A friend who works in the Research and Development team at MAC Cosmetics was kind enough to speak to me about her experience working at the company.
I think her story is a great example of what hard work, putting yourself out there, quick learning, and dedication can achieve!
What was your education and work background before your current job?
Honours Science Degree – B.Sc at the University of Waterloo
Did you want to work in the cosmetic industry?
I love lipstick and all, but never ever once imagined myself working for MAC Cosmetics. I was initially looking into healthcare.
How long have you been employed in the cosmetic industry?
Almost a year full-time!
What is your role at MAC?
I am a Lab Technician for the Outside Vendor group at the Canadian Innovation Centre. I deal with third parties to launch products through MAC.
What did you do yesterday at work?
I am working on launching shade extensions of existing products. There are many tests that the products must go through before it launches, therefore I observe stability of various products while keeping a record of results and any issues that arise. What sort of projects do you work on?
As I am just under a year with Estee Lauder (which, by the way, owns MAC), I am currently assigned to shade extensions which must be released within deadlines. Fragrance changes, fading opportunities, new colours – all must be re-tested. After more experience, I hope to take on new products that have never launched before.
Do you see yourself moving around in the company? What sort of position would you like to be in, if not this one?
Currently my position has given me a lot of knowledge about the world of cosmetics at MAC. I am also taking the initiative to learn as much as I can – attending vendor meetings (effects of new raw materials), and attending workshops to improve personal skills like public speaking, time management, and more! I am definitely interested in the Product Development or Marketing side of this fascinating industry.
Besides your own job, what other interesting jobs do you see within the company?
Marketing is something that intrigues me, just because there are so many aspects to it. To be a successful global company like Estee Lauder, making consumers of the over 15+ brands it owns is tough – but a challenge I would like to be a part of (well to start off at least…with MAC). As a millennial, it’s easy to see the power of social media and what factors really influence consumers to purchase a product.
Biggest perk of working at MAC?
SEEING PRODUCTS MANY MONTHS BEFORE IT HITS THE COUNTER!
Just joking (not really).
Employees are given an appreciation bag of goodies, but more than the physical items, I would say working in the small R&D Lab has given me more exposure and opportunities than I had imagined. I am surrounding with chemists who have been with the company for 10+ years, launched magnificent products for MAC, and are still working for months to develop the next best thing – being in the presence of that itself is a treat for me.
What would you suggest to someone who’s currently an undergrad who wants to work in the cosmetic industry? How did you find out about the job you have now?
How did I get here? I worked production for 3 months one summer – no interest in the cosmetic world I just needed some cash. A year later I was finishing my finals of my last semester at University when my ex-supervisor emailed me about a cleaning position at the R&D Lab. I had told her when I left to give me a heads up if any lab position opened up, this definitely was not the one I had envisioned – I took it.
My number one advice for many post grads is to let go of their ego and get ready to do the dirty work first. I worked out of the cleaning position, as a chemist had seen potential and became an assistant. After 2 months, a chemist handed me a job posting that I did not have access to at the time. With zero experience I was hesitant to apply, but I did it. I interviewed for the Lab Tech position with no experience, but a lot to promise if I had gotten it. The smallest life choices can get you somewhere you never expected.
You’ve mentioned you came in from a non-chemistry degree, how do you think this has helped you adapt to your current role?
I would like to become a Chemist in the future, but I have yet a lot to learn about formulating. Sometimes opportunities are thrown at you when you least expect it, that’s the time to take charge and make it work with extra time if needed. As long as you know the basics of Chemistry, the rest will be taught by senior mentors and experience. There are new things I am learning every day, and that’s the beauty of it all.
This is an oil cleanser that I’ve been working on, as you can see it powers through thick, waxy makeup quite well! It rinses off the skin cleanly, with no residue. Other versions I’m working on leave a thin film of emollients on the skin.
The formula is PEG free and made completely of plant oils. PEGs, while safe and biodegradable, are produced from ethylene oxide. I wanted to see if there were greener alternatives, and this is the result!
Niacinamide and ascorbic acid on their own are great skin care ingredients. Ascorbic acid is not only a good water-soluble antioxidant, but may also increase production of collagen in the skin which can help mitigate some of the damaging effects caused by UV exposure.
Niacinamide is a good anti-inflammatory which makes it useful for treating inflammatory conditions like acne and has been shown to increase naturally occurring moisturizers in the skin.
They’re both very effective at reducing hyperpigmentation of the skin – it’s easy to see why people would want to use the two of them together.
If you Google Niacinamide and Vitamin C, you’ll get some posts about not combining them. The worry is that they form a 1:1 complex and cancel out each other’s skin benefits.
There are two main chemical reactions that occur when you mix niacinamide and ascorbic acid. The first occurs when you mix niacinamide with any acid (or base), and that’s the conversion of niacinamide to niacin. This takes a long time and is more of a concern for manufacturers that are using niacinamide in acidic products.
It’s possible that niacin is just as effective as niacinamide, but it has the side effect of activating Langerhan cells in the skin. This leads to the release of prostaglandins and dilation of the blood vessels, which causes the skin to flush with redness and tingle. This flushing and tingling is temporary, but can be uncomfortable and potentially problematic for someone with inflammatory acne or erythema.
The second concern is the formation of a complex between niacinamide and ascorbic acid. I think the worry is that this complex is no longer effective in benefiting the skin, and I’ve also seen concerns that it may produce hydrogen peroxide which can lead to skin cell death.
I took a look at the research to get a better understanding of these two chemical reactions. It is important to note that a few of these papers are old, so they don’t use newer visualization techniques that can help us quantify chemical changes and structures more accurately.
Hydrolysis of Niacinamide to Niacin
Amides, like niacinamide, are very stable compounds. This stability means it takes a lot of heat and concentrated acids or bases to get niacinamide to turn into niacin (also known as nicotinic acid).
I’m going to do a separate post that will explain this more, but the important thing to see is that the -NH2 group, a nitrogen and two hydrogens, is replaced with an -OH group, an oxygen and a hydrogen.
Heat vastly speeds up reactions; a rough approximation is that every 10 °C (18 °F) increase in temperature doubles the reaction rate. If the pH 2 solution was kept at 30 °C (86 °F) we could expect it to take over 4800 hours or almost half a year – and that’s if the acidic solution didn’t corrode your skin first!
An experiment with temperature conditions closer to room temperature shows how heat affects the rate of conversion. Only after 6 weeks of storage at 45 °C (113 °F) in acidic pHs did they find niacin, and the conversion never exceeded 2%. At room temperature (25 °C or 77 °F) the amount of niacin was less than 1% after 6 weeks, but the measurement wasn’t accurate enough to tell exactly how much, just that a small amount was present.
Another thing to keep in mind is that reaction rates also slow down when the viscosity or thickness of the solution is increased. Most skin care products, even serums, are thickened to some extent – which will further slow down the conversion of niacinamide to niacin.
If we can get metaphorical for a second, chemical reactions aren’t like a distance race. They’re more like jumping over hurdles. There’s a minimum amount of energy that’s needed to cause the molecule to change, called the activation energy. If you don’t have the energy to jump over a hurdle, you can’t progress. You can’t just roll on the ground until you hit the finish line.
It’s also important to note the difference between irritation due to an acidic product versus the flushing caused by niacin. Niacin flushing appears evenly, affecting everywhere it’s been applied. It is also temporary (often lasting longer than 20 minutes), and comes with a tingling sensation.
If you’re using a product with niacinamide and ascorbic acid in the ingredients list and aren’t noticing any skin reddening…there’s either very little niacin that’s been formed, or you’re not very sensitive. If you’re worried about a product that contains both ingredients, storing it in a cool environment will discourage transformation of niacinamide to niacin.
But what about applying a product with niacinamide and then one with ascorbic acid? Is niacin being formed? I don’t want to say absolutely not, but the amount potentially formed is so miniscule, I don’t think it’s a relevant worry.
Niacinamide and Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) Complex
Mixing niacinamide and ascorbic acid turns the two clear solutions a yellow colour, but this isn’t the same yellow colour that appears when ascorbic acid is oxidized into dehydroascorbic acid.
I think the fear of this complex negating the benefits of both ascorbic acid and niacinamide is not knowing that this complex is easily reversed and separated.
This experiment also found that the pH of the solution that the two are mixed together in affects how much of the niacinamide ascorbate is formed. Niacinamide ascorbate forms best at a pH close to 3.8, but at pHs higher or lower less is formed. This means if the pH of a solution they were mixed together in was changed, away from 3.8, the two molecules would separate from each other.
This means if we added the same number of molecules of niacinamide and ascorbic acid into a solution of pH 3.8, about half of them would be in the niacinamide ascorbate complex, and the rest of them would just be on their own floating around.
I’m going to do a separate post that will walk through the calculation of this.
The pH dependent formation is important, because only the surface of our skin is acidic. Each deeper layer of skin becomes less and less acidic, finally reaching physiological pH which is around 7. This means as the niacinamide ascorbate moves deeper into the skin, there’s less impetus for them to be associated with each other. As well, as more individual ascorbic acid and niacinamide molecules move into the skin, the ratio of free to complexed niacinamide and ascorbic acid would decrease, and the complexed niacinamide ascorbate would separate until equilibrium was reached again.
So the important takeaway is to know that the yellow colour isn’t the same thing as an oxidation of ascorbic acid, and that the complex formed between niacinamide and ascorbic acid is completely reversible. The niacinamide and ascorbic acid are held together like two pieces of paper with static, versus glue.
Many skin care ingredients will degrade or change with UV exposure, but using a sunscreen will greatly reduce or even eliminate the chances of this occurring.
The paper also theorized that by mixing the niacinamide and ascorbic acid with tocopherol (Vitamin E), the radical production could be mitigated.
Takeaway
I hope this has helped you understand what’s occurring when you mix niacinamide and ascorbic acid (or any acid) together. While there are chemical reactions that occur, they either occur super slowly, or are reversible.
You can definitely still choose to use niacinamide and ascorbic acid separately. You could use ascorbic acid during the day and niacinamide in the evenings. If you do choose to use them together, I don’t think the evidence points to any disabling of their benefits or any skin damage.
People do often experience some redness or tingling when using the two, but I think that can be chalked up to the irritation caused by ascorbic acid, especially if the product isn’t pH adjusted and acidic. I don’t want to suggest you to take a niacin pill to experience a flush, but unless the redness is very even and demarcated, it’s not likely due
to niacin.
One of the major concerns people have when thinking about working within the cosmetic industry is a lack of a chemistry degree.
While I won’t say it doesn’t help, there are plenty of positions available to people in the industry that aren’t dependent on a knowledge of chemistry.
Roles in sales, distribution, marketing, logistics are all available. Pretty much any position you’d find at any other large transnational, you can find within the cosmetic industry.
What was your education and work background before your current job?
Before starting at Estée, I was working at a Microbiology Food Laboratory.
Did you want to work in the cosmetic industry?
My interests were mainly biological/scientific and computer technology. I was always fascinated by science even though half the time I didn’t understand it. Never would I have ever thought about looking for work in the cosmetic industry until I started at Estée Lauder.
How long have you been employed in the cosmetic industry?
Come April 2016, I will be with the company for 1 year.
What is your role at Estée Lauder?
When I first started with Estée Lauder, I started as a Technical Administrative Assistant. A few months later my position merged with that of Formula Control. We basically handle releasing the methods of process and materials, etc to the manufacturing plants once a project is ready for production.
What did you do yesterday at work?
Yesterday I had a lot of troubleshooting issues where the plants were not seeing specific data in the designated systems so I had to work alongside planners, brand reps, etc. to figure out what was causing the issue.
What sort of projects do you work on?
I still take on duties from my initial position. I review documents for projects that are considered either “over-the-counter” or “quasi drug” and work alongside our drug compliance team and assure that the documents are up to good documentation practice standards.
Do you see yourself moving around in the company? What sort of position would you like to be in, if not this one?
I definitely do see myself taking on more tasks and responsibilities within the company and definitely see myself in my current position for years to come because it’s an essential position where I work side by side with engineers and chemists. After all, that is where the product first starts being created.
Besides your own job, what other interesting jobs do you see within the company?
The position of the drug compliance team is one that interests me. The FDA is ever-changing their rules and regulations and in turn keeps us on our toes to make sure we are compliant with whatever regulations and changes are being set both here in the U.S. and globally at our sister facilities.
Biggest perk of working at Estée Lauder?
The biggest perk to me working at Estée Lauder is the education you get out of it. The way you witness the startup of a project to product and how it works and the work that goes into it is just something personally I feel is a big perk. As the saying goes “You learn something new every day” and I like to think that’s definitely something that takes place every day a Estée Lauder.
What would you suggest to someone who’s currently an undergrad who wants to work in the cosmetic industry?
I would suggest to those who are contemplating to work in the cosmetic industry to be patient, have tough skin. It’s a competitive business but also a great one to be in for its ever changing culture.
I would also recommend for those who aren’t into trends or what’s hot and what’s not to at least consider taking a look into trends. Being that you are in the cosmetic industry and trend setting is one of the many main concepts it’s involved in.
