Why there is no water
in your balm.

Cosmetic formulas split fairly cleanly into two families. Anything with water in it — lotions, creams, serums, most things that pump — and anything without — balms, salves, oil blends, most things in a tin. The technical word for the second family is anhydrous, and it explains more than it sounds like it should.

It is why the tin is solid when it is cold. An anhydrous balm is butters and waxes held together by oils, and that mixture has a melt point. Below it, the balm is firm. Press a fingertip in for a second or two and your body heat softens the surface enough to lift some off. This is also why a tin left in a hot car turns liquid and then re-sets with a less tidy surface. It has not spoiled; it has simply melted and cooled again.

It is why there is no preservative. Bacteria, yeast and mould need water to grow. Take the water out and there is nothing for them to live in, which is why a balm can sit in a bathroom for two years without the preservative system a lotion would need within days. What an anhydrous formula does need is an antioxidant, because the risk is not microbial growth but the oils themselves going rancid as they oxidise. That is a different problem with a different solution.

It is also why the one genuine hygiene risk is you. Water introduced on a wet finger gives microbes somewhere to live. Dry hands, and the tin keeps as long as the label says.

And it is why a balm cannot have a pH. This is the part that caught us out. pH is a measurement of hydrogen ion concentration in a water-based solution. No water, no solution, no pH — not a neutral one, not a balanced one, none at all. You can smear a balm on a pH strip and the strip will do something, but what it is reading is the moisture on the strip, not the product.

Which brings us to an apology. This website used to say Glo Girl was pH-balanced. It is a phrase that sounds reassuring and means nothing on a product like this one, and it should never have been there. We have taken it off, along with a handful of other claims that were inherited rather than checked — including one on the ingredients page telling people the balm was safe to use with latex, which it is not. Plant oils degrade latex. That was the worst of them and it is gone.

If you want the test for a claim like this, it is a decent one: ask what measurement sits behind the word. pH-balanced has a measurement behind it in a face wash. In a tin of butter and wax it is decoration.

The ingredients page lists everything in the tin, and the FAQ covers the rest.

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