Everyday Body Lotion

Details

A daily lotion for rough shins, forearms, elbows and heels, built on urea at 5 percent. Urea is a humectant that holds water inside the outer skin and, above about 10 percent, begins to break down hardened keratin; at 5 percent it is doing the first job and not much of the second, which is the honest description of what is in this bottle. Two disclosures the category avoids. The first is water. A body lotion is mostly water, always, and the front of the pack usually carries a picture of a nut or a butter instead of a figure, so here is the figure: 66.1 percent water, and the other 33.9 percent is itemised below to the tenth of a percent. The second is silicone. There is dimethicone in this at 2.0 percent, named plainly rather than folded into a phrase like conditioning agents or skin-smoothing complex. Dimethicone is a silicone. It does not absorb, it does not feed skin and it repairs nothing; it lies on the surface as a breathable film and slows the rate at which water leaves, which is exactly the job an occlusive is in a lotion to do, and a lotion holding 5 percent urea needs one or the urea's own water goes back into the air. Removing it to earn a silicone-free line would make the lotion work less well, so it stays and it is declared.

• Urea at 5.0 percent by formula, assayed at 5.06 percent by HPLC, because a label claim and an assay are two different numbers and only one of them is tested
• Water 66.1 percent, declared. The remaining 33.9 percent is listed to the tenth of a percent below
• Dimethicone 2.0 percent, named as a silicone, with what it does and does not do stated above
• Full INCI in descending order: Aqua, Glycerin (6.0 percent), Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride (5.0 percent), Urea (5.0 percent), Cetearyl Alcohol (3.5 percent), Butyrospermum Parkii Butter (3.0 percent), Helianthus Annuus Seed Oil (2.5 percent), Dimethicone (2.0 percent), Glyceryl Stearate (1.8 percent), Cetearyl Glucoside (1.2 percent), Panthenol (1.0 percent), Sodium Lactate (1.0 percent), Sodium Benzoate, Xanthan Gum, Lactic Acid, Potassium Sorbate, Tocopherol, Sodium Phytate
• Shea butter at 3.0 percent and cold-pressed sunflower seed oil at 2.5 percent, both stated, because with argan oil or with shea butter on a front panel can lawfully mean 0.1 percent
• Measured pH 5.0, and there is a reason it is 5.0 rather than 5.5. Urea hydrolyses to ammonia as pH rises, so a urea lotion that drifts alkaline starts to smell and loses its active. The sodium lactate and lactic acid are the buffer that holds it
• Fragrance-free, no parfum, no essential oil, no masking agent. It smells faintly of shea and sunflower, which is what a fragrance-free lotion smells like
• No mineral oil, no paraffin, no paraben, no MIT, no formaldehyde donor, no dye, no alcohol, no EDTA
• Tested fill: 200 ml net, filled by weight to 196 g at a measured density of 0.980 g per ml. The 400 ml is 392 g, checked per lot
• Honest trade-off: urea stings on broken, cracked-open or freshly shaved skin. That is urea working on exposed nerve endings, not an allergy, but it hurts, so leave those patches until they close
• Second trade-off: 5 percent urea softens rough skin and holds water. It will not clear a deeply fissured heel. That wants 10 to 20 percent urea, which is a different product and is not this one