Toxic Cosmetics

10 Quezon City stores called out for selling cosmetics with mercury https://t.co/LYgJSE9RIF

— Inquirer (@inquirerdotnet) January 22, 2024

article here:

“Much to our disappointment, we found at least 10 stores still selling mercury-contaminated facial and underarm whitening creams from Pakistan and Thailand. This is despite the recent store inspections conducted by the QCHD in response to the complaints we lodged against the errant sellers,” it added. 

medical article about the problem of toxic mercury in skin whiteners.

 here in Asia, skin whitening cosmetics are used a lot.

 Heck, even the deodorant has skin whiteners in it (is this for acanthosis nigricans or is it just a normal problem with pigmentation)?

this article from a cosmetic site says it is similar to the darkening on the face during pregnancy, or maybe from irritation or maybe from using deodorants, and talks about expensive treatments for it....a lot of articles blame deodorants... 

but that sounds crazy because I never ran into this in the USA.

or rather I did run into it: We saw a lot of acanthosis nigricans in our Native American population, which is thickened and dark skin on the neck or other regions, including the armpit...and we viewed it as a marker for metabolic syndrome which predisposes this population for diabetes.

So is the darkening armpits that lead to whitening agents in deodorant due to the fact that people are now getting fatter so we see this appearing? or is it from hormonal changes that darken the skin e.g. chloasma...

This is an article on all sorts of armpit rashes if you want to worry about it.

But there are numerous reports of mercury in skin whitening products: And a lot of worry because mercury is a very nasty chemical. And when women use it, there is the additional worry about it being absorbed into her blood and poisoning the growing baby.

UKGuardian article about this.

however, a lot of western reporters simply point to evil white people for the fact that Asians use skin whiteners to look "white"...(I think it has to do with the fact that poor people work outside in the sun and rich people stay inside so have white skin)...

 but if a lot of these products are in your deodorant, then I guess you can't blame racism for this.