NY bans cosmetics with deadly mercury amid health concerns

New York is banning cosmetic products containing mercury, becoming the third state to do so.

The new law, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in December, will go into effect June 1 and will ban the sale of any beauty merchandise that contains the potentially dangerous neurotoxin.

Mercury has been linked to a number of debilitating and damaging health effects, ranging from irritability and depression to tremors, sensory changes and numbness in the hands, feet or face.

“Higher exposures may also cause kidney effects, respiratory failure and death,” according to the EPA.

The chemical is typically found in cosmetics that are produced outside the US and then sold in the country illegally — namely in products that promote “anti-aging” or “skin-lightening” properties. Mercury acts as a bleaching agent in some creams, Allure reported.

“There’s a really strong link between racism and the use of cosmetics, particularly skin-lightening creams,” Sonal Jessel, the director of policy for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told Gothamist.

Mercury-containing products, while illegal in the US, can be purchased online via social media or apps — and, in particular, target people with darker complexions.

Known by the various monikers “mercurous chloride,” “calomel,” “mercuric” and “mercurio,” mercury doesn’t just harm the user — it can even affect his or her household. According to the Food and Drug Administration, a user’s family can be exposed to the toxic chemical through vapors in the air or by sharing contaminated towels.

City health officials have sounded alarm bells before for creams and soaps that contain the chemical. At the time, officials scoured store shelves, swiping the potentially harmful products out of consumers’ grasps — but now the state is cracking down even more.

The new law comes just one month after a Minnesota woman lost partial vision due to mercury poisoning from a beauty cream. Upon testing her blood and urine, clinicians determined the chemical was causing the publicly unnamed woman’s severe symptoms.

When the Poison Control team first visited the woman’s home, she showed the Poison Control team skin whitening creams from outside the country, vowing she did not use it anymore. In two of the products, CNN reports, the agency discovered mercury levels “several thousand times higher” than what is permitted.

A second visit revealed the woman had previously purchased additional products — in these cases not skin whiteners — that contained mercury, the presence of which was not indicated on the products’ labels.

“People have no idea,” Dr. Erin Batdorff, who works with Minnesota Poison Control, told CNN. “No one intentionally wants to hurt themselves or their family members. But it’s out there and you can’t see it, you can’t smell it. There’s no way [for consumers] to know whether [mercury] is in the creams or not because it’s not on the labels.”

Since the FDA doesn’t require beauty brands to list every ingredient in their products, it’s impossible to know what exactly is going on with users’ skin — and ingredient testing for every product entering the country is an unfathomable task.

“There’s not the capacity to test every single product that finds its way to the US,” Tasha Stoiber, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, told Gothamist.

As of 2023, there are only 11 ingredients prohibited by the FDA in beauty products, but a late 2022 law, dubbed the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act, is intended to change that.

After more than 8 decades of static beauty laws, the new act requires cosmetic manufacturers to report ingredients to the FDA, along with reports of “serious adverse events” and ingredient safety. Under the new law, the FDA also reserves the right to conduct mandatory recalls of products if it deems them unsafe.