It’s 2022 and people are ordering skin whitening creams and slathering them on their faces and bodies, perpetuating white supremacy and the Eurocentric ideals of beauty. These products are physically toxic to us, too, apparently, as new research confirms. Even though the beauty industry has promised to do better, many skin lightening products sold online still contain dangerously high levels of mercury, according to a new report obtained by CNN.
The report was put together by the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG), a group of environmental and health NGOs from around the world. They bought and tested 271 popular skin lightening products from online platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba. Although the use of mercury in cosmetic products is tightly regulated in many countries, their study found that a staggering 47% of the soaps and creams they tested contained high levels of mercury — some with as much as 50,000 parts per million, per CNN.
