Despite being subject to a global United Nations ban, damaging mercury-based skin lightening products are still easily purchased around the world via some of the world’s biggest online retailers. New international testing, the results of which were released today, reveals the extent of this toxic trade. 129 products with harmful and illegal amounts of mercury are still being sold by e-commerce giants including eBay, Amazon, AliBaba, and Flipkart (majority owned by WalMart).
The global Zero Mercury Working Group coordinated a study of skin products they suspected had high levels of mercury as their active ingredient. Coordinators from 17 countries purchased 271 products from online retailers, and, despite US law and the global Minamata treaty banning mercury concentrations greater than one part per million in cosmetics, more than 100 products tested positive for illegal mercury levels. Of those, seven, which contained between 2.8 to 12,418 parts per million of mercury, were easily purchased from the US on eBay and delivered to a US address.
It’s well documented that long-term use of mercury-based skin products can cause skin damage, neurological damage, and a myriad of other harmful side effects to unsuspecting consumers, who tend to apply the products daily and sometimes to large areas of the body. Even more concerning is the fact that for consumers who use these products during their pregnancy, mercury poses enormous risks to the developing fetus, including lasting damage to the brain and nervous system.
Despite the well-documented hazards posed by mercury in skin products, these cosmetics are still widely marketed to and used by Black and Brown people, primarily women, around the world, who wish to lighten their skin. Activists caution that until s the underlying stigma and discrimination against people with darker skin known as “colorism” is addressed, there will be little progress in ending skin lightening and the sales of these products.
This new study also shows that alarmingly little progress has been made to stop online retail sales of mercury based products. In 2019, the global Zero Mercury Working Group found a similar dynamic with online e-commerce giants selling products containing illegal levels of mercury that were already on national “watch lists” for import inspectors. The Working Group warned online retailers about the need to proactively screen their inventories to keep these toxic and sometimes deadly products off their sites. That year, in partnership with the Beautywell Project, the Sierra Club launched a campaign against Amazon and eBay and successfully got retailers to claim they would stop selling these toxic products in the US.
Yet nearly three years later, the newest study has identified seven products available on eBay US. While the study did not find mercury in the products tested from Amazon US, international partners were able to purchase mercury-based lighteners for sale on Amazon in Antigua & Barbuda and India.
This year’s findings suggest additional laws and scrutiny are needed to interrupt the international trade of dangerous skin lightening products. Online retail giants are playing a unique role in extending the global distribution of products from a handful of brands. More work is urgently needed to combat colorism’s harmful impact on the wellbeing of Black and Brown people. The Sierra Club and the Mercury Policy Project are joining the Zero Mercury Working Group in calling for world governments to shut down the production and sale of these toxic and racist skin creams.