If you have ever looked at the ingredient list of your favorite bottle of nail polish, you might have gone cross-eyed from all the chemicals. In this series of posts, Mette Jorgensen is decoding what some of those scary ingredients are, what they do, and how they do their job.
Today is the last in the ‘Decoding the Ingredients’ series and I will be explaining dispersants and UV stabilizers.
Dispersants are additives that are used to mix pigments with resins and solvents, which is an extremely important job as it slows down the process of the color settling and separating in the bottle. Common dispersants used are stearalkonium hectorite or stearalkonium bentonite.
UV stabilizers are also important as they prevent polish from changing color or fading when it’s exposed to sunlight. However some polishes now offer a ‘color change’ effect so don’t contain UV stabilizers. The most commonly used stablizier is benzophenone, which is mostly followed by a dash and the number one.
– Mette Jorgensen
