Woman Ends Up In Coma After Using Skin-Lightening Cream Laced With Poison

A woman is now in a coma after she used a skin-lightening product. Unbeknownst to her, the cream was laced with a highly toxic compound that rendered her ill after using.

A 47-year-old lady from Sacramento, California, ended up in a coma after she made use of a beauty product. The woman, as per South China Morning Post, had been buying face cream for 12 years from a friend of her friend.

However, the latest cream that she ended up with was laced with a toxic skin-lightening compound. There was someone from the Mexican state of Jalisco who had somehow altered the composition of the product through the lightening compound.

According to SCMP’s report, the unnamed woman bought Pond’s Rejuveness from the same person whom she had been buying face cream from for the past 12 years. She had no idea that the product was laced with a toxic compound.

The woman was in the hospital’s emergency room for the summer. She exhibited slurring of speech, numbness in hands and feet, and even her face, and she was also unable to walk.

Authorities pointed to methylmercury as the culprit behind her condition. It was a case of methylmercury poisoning, the first recorded from a beauty product in the United States.

According to the report, the product that got the victim ill was tampered with. The incident occurred after it was already manufactured. The effects of the poisoning include lack of coordination, loss of peripheral vision, and kidney damage.

Bhavna Shamasunder, Occidental College professor in Los Angeles, said that there are beauty products that contain mercury, especially those that are made to remove skin pigmentation. But then, the effect of this element is toxic.

In a statement, Pond’s reiterated that it was not using mercury in any of its products. It also vowed to investigate the case of the Sacramento woman.

The recent case of methylmercury poisoning is not the first one in the United States. More than 60 poisonings in California have been linked to unlabeled or home-made skin creams. This was the stats in the past nine years.

Although it has been declared illegal in the US to sell cosmetics that contain one part per million of mercury, except eye products, the Food and Drug Administration had a hard time keeping up with the importation in whatever form.

Accordingly, products made outside the US are not subjected to the same strict standards as those that are made within the US. With the popularity of skin-lightening products all over the world, it can become quite challenging to monitor the production of all these products.