Cosmetic chemistry and the law

The false friend on this page sits on the bathroom shelf rather than in the regulation. Das Peeling looks English, but it is not used the way English uses « peeling ». In German it is the treatment or the product that takes dead cells off the surface: a scrub with fine grains in it, a gel with fruit acids, or a chemical peel at the dermatologist’s. What skin does by itself a few days after sunburn is something else, and German says it with a reflexive verb: die Haut schält sich. So ein Peeling machen is a choice and a purchase, never a symptom. The rest of the page moves from the jar to the file: how a formulation is built, what makes it unstable, which ingredients are restricted, and the paperwork that has to exist before a cream may be sold.