Darker Side of Skin Care Products!

Darker Side of Skin Care Products!

 By Dr Guru prasad Mohanta

“The recent compensation of USD 72 million granted by an US Court to the family of an Alabama woman (USA) who died from ovarian cancer which was linked to well-known baby powder and other products containing talcum” raises serious concern about the safety aspects of cosmetics. She was reported to have used iconic talcum powder as a bathroom staple for decades which caused the cancer, her cause of death.

Indian market is flooded with many skin care or cosmetic products of doubtful efficacy and do have potential to cause damaging effect to health. Here is a case of fairness cream, a cocktail mixture, for the men who are in pursuit of fair skin. Flucinolone is a steroid used to treat the itching, redness, dryness, crusting, scaling, inflammation, and discomfort of various skin conditions; Hydroquinone is a skin bleaching agent; and Tretinoin is a form of Vitamin A helps skin to renew quickly.  This is a steroid based cream and un-necessary and prolong use can cause serious adverse effects. “Facial erythema with skin irritation, aggravation of acne, and steroid addiction” are the main adverse effects reported by many studies. The dermatologists cautioned against the unsupervised use of these creams.

Hydroquinone lightens the areas of darken skin by decreasing the production and increasing the breakdown of melanin in skin. Melanin is responsible for skin pigmentation. It requires at least a month or so to see the effects of topical hydroquinone in lightening the skin. Though topical use of hydroquinone is often well tolerated, some users may experience minor and temporary skin irritations like mild itching and reddening of the skin. Tretinoin is indicated for the treatment of acne. It controls but not cures. It takes about two to three weeks to see a visible change of improvement. However, it may also cause warmth or slight stinging of the skin, scaling of skin, increase in acne sores, blistering or crusting of the skin.  

Another startling finding is the presence of heavy metals in fairness creams. The Centre for Science and Environment, a not for profit organization, recently tested the marketed cosmetics and revealed the presence of mercury in 44 % of fairness creams.  Other cosmetics are no less hazardous. The presence of chromium in 50 % and nickel in 43 % of lipstick samples are also detected.  The present revelation showed that 14 of the 32 tested fairness has the presence of mercury from 0.10 parts per million (ppm) to 1.97 ppm. 15 out of 30 tested lipsticks showed the presence of 0.45 ppm to 17.83 ppm of chromium and 13 out of 30 lipstick products found to have nickel in the range of 0.57 to 9.18 ppm. The content of heavy metals in these cosmetic products are much higher than the permissible limits.

            Mercury in any form is highly toxic and potentially dangerous for pregnant woman, foetus and child. Exposure to mercury, even in fairly small amounts, may cause serious health issues. Mercury may have toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune system, and on lungs, kidneys and eyes.  Mercury released to environment is eaten by fishes. The individuals eating such fishes expose themselves to mercurial toxicities. Realising the toxicity of mercury based products and their environmental impact, worldwide it has been advocated to discontinue the use of mercury based health products. The steps are initiated by various authorities even to replace the mercury based clinical thermometers with digital ones. One can just imagine the health impact of use of such fairness products. The other two heavy metals found in lip sticks are equally hazardous too. Chromium is known to be carcinogenic and the acute ingestion of nickel is known to cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and headache.  Nickel too is a known carcinogenic and can cause several harmful effects even deaths. The lipsticks are invariably gets ingested by users. The baby shampoo was also known to contain harmful ingredients.

Someone once said “We make cosmetics in our factory but we sell hopes in the store”. The industry should be conscious enough to selling hopes but not harming the users.