Scope check
Who may lawfully perform this, in this state?
Checked against the rule the state actually wrote down — quoted, cited, and linked at source. This compares a procedure against a published limit; it is not a judgement about what a treatment does to skin, and it is not legal advice.
Our scope corpus holds rules read at source for 51 states across 9 service categories. Coverage is uneven and we show you which you are in on every answer. Where we have not read a rule we say so — we never treat our silence as the state's permission.
District of Columbia · Chemical peel · Rule on record
We have read and cited this state's own rule for chemical peel. The verdict below rests on that text, linked at source so you can verify it.
DC gates on peel depth, which was not supplied.
The District defines Level I aesthetic services — the work that does NOT constitute the practice of medicine — as superficial peels at 20% or less with a pH of 3.0 or above, above the stratum corneum and no deeper than 35% of the depth of the dermis.
- DC permits up to "Superficial" for Esthetician. Supply the product's own depth designation — we will not infer depth from a percentage.
The rule this rests on
Level I aesthetic services include Chemicals, such as: (1) Superficial (above the stratum corneum and no deeper than 35% of the depth of the dermis) exfoliation; (2) Superficial chemical peels using less than or equal to a 20% concentration with a pH value of greater than or equal to 3.0.
D.C. Board of Medicine Policy No. 15-02 § 1.2(e) (Practice of Aesthetic Medicine) · verified 2026-08-31 · read at source
Aesthetic services shall be classified as Level I aesthetic services. Level I aesthetic services do not constitute the practice of medicine. Aesthetic medical procedures shall be classified as Level II and Level III procedures, as determined by the Board from time to time.
D.C. Board of Medicine Policy No. 15-02 §§ 1.1, 1.2 · verified 2026-08-31 · read at source
MedSpaRadar is regulatory monitoring and reference: it summarizes public laws, regulations and agency actions and links each to its source. It is not legal, medical, or compliance advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. A summary can lag its source or leave out detail, and monitoring itself can be interrupted — so an absence of alerts means nothing reached you, not that nothing happened. Read the cited source, check its effective date, and confirm any change to your operations or clinical practice with qualified health-law counsel and your medical director.
Where the corpus is deep, and where it isn’t
Read this before you rely on a quiet answer. A category with few states behind it is a category where we will more often tell you we don’t know — which is the correct answer, and not the same as a green light.
| Procedure | States with a rule on record |
|---|---|
| Injectable (neuromodulator, dermal filler) | 46 |
| Energy device (laser, IPL, RF, plasma, ultrasound) | 39 |
| Microneedling / collagen induction | 38 |
| Hair removal (laser / IPL) | 35 |
| Chemical peel | 34 |
| Micropigmentation / permanent makeup | 34 |
| Mechanical exfoliation (dermaplaning, microdermabrasion) | 33 |
| Sclerotherapy | 29 |
| Body contouring (cryolipolysis, RF, ultrasound) | 17 |
Every rule behind these answers is read at an official source and cited. The wider cited corpus — supervision, good-faith exams, ownership and CPOM, advertising — lives on the state pages, and how we decide what to publish is written down in the methodology.
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