Toxic Trade: Online Retailers Are Selling Mercury-Filled Skin Lighteners

UPDATE ON CAMPAIGN (11/22/2019):  A temporary victory, the fight continues.

Yesterday, Amazon removed the illegal mercury-filled skin-lightening products from its website in response to the US testing data and our campaign's pressure. The Sierra Club and the Beautywell Project caution that the company must enact permanent mechanisms to ensure that the products remain offline. eBay and other global retailers have yet to take action. More updates to come!

Toxic Trade: Online Retailers Are Selling Mercury-Filled Skin Lighteners (11/19/2019)

The massive growth of online retail is creating a challenge for governments attempting to keep dangerous and illegal products from being imported and sold. A recent exposé by The Wall Street Journal found that Amazon—the largest online retailer in the world—is selling more than 4,000 products that are either deceptively labeled, declared unsafe, or banned by federal law.

Among the less well-known—but alarmingly dangerous—products are mercury-based skin-lightening creams. The products are commonly used by women of color who’ve immigrated to the United States from Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East. While progressive cities like New York, and states like Minnesota and California, have taken action to end store sales of these illegal imports, many online retailers still sell them to unsuspecting customers.

The Sierra Club’s Gender, Equity & Environment campaign joined The Beautywell Project and the Zero Mercury Working Group to test a number of these products purchased online in 2018 and 2019. Our new tests confirmed that Amazon and eBay are still selling several of these toxic skin lighteners in the US. We purchased 24 creams and found seven products for sale on eBay and eight on Amazon in the United States that clearly violate the legal limit of one part per million of mercury. 

This year’s testing focused on brands with a global reach— ones that governments across the world listed as containing high mercury levels.

At the same time we tested those 24 products, our international partners at the Zero Mercury Working Group investigated the global supply chain by purchasing 135 additional skin-lightening products in ten countries and the European Union. In total, 80 of the products they purchased online contained high mercury levels. The international testing told us that mercury-filled brands are widely available in different regions of the world. It also confirms that online sales are a main vehicle for distribution.

2019 product testing results:

These harmful skin lighteners are marketed to women of color based on racist beauty norms. The pervasive and discriminatory preference for lighter skin means that people feel pressure to use these harmful products. 

While mercury is one of only 11 ingredients that the FDA declared illegal in body-care products, it still is finding its way into American homes. Too often, when the women who use these products visit their doctor, they are found to have clinical signs of mercury poisoning associated with the use of these creams.

We must ensure that people are not sold deceptively labeled products that can literally poison them. 

In 2018, a group of 51 national and international advocacy groups called for Amazon and eBay to stop selling these harmful products. In some countries, there has been notable progress. In Europe, Amazon, eBay, and other massive online retailers have pledged to take 12 important steps to keep these types of toxic and illegal products out of their inventories. 

Today, the Beautywell Project and the Sierra Club are delivering a petition from 23,000 supporters calling on Amazon and eBay to protect their customers by immediately implementing similar protocols.

These must include:

• Consulting government safety lists to address illegally-imported products.

• Developing an internal process for taking down dangerous products from the websites.

• Reacting quickly when the government identifies and flags unsafe products for sale.

• Proactively removing banned product groups from their sites.

And at the community level, public education about the danger of these products is critical. Our partners at The Beautywell Project are leading important, peer-centered conversations within communities that use skin-lightening products—focused on addressing and advocating against the discriminatory practice of colorism, which underlies skin-lightening sales. 

Fighting this toxic, discriminatory reality will require a system change—one that is centered on true health and wellness, not on antiquated and racist beauty norms.