How the city affects your skin
I’m sure that many times you’ve got home after spending a day in the centre of the city and noticed that your skin was dryer, irritated or even showing a localised mild allergic reaction.
The hustle and bustle of the city and its many amenities also have the odd drawback for your skin. One of the main ones is the effect that pollution has on your body. That's why it’s essential to know how it impacts skin health and ways to prevent its negative effects.
How does pollution affect your skin?
The environmental pollution concentrated in major urban centres can entail health risks. Pollution can also cause damage to the skin.
Then there is the added factor of heat. The dreaded greenhouse effect, in addition to the reduction in the ozone layer, involves a year-round rise in environmental temperature. And not only that, heat makes rainfall less frequent, which reduces evaporation and with it the cleansing of harmful substances from the city.
What substances are we talking about?
The type of substances released into the environment are basically waste produced by hydrocarbons and used in aerosols and industrial processes, but also at the domestic level.
It involves very small particles which can easily enter your pores because of how tiny they are. However, they have a very high molecular weight, which means they can build up and obstruct your follicles and pores. These types of substances have a high carbon dioxide (CO2) content and inflated concentrations of heavy metals like chlorine, bromine, ammonium and arsenic.
What effects do they have on your skin?
These harmful particles are absorbed and can interact with the physiological composition of your skin and cause oxidative reactions that give rise to free radicals, which can negatively impact the skin.
By accumulating these substances and developing inflammatory processes to defend itself, skin composition will change: the horny layer will thicken and cell turnover will be reduced. These processes will give rise to:
- Premature aging with the appearance of age spots due to the increase in oxidative reactions caused by these harmful compounds.
- Dehydration due to the evaporation of water that wasn't able to be absorbed cause of the blockage of the skin's outermost layers caused by the build-up of heavy pollutants.
- Acne, due to obstruction of the pores.
- Allergic eczema or allergic irritation.
- Loss of firmness due to reduction of the extracellular matrix, which will give rise to wrinkles.
How to protect it
Despite World Health Organization recommendations on environmental pollution and its serious consequences on our body, we are often unaware of why skincare and cleansing is so important.
To preserve our skin and minimise the effects of pollution, it is essential to follow a skin cleansing routine:
- Daily cleansing: You need to wash your skin at least a couple of times a day (morning and night) and always consider your skin type. Remember we can be somewhat more aggressive if we have oily skin but must be more cautious with sensitive skin to prevent the loss of the lipid cover that protects the skin’s outermost layer.
Use products containing micelles, oils or sulphate-free foams to remove all the substances that build up on your skin.
- Protect yourself from the inside: after a proper cleansing, you should use nourishing emollients with hyaluronic acid that supplies antioxidants like vitamins A, C and E to fight the effect of free radicals.
- Feed yourself properly: good hydration, as well as a healthy, balanced diet, will help your skin defend itself against pollution.
