What Solvents Show Up in Balms
Scan a few popular lip balms and protective coatings and you’ll find quick-flash ingredients like isododecane, triacetin, benzyl alcohol, and benzyl benzoate. They thin heavy formulas, carry pigments, and help products dry in seconds.
Many blends lean on phenoxyethanol to keep costs down and pours smooth. It still behaves like the solvent it was built to be, dissolving resins and plasticizers long after the balm feels dry.
Why They Don’t Belong on Daily-Use Skin
- They pull at your skin’s natural barrier. Solvents are designed to dissolve oils. When they hit your lips or knuckles, they can strip away the lipids you’re trying to protect, leaving skin tight the second the slick feeling fades.
- They carry unwanted hitchhikers. Those same solvents can leach plasticizers, dyes, and residues from cups, bottles, and gloves. Once dissolved, those hitchhikers ride right back onto your skin.
- They don’t play nice with gear. Leave a solvent-heavy balm on plastic handles, safety glasses, or polymer-coated tools and you’ll spot fogging, softening, or micro-cracking over time.
Many Fragrance Oils Can Act Like Solvents Too
Citrus oils and minty extracts double as degreasers. Peppermint oil, spearmint, and similar blends lean on menthol and camphor to melt residue. Orange, bergamot, and other citrus oils carry limonene, linalool, and citral that often power graffiti removers and label strippers. In a balm, those same solvents creep under finishes, cloud plastics, and irritate weathered skin.
Even when the fragrance is billed as “natural,” those terpenes keep chipping away at surfaces. Once limonene, linalool, citral, menthol, or camphor touch skin or tool handles they don’t clock out. Peppermint oil and citrus oils keep softening plastics and lifting finishes long after the scent fades.
Built for the Long Haul
Working Balm needs to survive in pockets, packs, glove boxes, and gear bags for years. Solvents flash off, dry out sticks, and attack plastics when they sit. Our formula is carefully crafted and field-tested to stay put, condition skin, and shield metal without melting anything else.
You can swipe it on lips, hands, hinges, O-rings, and polymer grips without worrying about slow damage. No solvents, no surprises, just a steady stick built for life’s long haul.