Carnauba Wax

Carnauba wax comes from the leaves of a fan palm that grows in the dry north-east of Brazil. The tree coats its fronds to survive months without rain. The leaves are cut, dried until the coating flakes away, and the flakes are melted and filtered.

It is the hardest and among the highest-melting waxes in ordinary cosmetic use, and it is valued for precisely that. A small proportion added to a softer base raises the melting point of the whole blend and lifts the gloss of the finished surface.^[1]

The wax is dominated by esters of very long-chain acids and alcohols, mostly in the range of twenty-six to thirty carbons, together with a substantial fraction of diesters built on hydroxycinnamic acid. Those aromatic diesters are unusual among commercial waxes and are part of the reason carnauba sets so hard.

The nomenclature is a small trap. The palm's accepted botanical name is Copernicia prunifera, but the cosmetic ingredient is still listed under the older synonym Copernicia cerifera. An ingredient list and a botanical reference can therefore disagree while describing the same tree.^[2]

Carnauba was a Brazilian export commodity long before it was a cosmetic ingredient. European chemists examined it during the nineteenth century, first with candles in mind and later as the working component of floor and furniture polishes, and an economy grew around the palm groves of the north-eastern states.^[3]

Its cosmetic career followed the moulded lipstick. Once colour had to be cast into a stick that would be carried in a handbag and used in the street, the formulator needed a wax that held its shape in a warm room, and carnauba was already being produced in quantity for other trades.^[4]

Carnauba is a hardener, used at low percentages. It raises the melting point of a wax blend, increases the force needed to break a stick, and gives a smoother, glossier cast surface. It also acts as a film former: part of the thin layer left behind on lip or lash is carnauba.

Used alone it is unworkable. It sets brittle and drags rather than glides, so it is almost always carried in a softer matrix of beeswax, candelilla or a mineral wax.^[5]

The Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel assessed carnauba alongside beeswax, candelilla and Japan wax, concluding in 1984 that they were safe in the practices of concentration and use then current, and allowing that conclusion to stand on re-review.^[6] Carnauba is not listed in the prohibited or restricted annexes of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 of 30 November 2009.^[7]

In food it is E 903 under Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 of 16 December 2008,^[8] and Commission Regulation (EU) No 1147/2012 of 4 December 2012 set out its use as a glazing agent on certain fruits.^[9] Supply is a separate question from toxicology. Carnauba is cut and beaten by hand from wild and semi-managed groves, and the labour and land economics of that harvest have been examined in their own right.^[10]