Résumé : |
The sea holds a huge amount of power and influence in the minds of humans. At once mysterious, alluring and terrifying, Earth's onceans also represent the birthplace of all life, both plant and animal, and are increasingly becoming a rich source of medical and personal care ingredients.
In personal care, the popularity of marine-derived cosmetic ingredients is not only due to their efficacy, but also the connotations they come with. Consumers associate the sea with purity and freshness, two extremely important characteristics for personal care products, and skin care in particular. This is a deeply-ingrained association that has lead people to use sea flora as a skin care ingredient for many centuries as well as in soap, cleansers, and more recently shaving foams and shampoos.
The long medical and cosmetic history of seaweed is only recently being expanded to include other types of marine flora and microbes. The possibilities are almost endless, partly because relatively little of the marine ecosystem has so far been scientifically explored, leaving countless numbers of potentially useful chemical substances to wait for their moment in the laboratory spotlight. |