Mercury was banned in cosmetics and soaps by a recently signed global treaty at the Minamata Convention. But mascara and other eye makeup were exempted.
Mercury is used in trace amounts in eye makeup as a preservative. The treaty exempts eye area cosmetics from the list because “no effective, safe substitute alternatives are available,” according to the signed treaty.
The Minamata Convention for Mercury is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury and is designed to limit mercury use and emissions internationally. The treaty was agreed to on Oct. 10 after four years of negotiations and was signed by delegates of about 140 nations.
The United Nations Environment Programme says the intent of the ban is to eliminate cosmetics like skin-lightening cream and others that contain large concentrations of mercury and have been shown to cause kidney damage in women.
Joanna Tempowski, a scientist for the World Health Organization’s International Program on Chemical Safety told Environmental Health News that mercury is added to prevent the growth of bacteria and fungi that could infect and damage the eye, noting that “the risk-benefit analysis favors the use of these preservatives.”
The Food and Drug Administration allows mercury in eye cosmetics at concentrations of up to 65 parts per million.
Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Database provides practical solutions for people to protect themselves and their family from everyday exposures to chemicals. Environmental Working Group launched Skin Deep in 2004 to create online safety profiles for cosmetics and personal care products on more than 78,000 items.
Mascara brands without mercury sometimes use other harmful preservatives, such as formaldehyde (a carcinogenic) or parabens (which may be linked to hormone disruption), according to the database.
Want to find some chemical- and cruelty-free mascaras? Here's a list complied by One Green Planet:
1. Beauty Without Cruelty
A full-volume mascara that helps to define and separate each individual lash, it is long-lasting and smudge-resistant.
2. Ecco Bella
This mascara is gentle and water-resistant (but not waterproof) and perfect for sensitive eyes. In addition it is easy to remove and comes with its own mirror.
3. e.l.f.
4. Emani Minerals
A natural soy-based mascara, it nourishes, repairs and strengthens lashes. It is especially long-lasting and smudge-resistant, and is easy to remove.
5. Gabriel Cosmetics
This mascara is gentle and non-irritating, enriched with herbal extracts and minerals to help protect eyelashes. It is all-natural and is suitable for use by contact lens wearers and those with sensitive eyes.
6. Honeybee Gardens
This botanically-enriched mascara is long-lasting, providing all-day colour without clumping, flakingor smudging. In addition it is water-resistant, but not waterproof.
7. Lavera
A lengthening and volumizing mascara, this helps to nourish eyelashes with extracts of organic jojoba and wild rose oils. It offers long-lasting colour and volume, without flaking or smudging.
8. Larenim
This mascara contains jojoba oil, minerals and vitamin E to enhance lash growth. It defines and separates each lash, and is perfect for those with sensitive eyes.
9. Organic Wear
Helping to create dramatic, full and thick lashes this mascara is 100 percent natural. It doesn’t clump, flake or smudge and is long-lasting, coating lashes without breaking or drying them out.
10. 100% Pure
An excellent 100 percent natural mascara that lengthens, separates and thickens lashes with fruit and tea pigments. Suitable for those who wear contact lenses or have sensitive eyes, it is also smudge- and water-resistant.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.