Somewhere on this bottle is the figure 0.1 ppb, printed beside ceramide AS and again beside ceramide AP. A tenth of a part per billion is one gram in ten thousand tonnes; it is the kind of quantity analytical chemists talk about, not formulators. Benton prints it because Korean labelling lets a brand claim an ingredient only at its declared level, and the brand deserves credit for the candour. It also deserves the obvious follow-up question, which is why an ingredient at that level is on the front of the bottle at all. The answer is that ato body washes sell on ceramides, and this is an ato body wash, and the gap between what the name promises and what the doses deliver is the whole story of the product.
Start with the wash underneath the claims, because it is a good one. Disodium laureth sulfosuccinate leads, a sulfosuccinate rather than a sulfate, milder than the laureth sulfate in most drugstore washes though with more bite than the amino-acid surfactants Benton uses on the face. An amphoteric sultaine and two sugar-derived glucosides soften it, cocamide foam boosters and an opacifier give the pearly cream texture and the dense, cushioned lather, and glycerin, panthenol, squalane and jojoba leave a faintly conditioned feel after rinsing. The pH is 5.5. On ordinary dry or normal skin the result is exactly what the word cream promises: rich foam, no squeak, no tightness, and skin that takes a lotion well afterwards. It is a pleasant shower.
Now the label. Ceramide NP is declared at 50,000 parts per billion, which is five thousandths of a percent; the other three ceramides at one part per billion or less. In a product that is on the skin for under a minute and then rinsed away, those are not barrier ingredients, they are words. Then, at the very end of the list, come nine peptides, tripeptide-1 through palmitoyl tripeptide-5, including copper tripeptide-1 and palmitoyl pentapeptide-4, the signal peptides of anti-ageing serums. Peptides need hours of contact at meaningful concentrations to show anything even in leave-on studies; in a body wash they are ornament, and the copper peptide at any useful dose would quarrel with the rest of the formula anyway. A reader who understands this will not feel cheated, because the doses are printed. A reader who does not will have paid for a serum's vocabulary on a bottle of soap.
The fragrance is the part that matters for the people the name addresses. Ato is the Korean market's shorthand for atopic-prone skin, and the standing advice for eczema washes, in every guideline, is fragrance-free. This wash has fragrance sixth in the list, higher than in almost anything Benton makes, and the brand's mitigation is that the perfume is screened free of the 26 EU-declarable fragrance allergens. That is a real reduction in risk and it is honest to say so; it is not fragrance-free, and fragrance mixtures contain hundreds of components beyond the declarable list. Add cocamide MEA, a foam booster that a strict sensitive-skin formula would leave out, and the honest description is a scented, conventionally built wash for ordinary skin that has borrowed the eczema category's name. Benton's facial products have been fragrance-free for fifteen years; the brand knows the rule and chose, for its body line, not to follow it.
It is worth being fair about why the label looks the way it does, because the fault is only partly Benton's. Korean cosmetic rules let a brand advertise an ingredient only at the concentration it declares, which is why the parts-per-billion figures appear at all; the same rules do nothing to stop a brand declaring a vanishingly small amount and putting the ingredient's name on the front. The result is a market where honesty about dose and inflation of claim coexist on one bottle, and where the reader who learns to check the number beside the name is the only one who is not misled. This wash is a clean example of the pattern, and a better teacher of it than most.
In use, none of this is felt by the skin it suits. Normal and dry, unreactive skin gets a rich, comfortable wash with a soft powdery-floral scent that lingers lightly, and the two reviews on the exporters that carry it say as much. Reactive skin, or skin in the folds where surfactant and fragrance linger, may notice a faint itch after a few days, and that is the point at which to switch rather than persist. The pump has a shipping clip on the neck that has to be pulled off before first use, which the directions mention because buyers assume the pump is broken.
At twenty dollars for 300 mL on the brand's site it is priced like a premium Korean body wash and performs like a good ordinary one, lasting two to three months with a cloth; exporters have listed it at twenty-six to thirty-four dollars, which is too much for a scented sulfosuccinate wash by any measure. What the money buys is a creamy lather, a sensible pH and a pleasant smell. What it does not buy is a ceramide deposit, a peptide effect or a wash for eczema.
The verdict is therefore two verdicts. As an everyday body wash for skin that is dry but not inflamed, and for someone who likes a rich lather and a soft scent, it is a well-made product at a slightly high price. As the barrier-care, atopic-skin wash the name and the ceramide count suggest, it is the wrong product, and the numbers Benton itself prints on the bottle are the clearest evidence of that. Read them before the name.
