Alok Jha
Thursday January 18, 2007
The Guardian

Did you know that, right now, artificial electromagnetic (EM) waves could be tearing your skin cells apart and causing your face to age prematurely? Waves from televisions, mobile phones and radios are all around us. They pass through metres of concrete, so imagine what they're doing to your skin.

Clarins reckon they have something to help. It's Expertise 3P, "an ultra-sheer screen mist containing a pioneering combination of plant extracts capable of protecting the skin from the accelerated-ageing effects of all indoor and outdoor air pollution but, most significantly, the effects of Artificial Electromagnetic Waves." It's a bargain at £30 a bottle.

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This is such an important discovery that it is the subject of a new scientific research paper. Sadly, the Clarins press office couldn't tell us where or when the paper would be published. But it could offer an interview with the excitable Lionel de Benetti, head of research and development.

One of the ingredients, thermos thermophilus, comes from 2,000m deep in the ocean. The other, rhodiola rosea, lives in the extreme cold of Siberia. De Benetti can barely contain his glee at the discovery: "We exposed our cell cultures to a frequency of 900 MHz in the presence of these two plant extracts and found that their structures hardly changed!"

Michael Bluck, an engineer at Imperial College, sounds distinctly unconvinced. We have been bathed in EM waves since the dawn of time. So-called "artificial" waves are used by electronic devices because they do not interact with our bodies. If you were intent on stopping the waves, Bluck explains that you could scatter them with a fine mesh of metal or absorb them - although the energy would be converted to heat, which would cook your skin.

But what about the ocean ingredients that prevented ageing in lab tests? "Presumably there's not a lot in the way of electromagnetic waves, particularly artificial ones, down in the bottom of the ocean, so why the organisms should have evolved this capability is beyond me," says Bluck.

His advice for anyone worried about EM radiation? "Live as far away from the producers of EM waves as possible and live with the consequences of having no friends and no life," he says.