Ann Eveleth
Hazardous skin-lightening creams banned seven years ago in South Africa are still widely available on the streets of Yeoville, Hillbrow and central Johannesburg.
South Africa restricted the sale of products containing the bleaching agent hydroquinone to pharmacies in 1992, 17 years after South African medical research determined that the chemical causes severe disfigurement and health hazards to users. Hydroquinone works by reducing the skin’s production of melanin, the body’s primary defence against the sun.
A joint investigation by the Mail & Guardian and The Observer of London last month revealed that hydroquinone products manufactured in Britain were pouring into African countries, often with higher quantities of the chemical than the 2% legally allowed in the European Union.
This week the M&G found several hydroquinone products from Britain, France and the United States on sale in the streets of Johannesburg, and lining a massive shelf in a major wholesale warehouse that supplies many informal traders.
The traders are often, but not exclusively, African immigrants who say they know nothing of the ban, and are merely selling what is widely available in their home countries. Some purchase their stocks from door-to-door vendors, but most buy the dangerous creams from large warehouses that supply such products in bulk.
A corner shelf in Yeoville’s African grocery store, La Corbeille, is devoted to the sale of three different hydroquinone products. Two – Black Star Formule Plus and MGC Extraclear – are produced by a Paris- based manufacturer, MGC International. The third, Clear Essence Skin Beautifying Milk, comes from Blue Fred Associates in the US.
Owners Francine and Andre Tangu say they didn’t know about the ban. “These are sold everywhere in my country [the Democratic Republic of Congo]. I also lived in the US some years ago and black Americans use the same thing,” says Francine Tangu.
Tangu says she knows that hydroquinone is “not good for you. I won’t use it, but lots of women like it because they want fair skin,” she adds.
A disturbing feature of the product is that the market depends on continuing racial prejudice, with research findings indicating that many black women consider their skin “inferior”. Many of the creams are marketed as “beauty cream”, “clarifying cream” or “complexion cream”, rather than as skin-lighteners.
Yet there appear to be no official measures in place to prevent these illegal creams from being imported and marketed. Vincent Cheg, a Cameroonian chemist selling vegetables in Yeoville, said the products are also outlawed in Cameroon, where police regularly confiscate such creams.
The Tangus said they bought their stocks from a door-to-door vendor, but added that they wouldn’t buy any more after they sold their last few bottles. “We paid a lot of money for them, so we have to sell what’s left.”
Much of the stock at the Boutique-Phyna cosmetics shop three doors down contains hydroquinone. In addition to a generous stock of the products sold at La Corbeille, this shop stocks several others, such as Clarissime Cosmetique Bodyclear complexion lotion and Bellaclear Bleaching Body Lotion, both French products. Most of the bottles do not say how much hydroquinone they contain.
But formal shops are not the only outlets flogging hydroquinone. At least two informal traders on Rockey Street specialise in skin-lighteners. One of these, Ghanaian Patricia Dangwa, says she has personally used the products every day for more than a year. “I know it is supposed to be bad, but I don’t know when it gets bad.”
The lack of public knowledge about the dangers of hydroquinone allows the market to continue unabated.
All the Yeoville vendors said their main supplier is Jumbo Cash & Carry near Mayfair. The wholesaler supplies goods to many of the city’s informal traders, and two-thirds of aisle 26 is stocked with a vast range of skin-lighteners, most of which contain hydroquinone.
Many of the creams, like the British products Jaribu, Mekako and Amira, boldly advertise their hydroquinone content on the package – as a selling point rather than a warning. But other creams, such as Shirley, known to contain hydroquinone, contain no product information on their packaging.
Both Jumbo cosmetics manager Enver Ali and director Steve Sita claimed ignorance of the ban.
“You mean I’m selling something like cocaine? But it’s advertised in the newspapers,” exclaimed Sita.
He said he would remove the products from his shelves, but did not know how he would recover the money he had invested in the remaining stock. Sita blamed the suppliers for failing to inform him of the ban, and pointed out that these products were sold by most wholesalers. He undertook to provide the names of his suppliers, but had not done so at the time of publication.
The Department of Health medicines control inspectorate, which is responsible for enforcing regulations adopted by the Medicines Control Council, had not responded to written questions about efforts to enforce or raise awareness of the ban on hydroquinone by the time of publication.