Red 28 ●
TL;DR. This ingredient is a synthetic color additive used to create pink to red shades in cosmetics and personal care products. It is used mainly in lip, cheek, nail, bath, and some rinse-off products where a bright, clear hue is needed.
What does Red 28 do in a cosmetic formula?
This ingredient is a synthetic color additive used to create pink to red shades in cosmetics and personal care products. It is used mainly in lip, cheek, nail, bath, and some rinse-off products where a bright, clear hue is needed.
Is Red 28 clean?
Clean-beauty frameworks often flag this ingredient because it is a synthetic, batch-certified colorant with regulatory purity controls and use-area restrictions. It is not typically a sensitizer at normal colorant levels, but its clean-standard standing is limited by its synthetic dye status and impurity specifications.
Is Red 28 sustainable?
This material is typically made from petrochemical-derived feedstocks through multi-step synthetic processing. Its halogenated aromatic structure is not a strong fit for ready biodegradability, so it carries more environmental persistence concern than mineral or plant-derived colorants.
Is Red 28 COSMOS-approved?
It is not permitted under COSMOS-natural or COSMOS-organic standards, which generally allow only selected mineral pigments and nature-derived colorants. From a Green Chemistry view, it has weak alignment because it relies on synthetic petrochemical inputs, halogenation chemistry, and limited biodegradability.
How does Red 28 work chemically?
The molecule is a halogenated xanthene dye, generally used at very low levels because color strength is high and regulatory limits depend on product category and jurisdiction. It is pH- and light-sensitive compared with many inorganic pigments, so formulators manage shade drift, photostability, and compatibility with salts, surfactants, and reducing agents.
Last updated 2026-05-13