Comfrey is not for your face.

I have to admit to not knowing that until recently. I’d never really had the need to look into it to be honest, especially given that most cosmetic chemists look to Comfrey only for its Allantoin concentration and allantoin is cheap and abundant enough on its own. But just recently I did have reason to do some digging and this is what I found.

Comfrey is a lovely herb (my stash is shown above. I wonder how that superbly round hole got there…) but it is a herb which contains a few toxic alkaloids. Toxicity being a relative thing Comfrey is still OK to use topically with warnings but the herbal extract is not currently recommended for internal use due to the presence of these powerful naturally occurring chemicals.  I say ‘not currently’ because our understanding of the science and risks of chemicals both natural and synthetic evolves over time.

The alkaloids in question are Pyrrolizidine Alkaloids and we are looking at concentrations of between 0.02-0.5% depending on the species and whether the roots or leaves are taken.  As an aside, the concentration of Allantoin found in Comfrey is said to be between 0.6-4.7%, a cosmetically effective dose is around 0.2% so I’d need to add somewhere between 4.2 – 33% of herb to my cosmetic to get that dose – basically that doesn’t sound very practical to me.  Here is some information on herbs and their alkaloids. 

Even though using Comfrey extract is a poor way to achieve a good dose of Allantoin I still thought about doing it in order to meet my clients requirements for an organically certifiable product that contained the allantoin active.  This became a potential avenue to solve that problem once I realised that while allantoin is a naturally occurring chemical it is not extracted from plants, it is manufactured.  This discovery wasn’t exactly ground-breaking for me as many plant-derived isolates are man-made or what we call ‘nature-identical’ these days but what was annoying to discover was the fact that while allantoin synthesis originated as a natural process, it had been surpassed by a more economical, higher yielding, fully synthetic process that just wouldn’t pass muster with the organic certification bodies.  So pure, 100% active allantoin was out!

So back to Comfrey.

So after discovering Comfrey’s dirty little alkaloid secret (apparently one of them is a human carcinogen) I wanted to confirm how and when this ingredient could be used on skin so off to the TGA I went – do remember that I’m based in Australia and we have the TGA. If you are reading this from any other country you should really check with your therapeutic goods legislators before mixing up a batch of Comfrey cream or whatever.

In 2016 the TGA here in Australia were reviewing the status of Comfrey and following that some changes were made in the schedule. Now I’m not a law specialist – I find it too boring to be honest – but what I did find is this:

• Comfrey is on a poisons schedule (SUSMP)- schedule 5.
• THE SUSMP was updated in October 2017 – so very recently – and amendments to comfrey are reflected there.
• Comfrey is listed in the schedule under its botanical name Symphytum.
• It is referenced in schedule 10 and 5 and labelling legislation is in part 3 of appendix F.

Basically what all of this boils down to is that Comfrey extract can be used in cosmetics only as a topical (not to be ingested) extract but it can’t be used on the face or the genitals unless your doctor tells you to- yes it does say that:

Here is a link to the relevant piece of legislation. 

So with that line of investigative science exhausted for my particular application I turned my attention to other ways of getting a bit of Allantoin goodness into a cosmetic face cream and of course, who can forget the humble snail!  Snail secretion extract became a huge thing across Asia a couple of years ago but it was slower to take-off here, you could say it took off at a snail’s pace……  I was always a bit sad about that because no snails need to die to making snail secretion extract AND it is a lovely source of natural polymeric sugars of the Glycosaminoglycan type (same family as Hyaluronic acid and great for skin)  plus, of course, the allantoin.  Also I suspect the snails in the snail farm are treated with a bit more respect than they usually receive from your average veggie gardener or blackbird!  That said, I’m quite convinced it won’t be every body’s cup of tea but at least it’s an option.

Before I go I guess I should re-cap with you on what Allantoin is actually good for shouldn’t I!

Allantoin is usually supplied as a pharmaceutical grade active with high purity, this means that usually 98.5% or more of the white, crystaline material is active Allantoin. Powdered, concentrated actives are great in terms of their small input level and relatively small transportation carbon footprint so in many ways synthetic allantoin is probably a whole lot more eco-friendly than using Comfrey extract.

Here is a summary of its benefits:

• Increase moisture retention in the skin by increasing the capacity of the corneocytes to bind water.
• Soften skin by exfoliating dry and damaged cells making this a mild keratolytic active.
• Irritation prevention.  The active has been found to reduce the irritation potential of other actives including surfactants making it great even in wash-off applications.
• Improves the skins resilience making this a good ingredient for anti-pollution products as well as restorative skincare.

Parting Comments. 

The natural source of the active I want is not as safe as the synthetic source but the synthetic source is not allowed because of how it is processed.  I spend many an hour pondering this weird reality of ours trying to work out if we are, indeed, making any progress in the world of chemistry. Thank goodness for snails.