Beauty S-care: Mercury found way beyond limit in almost half of skin lightening creams available in market
By Mahbubur Rahman Khan
Sumi Akhter was on the lookout for a skin lightening cream as she wanted to appear fairer at her sister’s wedding just two weeks away.
She found her desired product at a cosmetics shop in the capital’s Hossainia Market. The Pakistan-made cream promised lighter skin tone in seven days.
The college student had no idea that the excessive amount of mercury usually found in such products can not only damage skin permanently but also cause fatal diseases.
A recent study found that the amount of mercury in 14 out of the 32 skin lightening cream samples collected from the market were 90 to 16,000 times higher than the 1ppm (parts per million) limit set by the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury.
