Beauty Brands Are Chasing Purity in a Polluted World

Pollution and purification have long been the focus of fringe Reddit forums and conspiracy theory dinner chat, but as of late, a broader consumer is feeling like there’s something in the water. From incidents such as the Flint river sewage spill in Michigan and new calls for UK lawmakers to tackle polluted air, public confidence in air quality and municipal water quality is reaching record lows, fueled by greater awareness around forever chemicals and anxieties bred by the daily doomscroll.

On TikTok, there are 513,000 posts on “how to purify tap water at home” to date. The beauty and wellness industries are starting to take note, creating products and devices that promise purification for the skin, scalp and hair.

“For us, it has never been about fearmongering,” says Adam Bedford, co-founder and CEO at purification brand Sans, whose sleek filtration systems are a hit with wellness-conscious aesthetes. On track to hit $100 million in revenue this year, the brand’s product assortment has grown to address all kinds of elemental concerns, starting with air purifiers (priced at $480+) and now encompassing filters that can remove contaminants from both drinking and bathing water supply. Sans profits have grown exponentially since 2020, when it did $1 million in its first year. “We’re not building business around triggers or trends — we’re grounded in provable improvements to air and water quality and growing trust through transparent testing,” he says. “It certainly feels like the right space to be building in, because there are tailwinds and an increasing number of people that care about purification.”

Water filtration white space

Hard water, found in the southwest and midwest of the US, the south of England, and large parts of Southern Europe, is a growing consumer concern, with limescale and build-up proven to increase risk of skin conditions like eczema, and reduce the efficacy of skin and hair products.

Founded in Liverpool, purification brand Curo aims to tackle the problem. Specializing in a stylish suite of KD55 showerhead filters, the brand has recently been picked up by leading UK retailer Boots. For its founder Harry Bilby, filtration wasn’t just booming business — it was personal. “I suffered badly with dermatitis in my beard, I’d brush and be covered in flakes,” he explains. “On a holiday abroad, my symptoms strangely cleared up.”

Back on home soil, Bilby went down a rabbit hole of research that revealed 52 contaminants in Liverpool tap water. “Chlorine, arsenic and pesticides were just a few of the things I found. The water companies are obliged to tell customers, but they often bury it in misleading, hard-to-find reports in the backlinks of their websites,” Bilby says. Since, he’s built an open-source report aggregating water quality data for postcodes across the UK, plus expanded Curo’s offering to include filters that fit directly on consumer faucets.

Dermatologists and trichologists online have been legitimizing such devices as part of their social media prescriptions for alleviated eczema, improved hair growth, and clearer skin. The market is ripe for similar filtered showerheads, and not yet at a saturation point in the UK — though with new, luxe launches from Water2, HelloKlean and Sans on the horizon, strong competitors are emerging in the space.

How, then, do you differentiate your product offer before the purification market hits saturation? Karlee Zhang, CMO and co-founder of water purification brand Hello Klean, has a pretty solid playbook to draw from. The brand, which specializes in filtering shower heads, is on track to double year-on-year growth to hit £20 million in revenue by the end of 2026.

“Education has to be available, relatable and bite-sized: if we’re using niche lingo from plumbing language, it can overwhelm the consumer. We found success translating things into a context the beauty and wellness consumer already knows and understands,” Zhang explains. To further capitalize on demand, Hello Klean launched a supporting cast of chelating hair and body care products, which chemically bind to and remove hard water build-up.

These products, including its Anti Breakage Hard Water Shampoo (£12), work in tandem with the hero showerhead SKU (£120). But they also perform on their own, offering lower friction, entry-level avenues into the Hello Klean world. (With the shampoo, for example, customers can buy into the HK ecosystem at a tenth of the cost of the latest Showerhead+).

Something in the air

Polluted water isn’t the only cause for concern among the wellness set. Post-pandemic, attention has turned to airborne contaminants, too.

Enter Matt Jennings, director of innovation at Dyson. Responsible for engineering many of the brand’s market-leading designs, he’s well-versed in what consumers across demographics want — and need — in the air purification space. ”What we notice is people can be very reactive to large scale or visible sources of pollution. For example, during events like the pandemic or wildfires, we see a spike in demand for air purifiers,” he explains.

What’s less known is that indoor activity — cooking, keeping pets, burning candles and spraying perfumes — generates pollutants and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), Jennings adds. “The data shows that indoor air quality is generally worse than it is outdoors,” he says, “so educating the consumer with validated research has become a big part of our strategy.”

New for 2026, Dyson’s Find+Follow Purifier incorporates intelligent machine learning sensors to follow users around a room, directing cool, purified air where it’s needed most. Its distinctive, gilded design has proven popular with affluent customers, because they inspire trust via advanced engineering while possessing distinct experiential allure. In an era where consumers are seeking solutions for climate changes, protection from airborne diseases and cachet that comes with ‘no-tox’ lifestyles, such designs set Dyson apart from its competitors in the air treatment space.

Pure hearted

As efficient as air and water purifiers may be, some companies are pushing purification to the extreme, with blood purifying wellness procedures. At London’s Clarify Clinics, founder Yael Cohen has developed the controversial Clari Procedure, a patented two-hour IV treatment that claims to purify the blood plasma.

“A lot of our patients are interested in removing microplastics and forever chemicals inside, essentially addressing the toxin burden in the body and the system-wide inflammation associated with it,” Yael says. “In simple terms, it’s subtractive medicine — aiming to remove things from your blood plasma that shouldn’t be there, while gently preserving the things that should like your blood cells.”

Apheresis (blood purifying) originated within the healthcare space, but the new wave of private clinic procedures like Clari is not arriving without scrutiny. Critics in the medical community highlight concerns over costs, risks, and a lack of peer-reviewed, long-term benefits, particularly of filtering plastics from the blood of otherwise healthy people outside of a standard hospital setting.

Cognisant of the skeptics, the founders say the Clari procedure is not a cure, but should be viewed as a tool in a wider kit of lifestyle adjustments that can reduce contaminant exposure. “Clari provides a first-of-its-kind, incremental benefit, but it is more of a turbocharging catalyst to lifestyle changes people still have to make,” says David Cohen, chemical engineer and board member at Clarify Clinic. “We advise our patients that there are many ways that do not entail our procedure to lower your exposure, like not drinking out of plastic water bottles, opting for natural fibers instead of things like polyester underwear, and reducing use of products containing PFAS.”

Clean cosmetics — legitimate or language laundering?

Cosmetic brands catering to these lifestyle shifts could see more uptake from the discerning consumer. Some, like 14 Day Mani, have already benefited from building this into their offer at the start. “Hema-free wasn’t a trend for us — it was one of the founding principles,” says founder Susan Cummings, in reference to her choice to omit Hema (a chemical commonly found causing skin irritation in gel polishes) from all 14 Day Mani products.

The brand also stocked TPO-free nail polishes well before the recent ban — following the gel polish ingredient’s correlation with reproductive risk. “I wanted to develop a professional-quality manicure system that delivered exceptional results while taking a more considered approach to ingredients,” Cummins says. “My philosophy has always been that beautiful nails should never come at the expense of health."

It’s a sentiment echoed by Neal’s Yard Remedies CEO Anabel Kindersley, who in 2016, successfully lobbied UK Parliament to ban the use of microplastic beads in rinse-off cosmetics. “The renewed conversation around PFAs is prompting many people to take a closer look at the ingredients in their beauty products, but we have always taken the precautionary principle: if there is reasonable doubt about an ingredient, we would rather leave it out. That has shaped our formulations.”

Authenticity is the watchword here. While there is demand, the clued-up beauty customer can sniff out virtue signaling from a mile off. Clean language alone no longer cuts it, according to findings from a 2026 WGSN report. Beauty brands positioning around purity must present meaningful results in order to substantiate any claims — and to actually earn sales.

“Consumers are more discerning about ingredient language — ‘natural’ is not a synonym for effective, and ‘synthetic’ is not a synonym for unsafe,” concurs Rita El Khouri, research and innovation SVP at K18. The brand’s Peptide Detox shampoo, which adsorbs hard water deposits to thoroughly clean hair, has amassed 238,000 impressions on TikTok this month and can consistently be found topping the app’s section for popular searches. “Our launches resonate when the consumer can connect the promise to evidence that the intervention creates meaningful improvements,” adds El Khouri.

With the purification industry tracking to reach $35 billion in less than a decade, the brands that capitalize on purification with prescient solutions have opportunity ahead.