What is activated charcoal?
Before you grab a few chunks of charcoal from your bag you use for barbecuing, you may want to keep on reading. Activated charcoal may have started out as the regular charcoal you are familiar with, but by the time it finds its way into your skincare products, it’s very different.
After grinding the charcoal to a powder, activated using calcium chloride, then washed and dried. Quite a process!
Regular charcoal is heated with a gas to make it more porous. This allows toxins to bind to it and it is now known as activated charcoal. Activated charcoal also undergoes a thorough cleaning process to ensure it’s clean and safe to use on your skin so you may want to put those charcoal chunks down right about now…
It’s also good to note, the only major difference between the terms “charcoal” and “activated charcoal” is that activated charcoal is made for medicinal use only.