Utilizing animals in cosmetics testing seems awfully outdated, and it may soon be obsolete too as synthetic skins are now apparently good enough to imitate animal skins in lab tests. Bharat Bhushan, a professor at Ohio State University and Wei Tang, an engineer at China University of Mining and Technology have conducted research on the responses of pseudo and rat skins to a generic skin cream. What did they find? Even at a scale of 100 nanometers—or one-thousandth the width of a human hair—every sample responded similarly. While these findings could save many of our animal friends, it could also contribute positively to burn victims’ futures. Both Bhushan and Tang may be onto something here.
