By UN Environment
In July, a 47-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of her local hospital in Sacramento, California. Her speech was slurred, she couldn’t walk, and she was unable to feel her hands or face. The woman soon fell into a coma, where she remained for several weeks.
The cause of the woman’s desperate condition, health officials soon discovered, was a skin-lightening ingredient—mercury—that had been illegally mixed into her pot of face cream.
“Mercury poisoning has dangerous and sometimes irreversible effects, and while unborn babies are most vulnerable, anyone can suffer,” said Claudia ten Have, Senior Policy Coordination Officer at the Minamata Convention Secretariat. As the case of the Sacramento woman makes clear, the toxic heavy metal can pose serious health threats in developing as well as developed countries.
