Part 1: What is a Formulation?

Audience: Everyone

I recently saw the below image online, and it really stuck with me.  Please view it below and know that I do not condone these views; however, they are worth serious discussion.

Image 1

Pretty scary, right?

How about this one (see below)?  This is all in your food!  Again, I do not condone these views, but they are worth discussing.

Image 2

So at this point you might be thinking that if you avoid any food you don’t make yourself and vaccines, you are in the clear, right?  Think again, this is an ingredient list for the shampoo that I use!  Looks like the crazy ingredients found a way in there, too!

Image 3

The point here is that formulation science has had there hands in pretty much every product you use in the modern world.  What I would like to discuss further in this and following blog posts is how formulation science works, and to eliminate some of the “scariness” of these ingredients. In fact, when you understand what is being done, you will feel much more comfortable, and you will actually be able to assess any real risks that there may be.  Importantly, I also hope that you will not fall for any fear-mongering tactics that seem all too common on the internet.

 

 

So to start off, what is a formulation?  A formulation, as defined by Merriam-Webster is “an act or the product of formulating.”  To follow this up, what is formulating?  Again, Merriam-Webster says “to develop a formula for the preparation of (something, such as a soap or plastic), an example is a plastic specially formulated to resist high temperatures.”  So formulation science is simply the development of a recipe (or formula to use the formal term) for a product.

 

 

In a more practical sense, a formulation is just an optimized mixture of compounds has desirable properties that make it easy to use for its intended application.  Let’s take a look at body spray as an example.  If my body spray applies easily, but smells terrible, it is unlikely to be successful product.  Similarly, if it smells great, but applies terribly, it is also unlikely to be a successful product.  A formulation scientist working for the body spray company will have to work out a happy medium between being able to apply the body spray and it smelling great.  The perfect recipe that they come up with will be the marketed “formulation.”  In the broader sense, all the recipes that these scientist come up would be called formulations, so a formulation is again just a mixture of compounds.  Considering the number of great body sprays out there, I would say that those formulation scientists have done a pretty great job!

 

 

At this stage, you are probably thinking, I could make anything a formulation!  I could put salt in water, mix it up, and that’s a formulation?  And you would be correct.  In fact, there is even a commercially marketed formulation that is exactly that!  Have you ever gotten a saline bag injected into you in a hospital?  Well that’s exactly what is in that bag, salt and water!  So yes, every mixture is a formulation!

 

 

Corporate formulation scientists make sure that what is marketed for a particular use is actually appropriate for that use.  In the salt and water example, the formulation scientist ensures that the right salt, right amount of salt, and right amount of water is used.  This also leads us to the first fear mongering tactic that I would like to discuss:  instilling fear with scary names!  The correct salt to use in saline is table salt, whose scientific name is Sodium Chloride (or NaCl for short).  Below is a list that I made off the top of my head, and this list is designed to scare you!  Look below if you dare!

 

  • Sodium Chloride — Notice that it’s two words!  What scientists won’t tell you is that it is made of two very dangerous compounds, sodium and chlorine!  Sneaky way they call it chloride to confuse us! We will examine how both of these ingredients are super dangerous!
    • Sodium
      • Explodes on contact with water!  Anything containing this and water could explode at any minute, but they will never tell you that.
      • Too much sodium will destroy your nerves!  That’s right, sodium is a neurotoxin!
      • Raises your blood pressure!  Probably a scam to  get you on blood pressure lowering medicine, too.
      • Is a metal!  That’s right, it’s little pieces of metal floating in water that they are injecting into you.  No wonder why so many people don’t get better a hospitals!
    • Chlorine
      • Poison gas used in WWI as a chemical weapon!  You heard me, I’m onto big pharma.  They are dissolving poison gas in water and injecting it into people.  Probably to make you sicker so that they can sell you more drugs!
      • Need I say more — it’s a chemical weapon, dude!

 

Now that above is pretty scary, right?  But do you see how I started it off…I used that scary sounding name, and then I linked it with other words that are scary.  This one was easy as there’s lot of hits when I google Sodium and Chlorine that are pretty scary, but is that information accurate?  Importantly, are the behaviors of sodium and chlorine by themselves the same way that they will act in solution?  Also, how can you tell if you aren’t a formulation scientist?

 

I used this example because it can easily be checked with a little common sense test — I mentioned that sodium chloride is table salt, right?  So when was the last time you heard of a jar of table salt exploding and killing everyone in the room when it was mixed with water?  In fact, when was the last time you heard of table salt having any of the properties that I listed? If you have, please put in the comments because I have never heard of this expect in rather extreme cases or if abused over the course of someone’s lifetime (in the case of the high blood pressure comment).

 

So what’s the difference?  Why doesn’t sodium chloride have the properties of its constituent parts, sodium and chlorine?  Why is chlorine a chemical weapon and sodium chloride a safe part of our bodies and diets?  Well, stay tuned for the next post, and we will get into that.  It has to do with “Solution Chemistry”; a concept used by formulation scientists every day….

 

Sources:

Image 1 (Public Domain) —http://vaccine.fyi/antivax-myth-vaccines-contain-dangerous-toxic-ingredients/

Image 2 (Public Domain) —https://www.pinterest.com/pin/82824080621315233/

Image 3 — Taken myself and is now public domain