The beauty industry is growing rapidly all over the world. In Sweden, hundreds of thousands of treatments are performed every year and the Swedish Consumer Agency estimates that the industry as a whole is growing by 20 percent annually.
Different kinds of laser treatments are growing particularly fast. But exactly how big the growth is, no one knows. It is also not known how many people provide laser treatments in Sweden.
There are no central registers, since no activities that use lasers for beauty-related purposes are subject to permit or notification.
The National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Consumer Agency recommended official registers and permit requirements already in 2018, ahead of the introduction of the new beauty law in 2021. Despite this, the regulation did not materialise.
Inspector: "There is a big limitation"
Laser-related injuries must be reported to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), but in fact most reports end up with the National Board for Consumer Disputes (ARN), the Swedish Consumer Agency or the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (Ivo).
None of the instances are obliged to forward their cases to the SSM, which in practice means that the authority simply does not know where the supervision will be carried out – or that a case has even been established.
Last year, the SSM received ten cases – no supervision was carried out.
Head of Department: Should put more resources
In total, the agency estimates that it has a full-time position that will handle the supervision of beauty-related lasers – throughout the country.
"This market has grown significantly in recent years and we haven't really had time to get up to speed in this area," says Erik Höglund, Head of Supervision at SSM.
Do you have sufficient resources to carry out your mission?
"The experience is that we should put more resources into this.