Skinstitut · AHA + BHA Clearing Serum
Three independent Greenlens lenses read the same 25 ingredients and land 36 points apart. That gap is not an error. Each lens asks a different question, and this page shows every answer, ingredient by ingredient, blended into nothing.
Our sources have reference data on all 25 listed ingredients. Our sources can only speak to ingredients they recognize — either flagged by an authority or known to be a common, well-characterized ingredient. An uncharacterized ingredient is a gap in our data, not a clean bill of health: a quiet safety scan over ingredients we can’t place is a weaker signal than one over ingredients we can.
Independent
The regulatory baseline. Follows EU cosmetic law: prohibited and restricted ingredients cost points, and allergen labelling is capped so it cannot tank a score on its own.
Flagged 6 of 25 ingredients: 2 restricted, 1 of concern, 2 regulated allergens.
Independent
The strict lens. Flags any ingredient with a listed hazard trait (SIN List, IARC, Prop 65), even when regulators still permit it.
Flagged 1 of 25 ingredients on hazard grounds: 1 mild sensitizer.
Independent
The lenient lens. Trusts dose and regulation: permitted ingredients kept within their legal caps are tolerated, and only genuinely prohibited substances take a big hit.
Flagged 2 of 25 ingredients: 2 restricted (within-limit).
These lenses disagree. A split of 36 points crosses our disagreement threshold (20). We keep every verdict and never average them; the table below is where the split comes from.
| Ingredient | Scan | Precautionary | Tolerance |
|---|---|---|---|
| POTASSIUM HYDROXIDE / SODIUM HYDROXIDEEU Cosmetics Regulation Annex III (restricted) | −10restricted | · | −6restricted |
| Salicylic AcidEU Cosmetics Regulation Annex III (restricted) | −10 |
Coverage & match quality
7 ratings · 1 of 4 axes
The overall ring on the product page is the weighted mean of the four pillars using your weights, computed fresh on every visit and never stored. How each lens's reference lists were built, penalty by penalty, is on the methodology page.
← Back to AHA + BHA Clearing Serum| · |
| −6restricted |
| Fragrance / Parfum (undisclosed)Common transparency/sensitization concern (not a regulatory ban) | −12concern | · | noted, 0concern |
| LimoneneEU Cosmetics Regulation Annex III / Reg. (EU) 2023/1545 (labelled fragrance allergen) | −3allergen | · | noted, 0allergen |
| LinaloolEU Cosmetics Regulation Annex III / Reg. (EU) 2023/1545 (labelled fragrance allergen) | −3allergen | · | noted, 0allergen |
| PhenoxyethanolEU Cosmetics Regulation Annex V (preservative, with limits) | noted, 0permitted | −2mild_sensitizer | noted, 0permitted |
−N points subtracted by that lens, labelled with its concern · noted, 0 seen but tolerated under that philosophy · · not on that lens's reference lists. Open an ingredient for the full reasoning and every rater's position. 19 other ingredients matched no list at all.