Bloom Baby Lotion

Details

A light daily moisturiser for the ten minutes after a bath, when skin loses water fastest. This is the leave-on product on the shelf, and leave-on is where preservative choice actually matters, because a rinse-off is on the skin for a minute and this is on it all day. So there is no phenoxyethanol in it. The European SCCS concluded in 2016 that phenoxyethanol is safe up to 1.0 percent including for children. The French ANSM, assessing products for children under three, recommended 0.4 percent and no use at all on the nappy area, and since 2019 has required leave-on products containing it to carry that warning. Two competent regulators, one product category, different answers. On a baby leave-on we take the more cautious one to its conclusion and use none. What replaces it is sodium benzoate 0.5 and potassium sorbate 0.3 at pH 5.0, and the pH is set at 5.0 rather than 5.5 for the same reason as the wash: those two only work undissociated, and half a pH point nearly triples how much of them is. Two figures do the rest of the work. Colloidal oatmeal is at 1.0 percent, which is the top of the range recognised for a skin protectant, and it is printed because with oat can otherwise mean a hundredth of this. And the total lipid load is 13.0 percent, which is what makes this a lotion rather than a cream. A cream runs 20 to 25. That difference is the honest answer to the most common question about this category: if a child has diagnosed eczema, a lotion is very likely too light, and what gets prescribed is an ointment or a thick cream. This is a daily moisturiser, not a treatment, and we are not going to blur the two.

• Full INCI, in descending order: Aqua, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Cetearyl Alcohol, Cetearyl Glucoside, Avena Sativa (Oat) Kernel Flour, Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate, Tocopherol, Xanthan Gum, Citric Acid, Sodium Phytate
• With percentages: Aqua 77.8, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil 6.0, Glycerin 5.0, Butyrospermum Parkii Butter 4.0, Cetearyl Alcohol 3.0, Cetearyl Glucoside 1.5, Avena Sativa Kernel Flour 1.0, Sodium Benzoate 0.5, Potassium Sorbate 0.3, Tocopherol 0.3, Xanthan Gum 0.3, Citric Acid 0.2, Sodium Phytate 0.1, which totals 100.0
• Lipid load 13.0 percent: sunflower oil 6.0 plus shea butter 4.0 plus cetearyl alcohol 3.0. A cream would be 20 to 25 percent, and that is the whole difference between the two words
• Colloidal oatmeal 1.0 percent, at the top of the recognised skin protectant range. The percentage is the claim; the word on its own is not
• Measured pH 5.0, and the same arithmetic as the wash: benzoic acid pKa 4.2 gives 13.7 percent undissociated at 5.0 against 4.8 percent at 5.5, sorbic acid pKa 4.76 gives 36.5 against 15.4
• Preservative efficacy to ISO 11930, criterion A, on the finished emulsion. An emulsion carrying 77.8 percent water and 1.0 percent oat flour is a richer growth medium than a wash, so the challenge test matters more here than anywhere else on this shelf
• No phenoxyethanol at all, for the reason above. Paraben-free and formaldehyde-donor-free with the replacement named rather than implied, and no MIT or CMIT put in behind them. Sodium Phytate 0.1 in place of EDTA
• The emulsifier is named, not called plant-derived: Cetearyl Glucoside 1.5 percent with Cetearyl Alcohol 3.0 percent. Naming the grade is the difference between a claim and a word
• No mineral oil, and MOSH and MOAH by LC-GC-FID below the limit of quantification at 1 mg per kg, which is the test that would find it. No silicone, no lanolin, no colour, no alcohol, no talc
• Fragrance-free: no parfum, no essential oil, none of the 26 EU declarable components. Phthalates by GC-MS for the six esters, none detected. Heavy metals by ICP-MS under the Cosmetics Rules 2020 limits
• Honest trade-off one: at 13.0 percent lipid this absorbs in about 90 seconds and needs reapplying more often than a cream would. It is built to go on a baby who will not lie still, and that is the compromise
• Honest trade-off two: oat is a cereal protein. A small number of children with severe eczema react to topical oat, so patch test on the inner arm before the first full use, particularly if there is already eczema
• Honest trade-off three: this is not for the nappy area. Use the Nappy Barrier Cream there. A lotion is a moisturiser, and a moisturiser is not a barrier
• If skin is genuinely eczematous, ask your paediatrician. This is a daily lotion and it is not a medicine, and a listing that hinted otherwise would be doing the same thing as the labels this shop exists to argue with