Space-age face cream for world's most polluted cities

It's what every girl in Mexico City needs - an anti-pollution face cream designed with the help of a satellite orbiting 500 miles above earth.

The cosmetics giant L'Oréal has teamed up with the European Space Agency to create a set of moisturisers, shampoos and creams designed specifically for the world's most polluted cities.

L'Oréal, owners of the Lancôme, Helena Rubinstein and Garnier brands, will use the world's most sophisticated and powerful monitoring satellite, Envisat - which normally helps combat environmental destruction, watches the ice caps melt and tracks rainforests' disappearance - to monitor the much higher levels of pollution in cities such as London and Los Angeles. Detailed maps of ozone, carbon monoxide and UV-radition levels could even one day create tailor-made creams for each city. Eventually a smart generation of cosmetics could adapt to day-by-day fluctuating pollution, says Patricia Pineau, a L'Oréal executive.