As countries try to rid themselves of toxic mercury pollution, some people are slathering and even injecting creams containing the metal onto or under their skin to lighten it, putting themselves and others at risk for serious health problems. To find those most at risk, scientists are reporting today that they can now identify these creams and intervene much faster than before. Authors of the research are speaking at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The meeting, organized by the world’s largest scientific society, features nearly 12,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics and is being held through Thursday. “In the U.S., the limit on mercury in products is 1 part per million,” says Gordon Vrdoljak, Ph.D., of the California Department of Public Health. “In some of these creams, we’ve been finding levels as high as 210,000 parts per million — really substantial amounts of mercury. If people are using the product quite regularly, their hands will exude it, it will get in their food, on their countertops, on the sheets their kids sleep on.” Identifying the toxic products has been a slow process, however. So, Vrdoljak turned to an instrument that uses a
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