Mercury

Mercury is a toxic metal and can cause serious health effects including kidney damage, anxiety depression and peripheral neuropathy. Beside the traditional sources of mercury such as industry mining, new sources of mercury exposure came to existence through cosmetics such as soaps, skin and whitening creams. In this study, eight samples of different brands of skin whitening creams were analyzed by Direct Mercury Analyzer (DMA) for the determination of mercury content. Quantification of mercury levels in these products was achieved by using external standard calibration curve method. The mercury levels in the studied skin whitening creams ranged from 0.00 ppm to maximum of 3.373ppm. The results showed that skin whitening creams have mercury level at detectable levels and is enough to cause adverse health effects. The study concluded that the Direct Mercury Analyzer (DMA) instrument proved to be an excellent tool for screening mercury in skin creams. This technique offers the advantages of simplicity, rapidity, low detection limit, accuracy and precision and no sample preparation.