Makeup and Mercury

 

        Allow me to paint a familiar picture: You’re having a debate with your friend, maybe your parents, maybe an annoying younger sibling. Anyway, you make some kind of factual claim, a perfectly logical statement that makes perfect sense to you, but seems obviously wrong to the other person. Regardless of what you two were arguing about, now the debate has shifted to the Verity (see what I did there?) of whatever you just said. After a while of back and forth combined with an argument going slower than molasses dripping uphill, one of you decides to bring out the ultimate weapon in any argument: Google. Your debate partner furiously whips out their mobile phone and searches up the question, and only a few short seconds later, they present to you the truth that the argument you had so much logical faith in… was blatantly wrong. In utter disbelief, you also Google the question, and the universe reaffirms to you that despite your greatest intellectual efforts, you were just flat-out wrong. Embarrassingly so.

        So what does any of this have to do with element 80, Mercury? …Or makeup for that matter? Well, in Victorian England, the highly toxic Mercury was a common ingredient in cosmetics, famous for its ability to restore lost eyelashes and eliminate skin blemishes. Despite Mercury’s toxic properties, many doctors and professionals of the age were absolutely certain that Mercury was perfectly safe and naturally conducive to a healthier skin tone and more beautiful appearance, and just like our example earlier, were exactly incorrect. Welp, you know what they say, Mercury dichloride (HgCl2) always kills skin blemishes, if it doesn’t kill you first.

        The problem is worsened by the reality that Mercury poisoning is one of the more brutal forms of metal poisoning, given that Mercury poisoning subjects the unfortunate victims to brutal symptoms such as desquamation (peeling skin), constant sweating, hypertension, formication (a sensation resembling insects crawling on/under the skin), and many more. Before the modern era, the primary method of mercury exposure was through either cosmetics or medicines – particularly calomel, Hg2Cl2 (which is an incredibly dangerous toxin, if I may add) – that contained mercury. Today, the most common way non-chemists are exposed to mercury is through their diets, particularly, through mercury containing species like some swordfish.

        Mercury can also form a large number of highly toxic chemical compounds, the most famous of which being dimethyl mercury, (CH3)2Hg, an organomercury compound famous for its effectiveness as a neurotoxin, even under minimal exposure. Dimethyl mercury is a colorless, highly dense, volatile liquid that can oxidize spontaneously upon exposure to the air. It can become an airborne fume as easily as it can penetrate latex gloves.

        In fact, the reason dimethyl mercury is so dangerous is because once it has penetrated one’s bloodstream, it can metabolize into methyl mercury, CH3Hg. Methyl mercury can mess with your nervous system worse than your little cousin messing your borrowed phone by entering brain cells and inhibiting enzyme function, causing widespread cell death in the nervous system.

        Really, I could go on and on for days on end talking about why mercury is so dangerous. But that really just highlights the irony of those Victorian cosmetologists and chemists’ confidence in mercury’s safety. So to you reader, take this as a reminder that you could always be wrong, so never forget to be humble and thus, wise.

• Opeyemi J., 11th Grade