New warning after teen’s skin burned by popular facial mask

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) – There’s a new warning about a popular kind of spa treatment face masks. A teenager says the product by “Yes To” burned her skin.

Lauren Moore is 13 years old. The teen got a collection of at-home facial masks, which are a popular treat during sleepovers with friends. After the last party during the holiday break, a few masks including one by the company “Yes To,” a grapefruit brightening unicorn mask, were left over.

“It had caught my eye specifically because of the shiny packaging and how like kiddish it sort of looked, so I thought it might to be fun to try on,” Moore said.

The package says, “If it’s tingling–it’s working!” But barely five minutes after applying it, Lauren says it felt like her face was on fire.

“It stung so bad I could barely open my eyes and my eyes started to water,” she said.

Her mom snapped pictures of how her face and neck looked after using the unicorn mask. It was red and burned.

“I walked downstairs to my mom and was like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ And she told me to put aloe on it,” Moore said.

Thankfully, nearly 24 hours later, her face cooled off and is almost back to normal now. But after sharing her story with friends on Snapchat and her mom posting on Facebook, they learned of dozens of other similar complaints with the same “Yes To” brand mask.

In fact, Friday night, the company posted to its social media, saying it was temporarily pulling the product to investigate.

“It makes me feel like I should probably check the label before using face masks or stuff like that because there are really harmful chemicals that could be in the masks that I hadn’t experienced before,” Moore said.

But despite the apparent voluntary recall, WDAF-TV still found the unicorn mask at major retailers in the metro Monday, and for sale online. WDAF-TV reached out to “Yes To,” which sent the following statement:

“Yes To is committed to ensuring the safety and integrity of all of our products and has maintained a strong track record of delivering quality products to our customers since our founding in 2006.

We have recently seen reports on social media that children have used the Grapefruit Vitamin C Glow-Boosting Unicorn Paper Mask, unfortunately resulting in skin irritation. We have also received some similar reports from adults who have used the product.  We apologize to anyone who was affected in this way, especially over the holiday season.

While our products are all independently tested for safety, irritation, and allergy – and while we provide both warnings and instructions on our products about the potential for skin irritation – the safety and satisfaction of our customers are our main concerns. Our products are all also only intended for adult use. As such, we have decided to pull this particular product off of the shelves while we investigate the complaints that we have received and seen online.

We have reached out to all our retailers and informed them that we are voluntarily pulling the product off the market and to please remove all Grapefruit Vitamin C Glow-Boosting Unicorn Paper Masks off their shelves immediately. However, each store has a different procedure and process when removing products. We hope to have all products completely removed by Friday and will continue to follow-up with each store to make sure that the product is pulled from shelves as quickly as possible.

We have directed the stores to refund anyone who returns a not used purchased mask to the store and have advised them to let the customers who have already used the product to contact us for a refund.

To notify consumers we have posted on social media about the product being pulled and have updated our website with the appropriate information.”

Dermatologists recommend you research ingredients on skin products. The unicorn mask, in particular, has lactic acid and vitamin C, which are typically used for tightening aging skin, not for youth skin.

And if you can, they suggest you do a small spot test first and wait a day to see if you have a reaction, before using a product on your entire face.