Controversy and Negative Health Effects
There is evidence to suggest that some types of skin-whitening products use active ingredients (such as mercurous chloride) and hydroquinone which can be harmful. Hydroquinone has now been banned in Europe and in many other countries can only be prescribed by a doctor for certain skin conditions.
A test of common skin lightening creams available in Nigeria showed that they caused mutations in bacteria and were possibly carcinogenic.
There is a growing market in skin lightening products that are toxic-free. However, they are more costly due to their expensive ingredients. Japan and the Pacific are big markets for high quality skin lightening products imported from Europe. In India and Pakistan, Fair and Lovely by Unilever remains a popular brand despite the company being forced by the Indians to withdraw television advertisements for the product in 2007 .
Read more about this topic: Skin Whitening
Famous quotes containing the words controversy, negative, health and/or effects:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)
“The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)