By Ify Onyekwere
Many people have had issues using mix of herbal products popularly called “Organic product” in the market place. Yet organic products are daily promoted on social media through enticing adverts.
NatureNews finds out that a large number of people involved in the manufacturing of such delicate products to the skin do not have the actual “know-how” to do it.
A sufferer of the negative impact of a not well prepared organic skin care, Miss Jolade shared her experience: “I was convinced by a family member even though I had always been mindful of what I use on my skin.
“I was good with general lotion until I started and stared having disturbing colours on my body.”
Another user, Cynthia said she bought hers from a roadside seller she met online and was hoping to use it in the nearest future but she changed her mind after she saw the effect on someone else who had used the product.
According to Cynthia, it caused a serious bleaching effect.
Another user of roadside organic product, Babatunde said the nature of his job made him crave for a light skin but people began to ask questions by just looking at him.
Another user, Amina, on the contrary loved the bleaching effect and opined it enhanced her beauty. A dermatologist, Nnanyelugo Ozor explained that the pigment of melanin in the human body is supposed to protect the skin from sunlight, adding that when people bleach, the melanocyte (cells that produce melanin to the body) are destroyed or the production of melanin stops.
He said when such a person is exposed to sunlight, there will be no protection of the skin from harmful rays of the sun.
Dr. Ozor made it known that overtime, it destroys the DNA on the skin and exposes the skin to cancer and fast aging.
“Some of the bleaching agents people use have harmful chemicals in them — agents like hydroquinone.
“We need to realise that this agents get absorbed in the body. For those who have already bleached their skin, I advise that they stop immediately and visit a dermatologist not a beauty specialist.
“Some of my patients who come to me deal in organic products as I know this through their whatsapp status but they do not say this to their customers,” he elaborated.
Dr Ozor advised that people should be conscious of what they buy from the market place and ask questions as people have different skins and react to things differently.
NatureNews reports that unemployment is one of the major reasons young people venture into producing skin care products with little knowledge on it. Recall that Nigeria’s unemployment rate came to at 27.1 percent in the second quarter of 2020, which is the second highest on record.
It was the first time since 2018 that Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) published such figures.
Majority of those who fall under the category of the unemployed are the active workforce as the NBS showed that about 13.9 million Nigerian youths are unemployed as at the second quarter of 2020.
