectant, solvent | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
- It's a helper ingredient that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products
- It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer
- It has a bad reputation among natural cosmetics advocates but cosmetic scientists and toxicology experts do not agree (read more in the geeky details section)
Read all the geeky details about Propylene Glycol here >>
Niacinamide - superstar
Also-called: vitamin B3, nicotinamide | What-it-does: cell-communicating ingredient, skin brightening, anti-acne, moisturizer/humectant
- A multi-functional skincare superstar with several proven benefits for the skin
- Great anti-aging, wrinkle smoothing ingredient used at 4-5% concentration
- Fades brown spots alone or in combination with amino sugar, acetyl glucosamine
- Increases ceramide synthesis that results in a stronger, healthier skin barrier and better skin hydration
- Can help to improve several skin conditions including acne, rosacea, and atopic dermatitis
Read all the geeky details about Niacinamide here >>
Salicylic Acid - superstar
Also-called: BHA | What-it-does: exfoliant, anti-acne, soothing, preservative
- It's one of the gold standard ingredients for treating problem skin
- It can exfoliate skin both on the surface and in the pores
- It's a potent anti-inflammatory agent
- It's more effective for treating blackheads than acne
- For acne combine it with antibacterial agents like benzoyl peroxide or azelaic acid
Read all the geeky details about Salicylic Acid here >>
PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil
What-it-does: emulsifying, surfactant/cleansing
A mildly viscous, amber-colored liquid with fatty odor, made from Castor Oil and polyethylene glycol (PEG).
If it were a person, we’d say, it’s agile, diligent & multifunctional. It’s mostly used as an emulsifier and surfactant but most often it is used to solubilizefragrances into water-based formulas.
Phenoxyethanol
What-it-does: preservative
It’s pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, but even more importantly, it’s not a feared-by-everyone-mostly-without-scientific-reason paraben.
It’s not something new: it was introduced around 1950 and today it can be used up to 1% worldwide. It can be found in nature - in green tea - but the version used in cosmetics is synthetic.
Other than having a good safety profile and being quite gentle to the skin it has some other advantages too. It can be used in many types of formulations as it has great thermal stability (can be heated up to 85°C) and works on a wide range of pH levels (ph 3-10).
It’s often used together with ethylhexylglycerin as it nicely improves the preservative activity of phenoxyethanol.
Sodium Hydroxide
Also-called: lye | What-it-does: buffering
The unfancy name for it is lye. It’s a solid white stuff that’s very alkaline and used in small amounts to adjust the pH of the product and make it just right.
For example, in case of AHA or BHA exfoliants, the right pH is super-duper important, and pH adjusters like sodium hydroxide are needed.
BTW, lye is not something new. It was already used by ancient Egyptians to help oil and fat magically turn into something else. Can you guess what? Yes, it’s soap. It still often shows up in the ingredient list of soaps and other cleansers.
Sodium hydroxide in itselfis a potent skin irritant, but once it's reacted (as it is usually in skin care products, like exfoliants) it is totallyharmless.
Sodium Hyaluronate - goodie
What-it-does: skin-identical ingredient, moisturizer/humectant | Irritancy: 0 | Comedogenicity: 0
It’s the - sodium form - cousin of the famous NMF,hyaluronic acid(HA). If HA does not tell you anything we have a super detailed, geeky explanation about it here. The TL; DR version of HA is that it's a huge polymer (big molecule from repeated subunits) found in the skin that acts as a sponge helping the skin to hold onto water, being plump and elastic. HA is famous for its crazy water holding capacity as it can bind up to 1000 times its own weight in water.
As far as skincare goes, sodium hyaluronate and hyaluronic acid are pretty much the same and the two names are used interchangeably. As cosmetic chemist kindofstephenwrites on reddit "sodium hyaluronate disassociates into hyaluronic acid molecule and a sodium atom in solution".
In spite of this, if you search for "hyaluronic acid vs sodium hyaluronate" you will find on multiple places that sodium hyaluronate is smaller and can penetrate the skin better. Chemically, this is definitely not true, as the two forms are almost the same, both are polymers and the subunits can be repeated in both forms as much as you like. (We also checkedProspector for sodium hyaluronate versions actually used in cosmetic products and found that the most common molecular weight was 1.5-1.8 million Da that absolutely counts as high molecular weight).
What seems to be a true difference, though, is that the salt form is more stable, easier to formulate andcheaper so it pops up more often on the ingredient lists.
If you wanna become a real HA-and-the-skin expert you can read way more about the topic at hyaluronic acid(including penetration-questions, differences between high and low molecular weight versions and a bunch of references to scientific literature).
Fragrance - icky
Also-called: Fragrance, Parfum;Parfum/Fragrance | What-it-does: perfuming
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.
Also, if your skin is sensitive, fragrance is again not your best friend. It’s the number one cause of contact allergy to cosmetics. It’s definitely a smart thing to avoid with sensitive skin (and fragrance of any type - natural is just as allergic as synthetic, if not worse!).
Epilobium Angustifolium Flower/Leaf/Stem Extract
We don't have description for this ingredient yet.
Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate
What-it-does: preservative
It's one of those things that help your cosmetics not to go wrong too soon, aka a preservative. Its strong point is being effective againstyeasts and molds, and as a nice bonus seems to be non-comedogenic as well.
It is safe in concentrations of less than 0.1%but is acutely toxic when inhaled, so it's not the proper preservative choice for aerosol formulas like hairsprays. Used at 0.1%, Iodopropynyl Butylcarbamate has an extremely low rate of skin-irritation when applied directly for 24 hours (around 0.1% of 4,883 participants) and after 48 hours that figure was 0.5%, so it counts as mild and safe unless your skin is super-duper sensitive.
Coumarin - icky
What-it-does: perfuming
A common fragrance ingredient that has a sweet, vanilla, nutty scent. When diluted it smells like freshly-mown hay.
It’s one of the “EU 26 fragrances” that has to be labelled separately (and cannot be simply included in the term “fragrance/perfume” on the label) because of allergen potential. Best to avoid if your skin is sensitive.
Limonene - icky
What-it-does: perfuming, solvent, deodorant
A supercommon and cheap fragrance ingredient. It's in many plants, e.g. rosemary, eucalyptus, lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and it's the main component (about 50-90%) of the peel oil of citrus fruits.
It does smellnice but the problemis that it oxidizes on air exposure and the resulting stuff is not good for the skin. Oxidizedlimonene cancause allergic contact dermatitis and counts asa frequent skin sensitizer.
Limonene's nr1 function is definitely being a fragrance component, but there are several studies showing that it's also a penetration enhancer, mainly for oil-loving components.
All in all, limonene has some pros and cons, but - especially if your skin is sensitive -the cons probably outweigh the pros.
Linalool - icky
What-it-does: perfuming, deodorant
Linalool is a super common fragrance ingredient. It’s kind of everywhere - both in plants and in cosmetic products. It’s part of 200 natural oils including lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot, jasmine, geranium and it can be found in 90-95% of prestige perfumes on the market.
The problem with linalool is, that just like limoneneit oxidises on air exposure and becomes allergenic. That’s why a product containing linalool that has been opened for several months is more likely to be allergenic than a fresh one.
A study made in the UK with 483 people tested the allergic reaction to 3% oxidised linalool and 2.3% had positive test results.
You may also want to take a look at...
Normal (well kind of - it's purified and deionized) water. Usually the main solvent in cosmetic products. [more] A common glycol that improves the freeze-thaw stability of products. It's also a solvent, humectant and to some extent a penetration enhancer. [more] A multi-functional skincare superstar that has clinically proven anti-aging, skin lightening, anti-inflammatory and barrier repair properties. [more] One of the gold standard ingredients for treating problem skin. It can exfoliate skin both on the surface and in the pores and it's a potent anti-inflammatory agent. [more] A mildly viscous, amber-colored liquid that works as an emulsifier and surfactant. [more] Pretty much the current IT-preservative. It’s safe and gentle, and can be used up to 1% worldwide. [more] Lye - A solid white stuff that’s very alkaline and used in small amount to adjust the pH of the product. [more] It's the salt form of famous humectant and natural moisturizing factor, hyaluronic acid. It can bind huge amounts of water and it's pretty much the current IT-moisturizer. [more] The generic term for nice smelling stuff put into cosmetic products so that the end product also smells nice. It is made up of 30 to 50 chemicals on average. [more] It's one of those things that help your cosmetics not to go wrong too soon, aka a preservative. Its strong point is being effective againstyeasts and molds, and as a nice bonus seems to be non-comedogenic as well.It is safe in concentrations of less than 0.1%but is acutely toxic when inhaled, so it's not the proper preservative choice for aerosol formulas like hairsprays. [more] A common fragrance ingredient that has a sweet, vanilla, nutty scent. When diluted it smells like freshly-mown hay. [more] A supercommon fragrance ingredient found naturally in many plants including citrus peel oils, rosemary or lavender. It autoxidizes on air exposure and counts as a common skin sensitizer. [more] A super common fragrance ingredient that can be found among others in lavender, ylang-ylang, bergamot or jasmine. The downside of it is that it oxidises on air exposure and might become allergenic. [more] what‑it‑does solvent what‑it‑does moisturizer/humectant | solvent irritancy,com. 0, 0 what‑it‑does cell-communicating ingredient | skin brightening | anti-acne | moisturizer/humectant what‑it‑does exfoliant | anti-acne | soothing | preservative what‑it‑does emulsifying | surfactant/cleansing what‑it‑does preservative what‑it‑does buffering what‑it‑does skin-identical ingredient | moisturizer/humectant irritancy,com. 0, 0 what‑it‑does perfuming what‑it‑does preservative what‑it‑does perfuming what‑it‑does perfuming | solvent what‑it‑does perfuming
