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One of the fastest growing sectors of the beauty industry, is also one of its most controversial:
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Skin Bleaching.
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She will do the buying.
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When the color of your skin can determine your future, how far would you go to be lighter?
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Having light skin, I think it is important here.
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Skin tone matters, nowadays.
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And they prefer the white ones.
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When I was younger, they would always call me, "pretty, but...
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Pretty but dark."
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Whatever that fair girl embodies in my head is just someone that is just a little better than me.
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Skin bleaching, also known as skin lightening or whitening, is a global market expected
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to grow to over 24 billion dollars in the next decade.
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Advertisements pedaling products can be seen across the globe.
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Asia holds the lion's share of the market, and at the heart of it lies the Philippines,
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with one of the highest rates of use in the world.
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The Philippines is a country on the economic rise, and its new money fuels the possibility
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of rapid social mobility.
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One of the most popular strategies to get a leg up is skin bleaching.
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But at what cost?
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It's estimated that 1-in-2 Filipinos have tried skin whitening products.
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I wanted to understand why, so I went to meet someone who's shaping the face of beauty,
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not only in the Philippines, but across the world.
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Dr Vicki Belo.
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It's almost a status symbol, like having a Hermes bag.
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It just sounds so politically incorrect that I'm having a hard time.
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She's a celebrity dermatologist who's built a skin lightening empire.
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What kind of treatments do you do here for whitening?
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We do scrubs, lasers, wet and dry dermabrasion, capsules, intravenous.
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So we treat it from the inside, we treat it from the outside.
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My motto is to make the Philippines the most beautiful country in the world.
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And for many, that means skin whitening.
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Today what do you want to do?
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Your usual drip?
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Your Cinderella drip?
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One of the most popular procedures here is an IV drip.
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Lean back.
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Are you okay?
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Are you comfortable?
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So we are about to see the Cinderella drip, which is a mix of glutathione and Vitamin C.
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The star ingredient, glutathione, is a controversial antioxidant to lighten the skin
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from the inside out.
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It hasn't been approved for cosmetic use by the FDA.
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Still, Dr. Belo's clients are willing to drop hundreds of dollars per session, taking
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on the risk, in hopes of getting whiter.
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I've done some Hollywood celebrities.
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People coming in from London!
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While off label glutathione requires more research, Dr. Belo argues that it's at least
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being done under medical supervision.
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I think you really get what you pay for.
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Cause some people, they just go for price.
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People actually risk their lives, just to get whiter.
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Things that are coming contain mercury in the creams.
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That's really destructive.
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That's really poisonous, actually.
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Videos online and in the news have emerged showing harmful side effects for some of these products.
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Across the Philippines, women have reported signs of mercury poisoning.
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The culprit: cheap whitening creams that often sell for a little over a dollar.
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I wanted to know what these products were, and why people would risk using them for paler skin.
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It's a serious concern.
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These kind of cheap skin whitening creams, you can buy it everywhere.
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There's one man fighting this issue on the front lines: Thony Dizon,
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an activist at Ecowaste Coalition.
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We discover that skin lightening is a product that has a mercury concentration and that
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there is a risk.
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A variety of ingredients can be used for skin whitening.
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The basic idea is to slow melanin production.
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The less melanin, the lighter your skin.
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Vitamin C, hydroquinone and kojic acid are some of the most common ones.
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But one of the cheapest and deadliest is mercury, a heavy metal that can be toxic for humans,
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even in tiny doses.
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Repeated exposure, like smearing it on your face every day, can lead to tremors, kidney
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failure and even birth defects.
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So mercury isn't just an incidental contaminant, it's actually what's bleaching your skin?
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It's a serious concern.
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A public health concern.
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I couldn't believe these products were on the market.
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It turns out, they aren't.
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Because they're so toxic, these mercury laced creams are banned by the government.
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But they're still flooding into the country at an alarming rate.
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And the reason behind it is shocking.
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Some customs people would hate me for this.
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Customs employees are in collusion with the smuggling.
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What do you mean in collusion with the smugglers?
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They know that these containers contain beauty products and they just let them slip through
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and they receive some bribes.
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It's a culture in the bureau that it is immoral to let drugs and fire arms slip through customs.
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But beauty products don't seem to fall under that?
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No.
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In fact some have this perception that they are helping Filipinos improve their appearance.
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It's almost like the culture around skin bleaching allows for this proliferation of
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illegal bleaching creams.
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Yes, definitely.
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It's baffling.
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But customs agents actually think that they're doing people a favor by allowing cheap creams
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with mass appeal to hit the market, since few can afford high end treatments.
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It makes for an uphill battle for Thony, but he's determined to crack down on this illegal activity.
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I'm riding along on an undercover buy, on the condition that I stay in the car, and
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protect his colleague's identity.
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What we're gonna do is we're gonna put a hidden camera on her.
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She will do the buying.
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So the hidden camera has been positioned in her bag and it's pointing directly outwards
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and she's going to wear her bag on the front.
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She's mic'd up and they have a couple different people standing throughout the market
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who are both safety and to capture different angles.
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Alright, so they just did the undercover buy and let's look at some of the products that
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you got.
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Armed with these creams, the next step is to take them back to test just how dangerous
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they are.
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But why do people take these risks at all?
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Do you think that people who were buying the products, like in that store for example,
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know how dangerous they are?
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What do you think about all the whitening products?
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Skin whitening products that I used were glutathione pills, papaya soaps, whitening soaps and lotions.
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They're not looking to be white like a white person, they're just looking to be lighter
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skinned because historically that's what they perceive as not only beautiful, but also
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powerful.
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For more than 400 years, the Philippines was ruled by one foreign power or another.
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Spain, the United States, and even Japan for a brief period of time.
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The Japanese occupation was celebrated by the invaders with a parade through the center
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of the city.
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The island nation finally declared its independence in 1946.
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But centuries of outside rule have shaped beauty standards to prize pale skin.
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It's a legacy that's very much alive today.
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Charlene is one Filipina who attributes much of her success to her skin tone.
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She's an influencer with over 200,000 followers.
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Hold that, looking great.
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My instagram, there are a lot of countries following me.
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They are like, “Oh you look so great, your skin is so fair.”
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In the Philippines if you have fair or lighter skin, you're more prettier, you're more
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beautiful and you have a lot of advantages.
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Like many Filipinas, Charlene's beauty routine includes a daily whitening regimen.
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I have morning and I have evening routine.
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So this is cortisone soap.
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I'm using this for six years now.
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And you use it all over your body and your face.
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Yes, I use it on my body, I use it on my face.
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So I drink this once a day before I sleep.
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It looks like this.
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And in the morning I feel my skin gets glowy.
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So the day I don't whiten my skin, I gave birth to a dark beautiful baby girl.
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And I don't want my daughter to feel the same insecurity that I went through.
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People lighten their skin just to increase their attractiveness to the opposite sex.
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I was starting to understand.
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Skin whitening is pervasive in the Philippines because for so many people, it represents
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the opportunity for something more.
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Skin tone isn't just about skin.
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It is about class.
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Everybody that uses these products are very clear about the economic benefit.
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That far outweighs any risk.
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Back at the Ecowaste headquarters, I'm about to find out just how much risk there is.
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Why are you putting gloves on?
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Ah, yes.
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Because this product has chemical so you don't want to expose.
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Especially because I will be touching the product.
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And at the same time we open up the windows since we suspected that this product has mercury.
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This is a point and shoot device.
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The screen will show the concentration of mercury.
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So I have sort of an idea of what these numbers mean, what are the legal limits of mercury
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in these products.
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For our country, it has a limit of one part per million.
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One part per million.
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Okay.
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Yes.
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This cream here is this bright yellow, almost custard-y consistency.
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Trying to hold my breath.
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Now you will see.
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Wow, so this is over four times the legal limit.
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More than, more than.
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It's 42,000.
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This isn't in percent, so if you were going to convert it times one hundred or times
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one thousand, this is 42,000.
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This is way, way beyond.
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I thought that it was shocking that it was four times the amount that was allowed, it's
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42,000 times the amount.
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Thony and I tested every cream they bought.
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Way beyond the limit.
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Jar after jar contained mercury at illegal and alarming levels.
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This is a little bit lower, but it still has mercury.
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So these products here are banned, they're illegal.
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But we just bought them today.
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Is that safe to say then that they are still being imported, they are still being smuggled in.
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Exactly.
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With results from our testing in hand, Thony's come to Quezon city hall to demand they remove
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these products from the streets.
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We don't want this situation to worsen up.
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We don't want to hear any more victims of this mercury exposure.
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What is at stake with the work that you're doing?
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It is very important in the country because nobody does it.
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Ecowaste is the only one doing this.
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The reality is, people in the Philippines and across the globe will continue to use
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skin whitening products and until the culture that privileges lighter skin changes, it's
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people like Thony, who look out for consumers to make sure products are safe.
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We've been out here for a few hours waiting for Thony, waiting on the news of whether
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or not the government's actually going to take action to try to seize all of these really
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toxic illegal products.
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Ahh!
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We got it!
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The meeting was a success.
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Wow!
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So what happened?
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We got the support of all the agencies who will do the law enforcement action.
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So because of your investigation, they're now looking into it and you're going to
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get these products off the street?
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Yes and we will still continue!
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Victory.
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Yes, victory moment!
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It may seem like a small step, but Thony's tireless work makes the world of beauty a
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little bit safer.
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And that progress is something to root for.
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