Mother loses peripheral vision from apparent exposure to mercury in beauty creams.
| CNN Health | Meera Senthilingam, CNN | November 29, 2022 |
Editor’s note: This story is part of 'White lies', a series by CNN's As Equals, investigating skin whitening practices worldwide to expose the underlying drivers of colorism, the industry that profits from it and the cost to individuals and communities.
At high levels, the inorganic mercury ("elemental mercury") typically found in these products is extremely toxic. Chronic exposure can lead to kidney and liver damage, as well as neurological damage including personality changes, anxiety, depression, early childhood development issues and, as seemingly shown in this case, vision loss.
It’s everywhere: in the rain, snow, our food, our waters, even in the human placenta! Mercury is poisoning life on Earth.
Did you know an estimated 18 million impoverished Artisanal and small-scale gold miners (ASGM) all largely suffering from undiagnosed mercury poisoning including 4.5 million women and 600,000 Children under the age of 15 use mercury, a deadly neurotoxin, to produce 20% of the world's supply of gold used in our jewellery, iPad’s, iPhone, computers, and other electronics devices?
Artisanal gold ore processing releases to the atmosphere and discharges to the waters thousands of tonnes of mercury annually is the world's largest anthropogenic (man-caused) source of deadly atmospheric global mercury pollution overtaking coal fired plants mercury emissions in 2017. Atmospheric mercury pollution is documented by Oxford University earth scientists in 2021 to stay airborne up to one year. Mercury then precipitates back to Earth in the form of rain and snow.
But finally there's hope!
An "innovation provider with a scalable ESG-driven climate action initiative designed to eliminate mercury used by artisanal ore processors and to safely recover more gold sustainably”
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