By Caitlin Spillane

This afternoon a few of us had the privilege of attending a panel discussing the issues of mercury in the cosmetics industry. The panelists were directors and coordinators within various countries and organizations who were led by a CNN journalist. It was very eye-opening to hear accounts from so many nations on how cosmetics with mercury disproportionately affects black women compared to the rest of the world. One of the first speakers was a woman named Kheris, an influencer with the brand of “Flexin In My Complexion”, brought to my attention the reason mercury cosmetics are so popular. It causes the skin to lighten, which causes much of the demand for the product due to societal pressures and conformity. For some countries, despite banning the import of these cosmetics, there is still such a high demand that people will pay increased amounts of money to attain them. These speakers concentrated on the importance of spreading awareness for the health and environmental concerns mercury causes and giving clear and concise communication to the consumers of these products. Amira, the Executive Director of Beauty Well, spoke on how there is no safe skin whitening product and that all of them should be eliminated. Even if mercury is not in the cosmetic, it would just be replaced with another toxic chemical.

Once this panel concluded, the afternoon plenary session, and our first of the day, began. It started with the item that I found most intriguing: “mercury waste: consideration of the relevant thresholds”. This was another attempt to establish a threshold for the allowable levels for mining waste, and this convention has tried to implement a uniform level since essentially COP-1. A co-chair of technical experts was discussing reasonable levels for the past year, even having an in-person meeting this past February due to funding from Japan. From this experience, they agreed on three potential thresholds: 10, 15, or 25 milligrams per kilogram, and these were the levels discussed. Unfortunately, the opinions on these numbers were very split between different countries, with the African regional group, USA, and Switzerland saying 10 milligrams per kilogram, and Norway, Pakistan, Thailand, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Mexico leaning towards 25. China and Iraq also had the opinion that every country should have thresholds that correspond to the circumstances of its people instead of following a national one. Since an agreement was not reached, a Contact Group was made. This means a separate discussion needed to occur to solidify a decision, which happened directly after the plenary session. It was led by USA and Pakistan, and while I was not able to watch the entire Contact Group, it was interesting to see how the process worked in the first hour. They essentially go through the document line by line and try to come to an agreement on each individual part. I was surprised that this topic is still being heavily debated since many emissions still come from the gold mining industry and I was under the impression that it would have been the first one globally regulated. However, as I was able to see today, a few countries still have very strong opinions on who should be allowed to regulate each countries emissions, and refuse to budge in their beliefs.

Since today was Halloween, my favorite part of the plenary was when the representative of Chile wished the entire delegation a “Happy Halloween” once he finished his Intervention. This led to Canada going from country to country passing around a bowl of candy to the nations in its vicinity. The reason I enjoyed this so much was because all these countries had different views on the topics being discussed, but the delegates of each of them were able to come together and enjoy the candy with no hard feelings!