Organic Acids

If you’ve used a glycolic acid serum or a lactic acid peel, you’ve used an alpha-hydroxy acid. Peat contains a natural cocktail of similar small organic acids — citric acid, malic acid, succinic acid, acetic acid, oxalic acid, and uronic acids — that provide the same type of gentle exfoliation built into peat’s chemistry.

What they do

pH regulation. Organic acids are a major reason peat is acidic. Together with the carboxyl groups on humic and fulvic acids, they maintain peat’s pH at 3.5–5.5 — measured across 23 Finnish mires averaging pH 4.4 (Korhonen 2008). This acidity closely matches the skin’s own acid mantle (pH 4.5–5.5), which is why peat applications support barrier function rather than disrupting it.

Gentle exfoliation. The small organic acids in peat work like a mild, natural AHA treatment. They loosen the bonds between dead skin cells on the surface, promoting gentle turnover without the aggressive pH drops of concentrated chemical exfoliants (Blonska-Sikora 2024). In a peat face mask, this exfoliating action happens alongside moisturising, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory effects — a combination that no single-ingredient AHA product can match.

The AHA parallel

The cosmetics industry spends billions on AHA products. Glycolic acid, lactic acid, citric acid — these are the active ingredients in chemical peels and exfoliating serums. Peat delivers several of these same acids naturally, at gentler concentrations, alongside dozens of other bioactive compounds. It’s not a replacement for a targeted chemical peel, but it provides background exfoliation as part of every peat application — one of many mechanisms working simultaneously rather than the sole active ingredient.