- Amazon has agreed to block sales of skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury.
- The agreement settles a decadelong lawsuit brought by the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow.
- Amazon must comply with California’s Proposition 65, which protects consumers from toxic products.
Amazon on Friday settled a decadelong legal battle by agreeing to block skin-lightening creams containing dangerous amounts of mercury from its website.
The settlement requires that Amazon pay a total of $6 million in civil penalties and legal fees. Amazon must also take specific measures to prevent brands and third-party sellers from offering FDA-banned creams — those containing more than .0065% mercury — on the site.
The settlement, which does not require that Amazon admit wrongdoing, ends a lawsuit originally brought in California by a group of anonymous plaintiffs and As You Sow, a nonprofit that works with corporations to promote environmental and social responsibility.
The lawsuit was later joined by the California attorney general’s office, which sued Amazon under the state’s Proposition 65 and its Unfair Competition Law. The AG’s office will receive $600,000 of the settlement money.
A spokesperson for Amazon said the company has worked in good faith with the AG’s office and is pleased to have the matter resolved.
The original 2014 lawsuit alleged that Amazon, at one point, had 27 products for sale containing high amounts of mercury, sometimes at tens of thousands of times the allowable levels. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can cause prenatal defects and life-threatening kidney, brain, and central nervous system damage.
Amazon knows which brands have already been flagged by regulators as violating FDA standards and California health and safety codes, and their internal filters are capable of flagging others, said Rachel S. Doughty, a plaintiff attorney for the original lawsuit.
Many of the dangerous skin products have easily targeted “red flags” in their listings, the plaintiffs had argued. Most were made in Mexico and Pakistan, for example. Products claiming to both whiten skin and treat acne were also red flags, because mercury is the only ingredient known to do both, they had argued.
“I have seen an improvement in their website in the ten years since we filed the first case,” Doughty told Business Insider. “And that means you will have a harder time finding well-known skin-whitening and lightening products on their website that have mercury in them.”
She said she hopes that the settlement will prompt Amazon to be vigilant in policing its site for other potentially toxic products.
“I hope that internally, they don’t want this to happen again, and that they are looking for other things that may have mercury, lead, cadmium, and a whole host of other chemicals,” she said.
Amazon said in an emailed statement that the company does not tolerate illegal or evasive behavior from the businesses that sell through its site.
“In this case, all products in question were evasively listed by bad actors and once identified, were removed,” the statement said.
“We have proactive measures in place to prevent prohibited products from being listed and we continuously monitor our store. If we discover a product was undetected by our automated checks, we address the issue immediately and refine our controls.”
