The Hidden Costs of Skin Lightening Products

If it's beautiful to be white, as so many marketers will tell you, it can also be extremely dangerous, too.

Throughout much of the developing world and the U.S., beauty salons and corner markets offer products like Skinlite and Vite-Fée ("fast fairy") — creams designed to make a person’s skin lighter. As Anna Hirsch writes over on Change.org's Race in America blog, there are a plethora of psychological risks involved in how these products’ perpetuate destructive and westernized standards of beauty.

But the medical risks are significant as well, because over-the-counter products are poorly regulated in the U.S. — and totally unregulated in most other countries.

A study reported by the Chicago Tribune, for example, found that five out of 50 types of skin lightening creams in the U.S. alone contained enough mercury to cause kidney damage over time, despite an FDA ban on mercury in such products. Additionally, a U.K. study found that many of these creams contain fairly high doses of steroids, which can lead to thinning and irritation of the skin. Especially in the developing world, this kind of irritation can make people susceptible to infection. Lastly, many contain hydroquinone, another agent that's banned in over-the-counter products in the U.S. for posing a risk of cancer. 

Because the risks associated with skin-lightening product use are long-term, and there's no decent data or research on such products, unfortunately, it's practically impossible to understand all the health effects. But what we've already seen is alarming enough.

In addition to these products' psychological and physical toll, they also heavily burden some families. Skin lightening creams — most of which require daily application — divert funding away from more useful or needed items. In India alone, the skin lightening industry is estimated to be worth a half billion dollars, and nearly $7 billion in China.

Of course, that's not to say that the poor don't have a right to invest in their appearance, and the confidence most people gain from making cosmetic changes can be valuable in its own right. But too often, consumers don't know what they're signing up for — and too often, they're signing up for physical risks that can deepen into serious health damage over the years.

Photo Credit: NickGrayWFU