How does pollution affect skin?

Beware the tox­ic avengers. A gang of Mar­vel anti-heroes? No, but in terms of skin age­ing, just as threat­en­ing. The expres­sion refers to envi­ron­men­tal aggres­sors and Mintel, who coined the catchy head­line, say in a recent report: “The cos­met­ics indus­try has been awak­en­ing con­sumers to the imme­di­ate, vis­i­ble and per­son­al effects of pol­lu­tion that threat­en our skin.”

About time too as the Skin Can­cer Foun­da­tion esti­mates that 90 per cent of pre­ma­ture age­ing is caused by envi­ron­men­tal dam­age, includ­ing ultra­vi­o­let (UV) rays. “The neg­a­tive impact of envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors oth­er than UV light has long been neglect­ed,” says Dr Ste­fanie Williams, inde­pen­dent der­ma­tol­o­gist at Euro­pean Der­ma­tol­ogy in Lon­don and spokesper­son for Avon.

What are these vil­lain­ous fac­tors and what do they do? “Pol­lu­tion is cre­at­ed by emis­sions of tox­ic gas­es,” explains Dr Rachael Eck­el, a cos­met­ic der­ma­tol­o­gist. “Com­bined with UV rays from sun­light it cre­ates a high­ly reac­tive mol­e­cule that caus­es dam­age to pro­teins, col­la­gen and lipids in the skin. Remem­ber, the main func­tion of the skin is to act as a bar­ri­er or a shield.”

Kiehl’s con­sult­ing der­ma­tol­o­gist Dr Adam Gey­er adds: “When breathed in, pol­lu­tants gen­er­ate cir­cu­lat­ing free rad­i­cals and increase our inflam­ma­to­ry state by acti­vat­ing our immune response which can accel­er­ate signs of age­ing.”

But what evi­dence is there that this actu­al­ly makes you look old­er? “Kitchen log­ic says pol­lu­tion is bad for the skin, but we need­ed a tech­ni­cal ratio­nale,” says Dr Frauke Neuser, Olay prin­ci­pal sci­en­tist. In a break­through last year, Olay skin­care pre­sent­ed a joint study at the annu­al con­fer­ence of the Chi­nese Der­ma­tol­o­gist Asso­ci­a­tion prov­ing that pol­lu­tion has a sig­nif­i­cant­ly detri­men­tal effect. The most impor­tant find­ing?  Liv­ing in a high­ly pol­lut­ed area ages peo­ple 10 per cent faster than their coun­try cousins.

Lon­don’s Oxford Street has up to ten times the legal lim­it of nitro­gen diox­ide lev­els

“We recruit­ed two groups of 100 women aged between 30 and 45, one liv­ing with­in the ring-road of Bei­jing and the oth­er in the sub­urbs,” says Dr Neuser. “The sci­en­tists mea­sured the hydra­tion, bar­ri­er func­tion, soft­ness, tex­ture and pro­teins on the skin. We found that the women in the city cen­tre had a 10 per cent low­er weak­er bar­ri­er func­tion because of sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er lev­els of pro­teins that makes the bar­ri­er strong.”

Although wide­ly report­ed that the Olay study stat­ed that par­tic­u­late mat­ter 2.5 (PM 2.5), the term for large, sug­ar-gran­ule-sized tox­ic pol­lut­ed par­ti­cles can be absorbed into the skin, this is not true.

“PM 2.5 par­ti­cles are too large to pen­e­trate,” says Dr Neuser. “But chem­i­cals that are attached to them, such as from fuel, oil, diesel and pes­ti­cides, will pen­e­trate and kick off a reac­tion with free rad­i­cal pro­duc­tion and oxida­tive stress which of course ages the skin.”  On a day of high pol­lu­tion, skin con­di­tions will flare up too. “It’s a vicious cir­cle,” she con­tin­ues. “Every time you go out, the chem­i­cals can pen­e­trate more eas­i­ly and the bar­ri­er is weak­ened.”

So Bei­jing is noto­ri­ous­ly pol­lut­ed, right? Actu­al­ly London’s Oxford Street has the worst pol­lu­tion in the world with lev­els of nitro­gen diox­ide (NO₂) at up to ten times the legal lim­it, accord­ing to a study by King’s Col­lege Lon­don.

Hence UK beau­ty com­pa­nies are falling over them­selves to pro­duce prod­ucts to pre­vent and fight back against the attack of the tox­ic avengers. “We have seen the emer­gence of sev­er­al skin prod­ucts aimed at com­bat­ting and remov­ing pol­lu­tants,” says Kar­la Ren­dle, research ana­lyst at Euromon­i­tor Inter­na­tion­al. “With a high pro­por­tion of the UK demo­graph­ic liv­ing in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed urban areas, as with sun pro­tec­tion, anti-pol­lu­tion has the poten­tial to become a stan­dard con­cern and part of con­sumers’ dai­ly skin­care rou­tine.”

SkinCeu­ti­cals says it best with the slo­gan “Sun­screens are not enough”. The hero prod­uct is C E Fer­ulic that swoops in like Super­man to dis­arm free rad­i­cals on the skin. Eliz­a­beth Arden’s new Pre­vage Triple Defence SPF 50 com­bines dam­age pre­ven­tion with oxida­tive repair, while La Roche-Posay Pig­mentclar UV SPF 30 works with the most sen­si­tive skin to offer pro­tec­tion, repair and to soothe.

Dior One Essen­tial City Defense lands in Sep­tem­ber with triple anti-pol­lu­tion action to pre­vent the accu­mu­la­tion of tox­ins in the skin. Lancôme City Mir­a­cle CC Cream SPF 50 hit the mark with Chi­nese women, 69 per cent of whom sit­ed pol­lu­tion as their beau­ty ene­my, but wear­ing this, 95 per cent felt pro­tect­ed against exter­nal aggres­sors.

To cure these rav­ages, Avon Anew Clin­i­cal E‑Defence Deep Recov­ery Cream is shown to help reverse the appear­ance of skin dam­age caused by expo­sure to envi­ron­men­tal aggres­sors. And Olay nar­row in on niaci­namide, found in all the anti-age­ing ranges such as Olay Regener­ist and Total Effects, to improve hydra­tion and strength­en the skin bar­ri­er to fight exter­nal dam­age and inflam­ma­tion in skin cells. Final­ly, Clinique’s Super City Block Oil-Free Dai­ly Face Pro­tec­tor Broad Spec­trum SPF 40, used with the 3‑Step Skin Care Sys­tem and skin cleans­ing brush, is proven to rid the skin of PM 2.5s.

Anoth­er way to pre­vent dam­age is to be aware of the tox­i­c­i­ty of your envi­ron­ment. Avon car­ried out a UK-wide study last year that cal­cu­lat­ed the worst cities for “urban dust”. The results? Edin­burgh and Pre­ston had the low­est air pol­lu­tion with lev­els of 26/100 and 29/100, and Lon­don nat­u­ral­ly lost the bat­tle of the tox­ic avengers with 99/100. As for a shop­ping trip to Oxford Street? Those pol­lu­tion lev­els make an online splurge sud­den­ly much more tempt­ing.

BEAUTY FROM THE INSIDE OUT

It’s a time-con­sum­ing busi­ness aspir­ing to be beau­ti­ful. But could pop­ping a pill or neck­ing a drink cre­at­ed specif­i­cal­ly to enhance skin be a quick­er route towards improved skin?

Accord­ing to Mintel’s Facial Skin­care – UK, May 2014 report: “Four­teen per cent of peo­ple take vit­a­mins and sup­ple­ments to improve their appear­ance, and a high pro­por­tion of con­sumers show an inter­est in try­ing [those] with appear­ance ben­e­fits.”

Yet con­sumers and der­ma­tol­o­gists have long been cyn­i­cal about so-called nutri-cos­met­ics, hence brands are now car­ry­ing out inde­pen­dent stud­ies to prove their verac­i­ty. Take Gold Col­la­gen, which in a nine-week clin­i­cal tri­al saw sub­jects show­ing an increase of 20 per cent in skin elas­tic­i­ty, fine lines reduced by 15 per cent and their depth decreased by 27 per cent. Mean­while Skinade’s stud­ies claim that 91 per cent of sub­jects saw a 28 per cent increase in their skin hydra­tion, demon­strat­ing that its drink packs a punch in terms of what they claim would nev­er be as effec­tive in a pill.

On that note, pos­si­bly the best-known brand of skin pill sup­ple­men­ta­tion Imedeen shows proof of effi­ca­cy with the Der­maS­can that cus­tomers are led through  in Boots, mea­sur­ing the con­di­tion of the deep­er lay­ers of the skin before and after three months of pop­ping the pills. Of course, results vary, but it inspires con­fi­dence by show­ing the cus­tomer a degree of proof.

All three are rich in sub­stances derived from fish, a pop­u­lar choice, but accord­ing to the co-founder of Los Ange­les-based vit­a­min brand Hum, which offers half a dozen beau­ty lines, not all oils are cre­at­ed equal. “You need to source omega oils from small­er fish that only eat plank­ton, such as sar­dines and anchovies,” says co-founder Christo­pher Coleridge. “Larg­er fish accu­mu­late tox­ins over time from eat­ing those small­er.”

How effec­tive are these prod­ucts?  “Omega 3 oils do work well for the skin,” says Dr Pene­lope Tym­pa­nadis, a Harley Street con­sul­tant der­ma­tol­o­gist. “The main point is that if you want to live well and eat well, you hard­ly need any sup­ple­ments.”  Lon­don-based natur­o­path­ic spe­cial­ist Nig­ma Tal­ib sug­gests fol­low­ing your gut. “If you are not digest­ing prop­er­ly, you won’t absorb sup­ple­ments, so even by get­ting that cor­rect­ed you will have few­er spots and less puffi­ness.”

But it’s not time for skin­care to resign its com­mis­sion – nutri-cos­met­ics will only be effec­tive if com­bined with a good skin­care reg­i­men. In life there are no short cuts, beau­ti­ful skin includ­ed.

TOP TIPS

HOW POLLUTION IS AFFECTING YOUR SKIN – AND HOW TO FIX IT

 Air pol­lu­tion has a direct effect on health and, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, on the lungs. It is also very harm­ful to the skin. Pol­lu­tion par­ti­cles, some­times 20 times small­er than pores, can infil­trate deep­er lay­ers of the epi­der­mis, caus­ing not only inflam­ma­tion and dehy­dra­tion, but also a cel­lu­lar-lev­el reac­tion that leads to lost elas­tic­i­ty and firm­ness.

1. Cleanse

Wash­ing your face thor­ough­ly every day is a crit­i­cal step in reduc­ing the bur­den that pol­lu­tion puts on your skin. The goal is to get every­thing off with­out too much scrub­bing, dry­ing or irri­ta­tion, which can exac­er­bate skin con­di­tions such as acne.

2. Neu­tralise

Most der­ma­tol­o­gists agree that antiox­i­dants help fight free rad­i­cal dam­age and can help main­tain healthy skin. To help pro­tect skin, lay­er on a serum with antiox­i­dants after cleans­ing in the morn­ing and do the same at night to bol­ster its repair process. Also eat antiox­i­dant-rich foods such as blue­ber­ries, leafy greens and beans.

3. Bar­ri­ers

Apply sun­screen (SPF) dai­ly to pro­tect your­self; the lat­est for­mu­las con­tain antiox­i­dants, boost­ing their pol­lu­tion-fight­ing pow­ers.

4. Water

Mois­ture is cru­cial in pol­lu­tion pro­tec­tion because hydrat­ing agents help strength­en the bar­ri­er func­tion of the skin.