Not all new ingredients call the consumer's bluff. Liposomes, for example, do just what the manufacturers say: they transport moisture into the skin and trap it there.
But at what chemical cost? if synthetic ingredients such as these are absorbed on contact with the skin - and by some estimates more than 50 per cent are -
then there is every chance some enter the bloodstream and get transported to the liver. Beauty companies may test their preparation for allergic reactions on the skin
but the true effects may be much deeper down.
Although the permitted amount of each ingredient is small, there is no limit to the number of chemicals that can be incorporated into a single product.
By one estimate, two kilos of cosmetic chemicals find their way into the average user's bloodstream every year.
Furthermore, while the effects of individual constituents have been tested, little account is taken of the 'cooktail effect' that may result when these chemicals are combined.
Buy the effects are hidden and their origin impossible to prove. Not so when people get adverse reaction to a facial product on their skin.
Complaints about such reactions have increased with the rang, aims and claims of products. Hardly surprising that 80 per cent of women questioned in one survey said they have senitive skin.
In a recent trial of anti-ageing creams by the Consumers' association, more than a third of the 48 women reported effects on their skin such as burning,
itching, flakiness and dryness. Yet such is the belief that treatment for skin is a patented , processed and packeaged product,
the usual response is to buy another cream to put right the after-effects of the last - and so the cycle continues.
