For the rest of our Q&A series, look out for these feature articles: Regulatory Considerations, How To Test Anti-Pollution Products and Pollution’s Effect on Hair.
Who are the experts?
To offer their industry expertise and deep market insight, CosmeticsDesign put your questions to two of our speakers:
- Dr. Maria Coronado, Euromonitor: ingredients analyst and doctor in chemical engineering. Find some of her recent insights here.
- Dr. Alain Khaiat, Seers Consulting: cosmetics consultant and contractor; an expert in the Asia region.
Can consumer appetite be maintained?
Do you think that if studies aren't published soon the consumer will start to stop believing in those anti pollution products and the trend will decrease and eventually disappear?
AK: No, air pollution is something consumers "see"; in many big cities they feel and see the pollution everyday. What they do not see are the effects on the skin, but they do believe that pollution is not healthy! Sure, publishing studies, explaining what's happening in lay term are important as well.
Can you give an indication of the size of the anti-pollution market?
MC: Giving specific numbers to the size of the market in terms of ingredients is not easy at this stage due to the wide number of different ingredients claiming pollution protection (from plant extracts, vitamins and antioxidants complexes, to film former polymers, cleaning ingredients and metal chelating agents.
However, with pollution levels hitting critical levels even in Western cities like London where its annual air pollution limits were repeatedly broken in January 2017, it is sensible to say that anti-pollution is a new category in the skincare arena which is here to stay and it is starting to penetrate also into other categories (hair care, sun protection, colour cosmetics and bath and shower).
New anti-pollution ingredients launches are on the horizon, for instance, the biotech company Greentech will launch in April 2017 a biological antipollution ingredient that activates the skin endogenous defence mechanisms and the detoxification pathways.