Behind the shimmer, the toxic story of mica and forever chemicals [Commentary]

In a world saturated with digitally altered images, the pressure to conform to manufactured standards of beauty is relentless. The pursuit of beauty has arguably evolved from a personal choice into a pervasive social and economic imperative.

The global beauty industry, projected to generate nearly $140 billion by 2030, thrives on this imperative, marketing not just products, but an ideal. Yet, behind the glossy packaging lies a profound and little-examined ecological and human cost. A critical examination of the lengthy, often incomprehensible ingredient lists on our cosmetic products reveals a story that is far from beautiful – both in what is listed and in what is not.

The unglamorous story of mica

Mica, a chemically stable, heat-resistant silicate mineral, is the ingredient that gives shimmer to eyeshadows, lipsticks, and foundations. India is one of the world’s largest producers, with a significant portion of its mining concentrated in the forested regions of Jharkhand and Bihar. A substantial portion of India’s mica production is sourced from illegal mines.

The human cost is severe. In these unregulated ‘rat-hole’ mines, workers, including young children, scavenge for mica without protective gear, exposed to dust that can lead to severe lung diseases. Despite mica extraction being banned since 1980, illegal mining persists to this day.

In response to mounting scrutiny, the cosmetics industry has attempted reform. The Responsible Mica Initiative (RMI), a coalition of companies and NGOs, was formed in 2017 with the goal of eradicating child labour from the Indian mica supply chain by 2022. However, RMI’s most recent annual report estimates that about 10% of India’s mica mining workforce still comprises children as of 2024, and the goal of child labour eradication has been delayed to 2030.

Few companies, such as L’Oréal and Estée Lauder, claim to adhere to ethical sourcing practices that respect labour rights, and others, like Lush, have shifted to synthetic mica. However, these partial solutions fall short. Synthetic mica has its own ecological footprint, requiring an energy-intensive manufacturing process. As numerous investigations have concluded, the core problem remains: a supply chain where the intense pressure for low-cost raw materials continues to overshadow human dignity and environmental integrity.

The unlabelled threat of ‘forever chemicals’

While mica is usually listed upfront on product labels, a more insidious threat emerges from what is not.

This threat comes from a vast family of over 14,000 synthetic chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS – often called ‘forever chemicals.’ Prized for their extraordinary stability, these chemicals have been used in cosmetics to create products that are waterproof, long-lasting, and smudge-proof. Their defining chemical feature is an exceptionally strong carbon-fluorine bond, which makes them nearly impossible to break down naturally; therefore, they continue to accumulate in the environment and in living organisms.

Different types of PFAS carry different toxicities. Large-molecule fluoropolymers, such as Teflon, are generally considered inert as they pass through the body without significant absorption. However, smaller-molecule PFAS such as perfluoroalkyl acids can enter the bloodstream and accumulate in the body.

A growing body of scientific evidence links this accumulation to a range of serious health problems, including elevated cholesterol, suppressed immune response, and certain types of cancer.

Exposure to PFAS is associated with negative health outcomes during pregnancy, such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, which is a pregnancy complication characterised by high blood pressure and damage to organs, such as the kidneys and liver. Critically, PFAS can disrupt the placenta’s function, which is critical for the foetus’ health and survival. It also interferes with the hormones essential for pregnancy, increasing inflammation and oxidative stress in the body. It can subsequently lead to low birth weight, affect brain development and immune function, and increase the risk of metabolic disorders, obesity, and learning problems later in life.

Despite these documented risks, the use of PFAS in cosmetics remains largely undisclosed. A landmark 2021 study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, tested 231 cosmetic products from the U.S. and Canada and found high fluorine levels, an indicator of PFAS, in over half of them. Of the samples tested, 82% of waterproof mascara, 63% of foundations, and 62% of liquid lipsticks contained measurable PFAS levels. Critically, in nearly all cases, these chemicals were not listed on the product labels.

This discrepancy has triggered legal challenges. In the United States, a class-action lawsuit was filed against L’Oréal in 2022, alleging that its waterproof mascara products contain PFAS without disclosure. Prior to the lawsuit, in 2018, L’Oréal announced that it had begun gradually eliminating all PFAS from its products, with a commitment to achieve 100% elimination by the end of 2024. However, no updates have been released since.

To understand the potential relevance for Indian consumers, the authors, as part of the research for this commentary, analysed the availability of the products alleged to contain significant levels of PFAS, as stated in the lawsuit. The independent analysis found that at least 26 out of these 41 products, that allegedly contain high PFAS, are currently sold in India. This raises urgent concerns for Indian consumers, especially teenagers and pregnant women, even though – to be clear – the presence of PFAS in the products sold in India has not been established through independent scientific testing.

Adding to this concern is the regulatory landscape in India. To our knowledge, there are no specific, overarching regulations that prohibit the use of the broad class of PFAS chemicals in cosmetic products sold in the country.

As part of the analysis for this piece, the authors reached out to 39 beauty brands and retail platforms in India, including the most prominent players such as L’Oréal, Lakme (Hindustan Unilever), Estee Lauder, Nykaa, and Tira, inquiring about their actions to mitigate mica use and PFAS contamination. We received a substantive response from only one brand, Stila Cosmetics, which stated that it follows a ‘Supplier Code of Conduct’ for mica, and that its products are FDA-compliant regarding PFAS. We received only an auto-response from seven other brands and one retail platform, and no response from the remaining 30.

The global context and a moral imperative

Not every smoker develops lung cancer, but smoking unequivocally increases the risk. The same logic applies to PFAS exposure. A 2018 report by the Danish Environmental Ministry concluded that exposure to PFAS from cosmetics alone is unlikely to pose a significant health risk. The danger lies in the accumulation that results from multiple exposure pathways. The potential presence of PFAS in cosmetics is a microcosm of a much larger planetary crisis of accumulating toxic, synthetic chemicals.

From Arctic ice to the blood of nearly every human on Earth, the presence of PFAS is ubiquitous. Exposure pathways include food packaging, non-stick cookware, dairy and livestock, and drinking water. We are unwitting participants in an uncontrolled, global chemical experiment, with recent research suggesting that the presence of PFAS and other toxic chemicals may already be destabilising the planet at the global scale.

This is where the question of moral responsibility becomes paramount. Unlike exposure from potentially essential sources, cosmetic use is driven by a manufactured ideal of beauty, propagated by vast marketing teams employing sophisticated psychological tools. This is not an incidental exposure, but a product of behaviour manipulation.

The cosmetics industry does not manufacture products; rather, it manufactures an ideal of beauty that instigates the consumption of its products. This grants it a unique moral duty to ensure the absolute safety of the vision it sells, particularly towards their biggest and most vulnerable demographics – teenagers and pregnant women.

Currently, this duty is being abdicated. The burden of proof rests with scientists and consumers to demonstrate harm after a product has already been on the market. This is a perverse reversal of a fundamental tenet of public safety known as the ‘precautionary principle.’ We see this principle in action elsewhere. For instance, a pharmaceutical company is barred from selling a new drug until its safety is established through rigorous trials. The onus is on the producer to demonstrate safety, not on the public to prove harm.

We contend that this principle must apply to the cosmetics industry and to the retail platforms profiting from selling them. The industry must be held to a higher standard: to proactively ensure that their products are free from harmful toxins, not merely react after the presence of toxins is proven at public expense. This requires a multi-pronged approach: independent, government-funded studies to assess the scale of contamination in India, the establishment of clear regulatory standards for PFAS in cosmetics, and a legally binding framework that mandates pre-market safety assessments by manufacturers.

Read more: Mica scavenging in Jharkhand destroys lives and environment

Trisha Putturaya recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Krea University. Chirag Dhara is a climate and sustainability scientist at Krea University, a lead author of the Indian Climate Assessment Report (2020), and a contributing author to the IPCC AR6 WG1 Atlas (2021).

As part of their analysis on the brands that the authors examined for this article, the authors used online purchase pages of the products to get their ingredient lists. The research and interpretation is based solely on information available online and the authors have not directly checked the ingredient labels on the products or conducted any testing.

Banner image: A representative image of cosmetic products. Image by Bairavi Arjunan3 via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA-4.0).