Earlier this week I wrote on Instagram about mercury in skin lightening creams and my DM blew up with responses—people sent in random creams without ingredient lists asking if they could use them.

Not if they should stop them :

It led me to think: why do people still reach for products like these, even when the harm is known?

The straightforward answer is that people want lighter skin.

The more honest answer is that none of this is new.

This is not a modern habit, and as much as we blame Indian society and un'fair' marketing, this did not begin in India.

Long before fairness creams existed, women in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome were already lightening their skin, as were people in ancient China.

Different cultures, separated by oceans and centuries, with no easy way to share what they knew, ended up doing the same thing for the same reason.

Pale skin meant you were someone who did not (need to) labour under the sun.

It became a shorthand for wealth, for rank, for a certain kind of protected life.

The ingredient that carried that promise, more often than not, was lead.

The most familiar face of this history belongs to Queen Elizabeth I.

After she survived smallpox in her late twenties, the illness left scarring across her skin, and she began to cover it with a preparation called Venetian ceruse, a mixture of white lead and vinegar that was considered the finest skin whitener money could buy.

It gave her the smooth, luminous pallor we still recognise in her portraits.

What it also did, slowly and out of sight, was poison her.

Lead absorbed through the skin damages it, and as the skin beneath deteriorated, the response was to apply another layer of ceruse to hide what the previous layer had caused.

Not just skin damage, this toxic make up led to chronic health issues, including hair loss and cognitive decline, causing her to avoid mirrors late in life.

Elizabeth was not unusual.

Across Renaissance Europe, lead, mercury and even arsenic were folded into the beauty routines of the wealthy.

The red she wore on her lips came from cinnabar, a mineral that carries mercury.

These ingredients promised beauty and status, and for a time they delivered the appearance of both.

What they left behind was hair loss, eroded skin, and eventually real illness.

And real illness is what we saw in the Nagpur news recently.

But today, in Indian dermatology clinics, we more commonly see trouble coming from another group of products; topical steroids, whose use for lightening and bleaching is more common than mercury.

We have a name in dermatology for what these products leave behind.

We call it topical steroid damaged, or dependent, face.

The skin thins.

Fine blood vessels surface as persistent redness.

Acne-like eruptions appear.

The skin turns reactive and raw in sunlight.

And it is almost an addiction.

When someone stops the steroid, the skin flares, reddens and itches, and using the cream again brings quick relief, so they use it again.

The relief is why it is so hard to stop, and the flare is why stopping feels impossible.

It is the same closed loop that held Elizabeth four centuries earlier, with a different molecule at its centre.

While this is the origin story of Redcovery serum, we are going with toxicology for the Word of the Week.

Because we do a lot of work on this at CHOSEN.

You know that CHOSEN has some of the most unique ingredients in our formulations, so I get asked this question a lot: How do you decide which ingredients become part of a CHOSEN formulation?

Here's the process.

Before formulation begins, we build an evidence dossier around every ingredient.

Efficacy is only one part of that review.

We look deeper.

Toxicology.

What is the long-term safety of this ingredient?

How does it behave in vulnerable populations?

• Pregnancy and nursing.
• Children.
• Sensitive skin.
• Environmental impact.
• Long-term exposure.
• Regulatory movements across different parts of the world.
• Clinical experience.

Toxicology is a powerful tool because it helps us decide what not to use in a formulation.

Some ingredients don't survive this meticulous process.

Over the years, we've built toxicology dossiers on thousands of ingredients as part of our ingredient explorations.

The ingredients that do survive this process become part of CHOSEN.

In fact, we've shared quite a bit of our toxicology work through the Ingredient Library on the CHOSEN Store.

Explore our Ingredient Library →

News

Community Meet

Last week, I mentioned that we were getting closer to announcing our community meet.

I'm delighted to share that the venue has now been finalised. It’s Bengaluru.

More details once we have visibility on the date. We'll be reaching out to our Bengaluru community members first as we have more details on the venue and date.

Light Routine Gentle

I also promised an update on Light Routine Gentle.

The new packaging is now entering its final phase of transit testing. To understand how it performs in the real world, we've sent it on some of our longest shipping routes, including international and difficult-to-reach destinations.

I'll share the results with you soon.

TOR Prime

And finally, TOR Prime.

After almost three years, it is finally returning.

As always, our community will receive first access, along with an exclusive launch offer.

Sharing more details about this in next week’s newsletter.

Until next time

Hyperpigmentation and Melasma Awareness Month is a good reminder that pigmentation isn't just about treating what we see today.

It is also about understanding how we got here.

(But... if only Queen Elizabeth had a good dermatologist 🙂)

Hope you enjoyed reading this.

Dr. Renita Rajan