Anti-Pollution Products: Definitely Worth It
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Did we call it or what? Along with dirtying up Mother Earth and stifling your lungs, pollution is bad news for your skin. Now, as The Wall Street Journal reports, the beauty industry is addressing the issue with a host of pollution-targeting products.
To understand why, you have to cross an ocean. As is the case with many of the big beauty innovations these days, pollution-fighting skin care is taking off in Asia. There, the pollution in some cities is so smoggy that the air is thick and visible. An average day in Beijing, for example, is more polluted than Los Angeles’s worst.
No wonder, then, that consumers in Asia are open to treating the effects of pollution — they can literally see how dirty the air is. And the effects aren’t limited to having a dirty complexion at the end of the day, either. In 2010, researchers studied 400 elderly women to gauge whether air pollution affected their skin. Sure enough, women who lived in pollution-filled cities had significantly more hyperpigmentation than women who lived in the country. (Wrinkles, however, didn’t seem to be as connected to poor air quality.) That may explain why antioxidant-rich “anti-pollution” products are in high demand. Last year, Dior created a microsite to share the day’s fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) rating — along with recommended One Essential products.
Related: Does Pollution Really Do Anything to Your Skin?
Although Americans may be less attuned to the effects of pollution, new products may change that. Japanese brand Shu Uemura has released Anti-Oxi, an anti-pollution version of its famous cleansing oil. The makers of skin-cleansing devices are hopping on the opportunity to show off their grime-busting abilities, too. Clarisonic is advertising its brush with a microsite that includes information on local pollution levels and photos showing off the brush’s cleansing skills.
If all of this pollution talk seems scary, here’s a bright spot of news: According to the EPA, air quality is better than it has been in decades. That doesn’t mean it’s fresh and clear, per se, but it’s a positive trend. Still, we’ll keep using our antioxidants—for this and other reasons, it certainly can’t hurt.
