Some Skin Lightening Products Contain Mercury
In testing conducted by the Minnesota Department of Health, certain skin lightening creams for women exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s limit of no more than one part per million (ppm) of mercury in cosmetic products. “Exposure to mercury can have serious health consequences,” said Charles Lee, M.D., a senior medical advisor at the FDA, concerning mercury in cosmetics. “It can damage the kidneys and the nervous system, and interfere with the development of the brain in unborn children and very young children.” So seriously everyone, stop lightening your skin with dangerous products.
According to the FDA’s page about cosmetics that have mercury in them, signs and symptoms of early mercury poisoning include:
- irritability
- shyness
- tremors
- changes in vision or hearing
- memory problems
- depression
- numbness and tingling in hands, feet or around mouth
Not Safe for Your Skin, but A-OK for Your Mouth and Muscles
The Thimerosol concentration in some flu vaccines is .o1% so, 1 part per 10,000. Thimerosol is about 49 % mercury, so that would mercury in vaccines is about mean 50 ppm. An amalgam filling is an alloy made of 50 percent mercury which I guess you could say would be 500,000 ppm. Please remember that according to the FDA, thimerosol containing vaccines and amalgam fillings are perfectly safe. I don’t know exactly how that works, since with vaccines, we are actually injecting mercury at 50 ppm into our bodies and with mercury fillings, we are putting it in our mouths at a rate of 500,000 ppm and both 50 ppm and 500,000 ppm seems to me to be higher than the 1 ppm used in cosmetics. It must just be that cosmetics are used daily. Of course… so is a dental filling. Hmmm…. At any rate, who am I to question the FDA?
Maybe since mercury that enters the body just kind of stays in our fatty tissue, the amalgam fillings and the vaccines, which are deemed medically necessary are taken into consideration as a base level and the small amounts of mercury in these cosmetics would just throw our bodies’ total mercury load into a dangerous level. Maybe that’s all being taken into consideration, right? At any rate, seriously, why bother using skin lightening products?
Embracing Real Beauty
I get that some women want to alter their skin with fake products like skin lighteners or fake tanners, but it always seems like in the end, simply embracing our individual beauty ends up being safest. For really gorgeous skin, Everything Birth carries two wonderful products that are both completely void of any kind of toxin at all. Garden Dreams Clay Face Mask can help pull toxins out of the skin, eliminate acne, and tone your skin. (I love this clay face mask so much, I even wrote a post all about it recently.) Another awesome product for your skin that Everything Birth carries is the Garden Dreams Beautiful Skin Face Cream. This natural skin cream is wonderful. It tones and brightens your natural complexion, helping your skin look great even without any make-up at all.