Crackdown on mercury-laced skin whiteners looms

DEADLY STUFF Some of the banned beauty products still being sold in Davao City. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

DAVAO CITY—The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Mindanao vowed to run after sellers of mercury-laced skin whitening products here.

Deborah Legaspi, director of FDA Mindanao’s east cluster, said her office had been raiding stores that sell the banned items but traders would turn up again weeks after the raids.

The group EcoWaste Coalition conducted test buys on April 2 and 3, obtaining 12 samples of the banned Goree, Jiaoli, S’Zitang and Yu Dan Tang brands of skin whitening products from six stores.

“To our shock and disbelief, the banned products are openly displayed and sold in stores,” said Thony Dizon, EcoWaste chemical safety campaigner, in a statement.

Killer metal

He said the mercury content of these beauty products was way above the one part per million (ppm) safe limit.

Dizon said Yu Dan Tang’s freckle spot remover, which doubles as a whitening sun block cream, showed up to 43,700 ppm mercury content.

Goree’s beauty cream had up to 17,800 ppm of mercury. Most of the products had a mercury content of more than 2,000 ppm.

When added to cosmetics, mercury could prevent the production of the skin pigment melanin making the skin look fairer.

But mercury could also result in skin discoloration, scarring and rashes.

Mercury, Dizon said, could also “contaminate the food supply in a complex chemical process that turns the heavy metal into the highly toxic methyl mercury.” —FRINSTON LIM