Stakeholders in Guyana’s multi-million dollar cosmetics industry may have noted the recent disclosure by the Ministry of Health’s Food and Drugs Department (FDD) regarding the presence in skin lighteners and other beauty products of potentially harmful levels of mercury, but are not prepared to go public on an issue which Head of the FDD Marilyn Collins says we have every reason to worry about.
The growth of the industry is driven by the growing preoccupation among Guyanese women with looking good. There is an extensive list of skin-lightening products which continue to be imported and sold openly on the local market and one of the busier high street retailers accepts that it is a matter of importers and distributors taking advantage