Africa wants to ban skin lighteners containing mercury

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Africa wants to amend the global mercury treaty by imposing a ban on skin-lightening products laced with the highly toxic metal.

The amendment proposal by Botswana and Burkina Faso, on behalf of the African region, seeks to amend the Minamata Convention on Mercury — a treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury — to ban the sale and offering of sales of cosmetics containing mercury. 

Despite known health risks, mercury is used because it suppresses the production of melanin and removes age spots, freckles, blemishes and wrinkles. Adolescents use skin-lightening creams, because mercury acts as an antibacterial on acne. 

These products are hazardous to human health and have been outlawed in numerous countries. At least 10 African countries — South Africa, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Sudan — have adopted regulations to curtail toxic skin lighteners. Since 2015, eight have taken steps to rein in these toxic cosmetics.

The Zero Mercury Working Group, an international coalition of more than 110 public interest environmental and health NGOs, applauded Africa’s proposal. 

“Over the years, the African region has taken a leadership role in phasing out mercury in products, including in lighting, dentistry and now skin-lightening cosmetics,” said Rico Euripidou, of groundWork, an environmental justice service and developmental nonprofit. He said toxic cosmetics are a “global mercury crisis warranting coordinated international collaboration”.

The convention requires that each party shall not allow the manufacture, import or export of mercury-added cosmetics that have a mercury content above 1ppm (parts per million), including skin-lightening soaps and creams. 

According to Africa’s proposal, made ahead of the fifth meeting of the Conference of Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury in October, “the proliferation, trade and sales of mercury-added skin-lightening products often continues unabated in local markets and increasingly, since the pandemic, though the internet”. 

It said internet sales of such products probably involve illegal activity by online platforms, decentralised third party sellers and producers “hiding in the shadows” — and there is insufficient awareness of health risks from mercury-added skin lightening products. 

“Without national collaboration and a globally coordinated effort, on both [the] supply and demand side, skin-lightening products trade and sales will persist into the foreseeable future long after all other Article  4 banned products are eventually eliminated.” 

Skin-lightening products containing mercury have health risks, especially to pregnant women, according to the proposal. 

“Mercury can readily enter the body via absorption through the skin, inhalation or orally. Regular use of mercury-added skin-lightening products reduces the skin’s resistance to bacterial and fungal infections and can lead to rashes, skin discolouration and blotching. Long-term exposure may also damage the eyes, lungs, kidneys, digestive, immune and nervous systems.”

Africa wants to eliminate the 1ppm mercury threshold for banning cosmetics. By doing this, “parties with limited capacity could utilise handheld devices (XRFs) to efficiently conduct market surveillance through inexpensive screening for mercury-added skin-lightening products,” it said, noting there are many countries that have no threshold limit in their regulations. 

Euripidou explained: “If we eliminate that artificial threshold, what it effectively says is that anything contaminated with mercury is illegal and there are tools that customs officials can use, which are handheld devices called XRF machines. 

“They can just point it at cosmetic shipments and if there is any mercury whatsoever, then you know that shipment is contaminated and you don’t have to worry about testing it at that 1ppm threshold.”

Africa proposes additional steps be taken to curtail sales and offering of sales, including setting national objectives to develop and implement strategies to discourage marketing, advertising and display. 

It said that several countries, including South Africa, Nigeria and India, have policies discouraging the promotion of skin-lightening products, with South Africa’s policies stopping advertising on television.

The proposals said the widespread use of skin-lightening products — with or without mercury — are a “symbol of societies grappling with colourism. In fact, the World Health Organisation recommends not to use skin-lightening products as skin is beautiful and we should love it as it is.” 

Monitoring the industry is necessary to identify manufacturers who may be breaking the law. It said mercury was seldom listed in the ingredients list. “Requiring licensing of products and product ingredient approvals could address this issue.” 

The proposal suggested that online platforms be part of developing and implementing product safety pledges and that interministerial coordination could help control the illicit trade in a country. 

To facilitate consumer awareness, physicians and dermatologists and beauty centre workers must be educated.

In 2012, a study by Ncoza Dlova of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which investigated the contents of the top 10 best-selling skin-lightening creams on the market in South Africa, found that nearly half of the products contained mercury, although this was neither declared on the ingredient listing nor the packaging label.

In her 2015 epidemiological study on skin-lightening practices of South African women of African and Indian ancestries, Dlova concluded the use of these cosmetics is common among darkly pigmented women of both ancestries. 

“Despite more than 20 years of governmental regulations aimed at prohibiting both the sale of cosmetics containing mercury, hydroquinone and corticosteroids, and the advertising of any kind of skin lightener, they are far from having disappeared. The main motivations for using these products are the desire to treat skin disorders and to achieve a lighter skin colour,” the study said.

A study in Ghana found that 70% of patients with kidney disease had a history of using bleaching creams, while a Nigeria study found that more than 30% of women who used bleaching creams experienced skin irritation.

Since the 1990s, South Africa has taken progressive steps to regulate mercury in skin lightening creams, groundWork’s Euripidou said. 

“However, the concern and this is an ongoing and systemic thing, is that the sale, manufacture and global distribution of skin-lightening creams with mercury is still carrying on unabated and the reason is because there’s a market for it. There’s a whole lot of embedded race and colonial issues in the idea that having a lighter skin is more preferable than having a darker skin.” 

This is spurring the global demand for these dangerous products. 

“And because we don’t have good controls over the importation of goods … if you have the importation of these creams that are going to get sold in the informal sector, at taxi ranks, at spaza shops, there’s absolutely just about no way that our custom officials believe that they can control it.”

To date, major online platforms are not held accountable for facilitating the sale of often illegal high-mercury cosmetics, said Michael Bender, international co-coordinator of the Zero Mercury Working Group. “If adopted, the sales ban can help prevent marketing of toxic and often illegal cosmetics.”

Euripidou added the online sale of skin-lightening creams with mercury is almost like a “new frontier” for the sale and distribution and “global continued contamination with mercury because it’s so unregulated, it’s so easy for it to happen and it’s such a big problem”.

Africa’s proposal would effectively ban the manufacture of skin-lightening creams at the source. Euripidou said it wasn’t a mystery where they’re originating from. “We know that a lot of them originate in Pakistan, the Caribbean and the West Indies … 

“So it’s not as if we don’t know what kind of control measures we need to take. If these control measures are adopted into the Minamata Convention, then we’ll know that we’re addressing the root cause and the origin of where the problem arises as well as the trade and the sale of the skin creams.”

Leslie Adogame, executive director of the Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Action, said that even in countries that have banned manufacture and trade, mercury-added cosmetics are still available. “Since most come from outside the country, more must be done globally to curtail sales and use.”