Foundation — a swamplink research property

What's in my toner?

Toner almost never carries an SPF claim, so this corpus uses the FDA's other route to an OTC drug filing: an acne-treatment salicylic acid claim. Seven products, sourced the same way as SPF foundation.

The corpus, and why it isn't SPF this time

Toner is almost never sold with an SPF claim, so this corpus uses the FDA's other monograph route to an OTC drug label: salicylic acid, an acne-treatment active. All 7 products here are liquid toners with a formulated cosmetic vehicle, filed the same way the SPF foundations are — a manufacturer's own declaration to the FDA, never a retailer listing.

Two populations of "toner" turned out not to be comparable and are excluded rather than blended in: plain witch-hazel astringents (T.N. Dickinson's, CVS Health, Equate) declare only witch hazel and alcohol, with no formulated vehicle to compare; and Stridex Maximum's FDA filing is for pre-saturated pads, not a pourable liquid, despite sharing the "toner" branding. Both are the same kind of exclusion the foundation corpus already makes for powders and sticks: a different vehicle, not sourced more weakly.

Brand	Product	Ingredients	Label filed	Source
Up & Up	Deep Clean Toner	13	2024-10-14	FDA filing
Clean & Clear	Essentials Deep Cleaning Astringent	8	2024-11-06	FDA filing
Neutrogena	Oil-Free Acne Stress Control Triple Action Toner	20	2024-11-01	FDA filing
Thayers	Witch Hazel Aloe Vera Formula Toner, Blemish Clearing	13	2026-05-14	FDA filing
Burt's Bees	Natural Acne Solutions Clarifying Toner	14	2010-08-16	FDA filing
Mary Kay	Clear Proof Blemish Control Toner	8	2024-12-17	FDA filing
Proactiv	Plus Retexturizing Toner	11	2026-01-07	FDA filing

Slide between two toners

Pick any two and watch the formulas converge or diverge.

A B

The common spine

These ingredients appear in at least 75% of the corpus.

water

Most common ingredients

Ingredient (INCI)	Products	Share
water	7	100%
glycerin	4	57%
parfum/fragrance	4	57%
alcohol denat	3	43%
propylene glycol	3	43%
benzophenone-4	2	29%
blue 1	2	29%
butylene glycol	2	29%
citric acid	2	29%
dimethicone propyl pg-betaine	2	29%
disodium edta	2	29%
ethylhexylglycerin	2	29%
isoceteth-20	2	29%
phenoxyethanol	2	29%
sodium citrate	2	29%
sodium hydroxide	2	29%
alcohol denat. (24.5 %)	1	14%
algae extract	1	14%
aloe barbadenis leaf juice	1	14%
aloe barbadensis leaf extract	1	14%
benzalkonium chloride	1	14%
c12-15 alkyl lactate	1	14%
camellia sinensis leaf extract	1	14%
caprylyl glycol	1	14%
cetyl lactate	1	14%
cocamidopropyl betaine	1	14%
cocamidopropyl pg-dimonium chloride phosphate	1	14%
cucumis sativus (cucumber) fruit extract	1	14%
cymbopogon flexuosus oil	1	14%
cymbopogon schoenanthus extract	1	14%

Margin, cost and price

Same method as the foundation study: nobody publishes per-bottle cost, so the ceiling of what can be said with a citation is the parent company's group gross margin — and, unlike lip gloss, four of this corpus's six parent companies do file one.

Parent company	Gross margin	Source
L'Oréal	74.3%	Annual results press release, consolidated profit and loss account
Kenvue	58.1%	SEC Form 10-K (XBRL company facts)
The Clorox Company	45.2%	SEC Form 10-K (XBRL company facts)
Target Corporation	27.9%	SEC Form 10-K (XBRL company facts)
Mary Kay Inc.	—	not available
Alchemee LLC	—	not available

Brand	Tier	List price	Parent margin	Implied COGS	Est. formula cost
Up & Up	budget	$3.99	27.9%	$2.88	$0.23–$0.81
Clean & Clear	budget	$5.67	58.1%	$2.38	$0.23–$0.82
Neutrogena	budget	$9.77	58.1%	$4.09	$0.23–$0.81
Thayers	mass	$14.90	74.3%	$3.83	$0.35–$1.22
Burt's Bees	mass	—	45.2%	—	$0.17–$0.60
Mary Kay	mass	$20.00	—	—	$0.14–$0.50
Proactiv	prestige	$40.00	—	—	$0.18–$0.62

Formula density assumed 0.98 g/mL. A water/alcohol/glycerin toner sits close to but slightly below water's density, driven down by the alcohol fraction; this is an assumption, not a filed figure.
Blended formula cost assumed $1.00-3.50/kg across the whole mass.
Anchors for that band: bulk ethanol traded at roughly $0.68-2.02/kg by region in 2026 (ChemAnalyst, Selina Wamucii commodity price reporting), and bulk USP glycerin at roughly $1.81/kg (Selina Wamucii, August 2026). Trade-listing prices are materially weaker evidence than the FDA filings this project is otherwise built on, which is exactly why the output is a band.
Implied cost of goods uses the PARENT COMPANY's group gross margin, not a product-level margin -- same method and same caveat as the foundation corpus. For Target Corporation this is a whole-RETAIL margin across every category Target sells, not a cosmetics or manufacturing margin.
Gross margin covers packaging, filling, labour, freight, duty and factory overhead as well as ingredients. Ingredient cost is a fraction of it.

The one rule this corpus actually triggers

5 of 7 toners are filed at the FDA acne monograph's 2.0% salicylic acid ceiling — which happens to equal the EU's leave-on concentration limit (Annex III entry 98, as amended by Regulation (EU) 2019/1966). The EU rule carries one condition the US monograph doesn't: a ban on use in preparations for children under 3. None of these labels carry that restriction.

Brand	Salicylic acid (filed)	Vs. ceiling
Up & Up	0.5%	under the ceiling
Clean & Clear	2.0%	at the EU/US ceiling
Neutrogena	2.0%	at the EU/US ceiling
Thayers	2.0%	at the EU/US ceiling
Burt's Bees	1.0%	under the ceiling
Mary Kay	2.0%	at the EU/US ceiling
Proactiv	2.0%	at the EU/US ceiling

Every product in this corpus declares its scent only as generic "fragrance"/"parfum" rather than naming an individual allergen, so the same EU-declarable fragrance-allergen check already run for the foundation corpus finds zero matches here — a real finding, not a skipped computation. A full EU Annex II general-prohibition sweep, like the one run for the foundation corpus, has not yet been done for this category; see the corpus's known limits.

Monograph-only inclusion is a selection bias, the same shape as foundation's SPF-only rule: it excludes non-drug toners (Kiehl's, Clinique, Paula's Choice, most prestige lines), which have no primary filing and are excluded rather than sourced more weakly. This corpus is therefore budget/mass-tier-heavy; no prestige-counter brand carries a qualifying filing.
The FDA's astringent monograph (plain witch hazel: T.N. Dickinson's, CVS Health, Equate, and Biore Witch Hazel Pore Clarifying Toner) also produces FDA-filed toner labels, but those products declare only witch hazel and alcohol as ingredients with no formulated vehicle -- there is nothing to cross-brand-compare at the inactive-ingredient level, so they are excluded here as a different formulation type, not sourced more weakly (mirrors the foundation corpus excluding powders/sticks as 'different vehicle, not comparable').
Biore Witch Hazel Pore Clarifying Toner (Kao USA) has a live DailyMed web page (setid 6edb3b74-e694-fe90-e053-2991aa0ab8ea) but no entry in the DailyMed SPL REST API this project's fetch tool uses -- the underlying XML is not retrievable through the pipeline this project requires, so it is excluded on sourcing-mechanics grounds as well as the vehicle-type exclusion above.
Stridex Maximum's SPL (setid a3b16d52-76a5-438b-a120-bb59ce062cc1) filed under the same 'toner' branding is not a pourable liquid: its packaging section lists jars of 55/70/90/110 pre-saturated pads, not a fluid ounce/mL fill. Same dosage-form exclusion as powders/sticks in the foundation corpus -- excluded as a different vehicle, not sourced more weakly.
An FDA filing is verbatim what the manufacturer submitted, including typos and inconsistent separator characters. Corrections are recorded per-ingredient in the normalization layer, never silently.
Burt's Bees Natural Acne Solutions Clarifying Toner's SPL label has an effective date of 2010-08-16, the oldest filing in any corpus this project uses; DailyMed has no newer version indexed, so this is treated as the current filing rather than superseded.