Bloom Baby Massage Oil

Details

The daily malish oil, and the first thing a listing owes you is which of the two kinds of oil is in the bottle. This is a vegetable carrier: sesame, sunflower and sweet almond, with tocopherol to keep it from turning. There is no mineral oil in it. That is the cheat in this aisle, and it is not that mineral oil is poison. Most of the baby oil sold in India is light liquid paraffin, a petroleum distillate, sold under a warm name with the words Light Liquid Paraffin IP in the small print on the back. Paraffin is cheap, it never goes rancid, it sits on the skin rather than sinking in, and used as sold it is not dangerous. What is not acceptable is a bottle that will not tell you which one you bought. Both are defensible; hiding which is not. And where paraffin is used, the thing that actually matters is grade, because the real risk in a mineral oil is contamination by aromatic hydrocarbons. So even though there is no paraffin here, we run the test that would find it: MOSH and MOAH by LC-GC-FID, both below the limit of quantification at 1 mg per kg. That figure does double duty, because cutting a vegetable oil with paraffin is a documented adulteration and this is the test that catches it. The second thing worth knowing is which vegetable oil, because they are not interchangeable on infant skin. Linoleic acid supports the lipids that hold the barrier together; oleic acid, in the work done on infant skin, does the opposite and loosens it. That is why there is no olive oil in this bottle: olive oil runs about 72 percent oleic and 10 percent linoleic. This blend measures 45.4 percent linoleic against 40.5 percent oleic by GC-FID, a ratio of 1.12 to 1, where olive oil is about 0.14 to 1. The sunflower fraction is a high-linoleic type and that is deliberate.

• Full INCI, in descending order: Sesamum Indicum (Sesame) Seed Oil, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Tocopherol
• With percentages: Sesamum Indicum Seed Oil 40.0, Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil 35.0, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis Oil 24.7, Tocopherol 0.3, which totals 100.0. Four things, and nothing is in here so a word can go on the front
• Fatty acid profile of the blend by GC-FID: linoleic 45.4, oleic 40.5, palmitic 7.3, stearic 3.8 percent
• MOSH and MOAH by LC-GC-FID, both below the limit of quantification at 1 mg per kg. No mineral oil, and no paraffin cut into the vegetable oil either
• Peroxide value below 2.0 milliequivalents of oxygen per kg at filling, and free fatty acid below 0.3 percent as oleic, to IS 548. These are the freshness numbers, and an oil that does not print them is asking you to trust a smell
• Almond protein by ELISA, below 2.5 mg per kg, the limit of quantification. That figure is here for a specific reason, in the trade-offs below
• No fragrance and no essential oil. Not an oversight. Lavender and chamomile oils are among the most common contact sensitisers reported in children, and their linalool and limonene oxidise in the bottle into stronger ones. There is nothing to declare because there is nothing in it
• No preservative, and the reason is that there is no water. An oil holds no free water, so nothing microbial grows in it. It still oxidises, which is what the tocopherol and the amber glass are for
• No mineral oil, no talc, no silicone, no colour. Lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium by ICP-MS, each under the Cosmetics Rules 2020 limits
• Honest trade-off one: it is oil. It marks clothes and bed linen, it does not wash out of cotton easily, and it makes a wet baby genuinely slippery to hold
• Honest trade-off two, and the important one: sesame is a recognised contact allergen in infants and almond is a tree nut. Do not use this on broken, weeping or eczematous skin. A damaged barrier is the route by which food proteins sensitise a child, so the caution is specific rather than general. Patch test on the inner arm first, and if there is eczema, ask your paediatrician before using any nut-derived oil
• Honest trade-off three: it is not sterile and it will not last. Use it within 6 months of opening, and if it smells sharp or like old paint, it has oxidised and it goes
• Never put oil in a baby's nose or ears. Oil instilled into the nose can be drawn into the lungs, and that is a reported and serious harm in infants, not a theoretical one