No One Knows How Many of the World’s Skin-Lightening Creams Are Tainted With Mercury

Tests keep turning up the toxic element, even in products the manufacturers claim are safe

Pedestrians walk past an advertising for skin-whitening cream on a street in Abidjan. Many African countries including Ivory Coast have banned the use of skin-lightening products because of health concerns. Photo: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images

By Sheridan Prasso and Vernon Silver

The mercury hunters of Manila were on a mission. Having paid an undercover visit to a neighborhood market, they returned to their office in an apartment block on the city’s outskirts to assess the haul of skin-lightening creams.

At a table in the headquarters of the EcoWaste Coalition, chemical safety campaigner Thony Dizon readied his investigative tool: an X-ray fluorescence analyzer, or XRF. He unlocked the ray gun’s hard-shell case, lifted the device, and aimed it into a small white jar containing an avocado-colored cream. The XRF took a few seconds to flash its red light, blast its rays, and then measure the photons emitted back by the contents. Blink, blink, blink … “FAIL,” the device read.

The $5 jar, labeled Goree Beauty Cream with Lycopene, registered 23,000 parts per million of mercury, according to the XRF. A mere 1ppm is considered dangerous. In a second test, a jar labeled Goree Day & Night Whitening Cream measured 19,900ppm. Both products are banned by the Philippines Food and Drug Administration, following similar tests by…