Mobile court seals off fairness cream manufacturing factory
A mobile court sealed off a cosmetics manufacturing factory, Lata Herbal, in Gazipur district town on Monday as its products contain hazardous chemicals, which damage skin.
It also sentenced a Lata Herbal official to two years' imprisonment and fined him Tk 2.5 lakh and ordered police to sue its chairman Ayub Ali, who is on the run.
Executive Magistrate AHM Anwar Pasha, who led the drive, said they seized the factory's all products, equipments and raw materials and will have those products in markets withdrawn soon.
"The company has BSTI approval and its licence is valid up to June 2014. But its manufactures contain ingredients, which were not in BSTI's guidelines," he said.
The Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) received several complaints from a number of consumers that Lata Herbal products, which were mainly skin-whitening cream and lotion, were causing them skin diseases.
The magistrate said, "We collected samples of the products from the market and lab-tested them at BSTI and Bangladesh Atomic Energy Centre. The findings suggest that toxic chemicals and ingredients like mercury are present in the cosmetic products."
The hazardous substances can cause skin rashes, discolouration (thus called fairness) and damage immunity to bacterial and fungal infections, he said, citing a report of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU). Mercury is poisonous to kidney and nerve cells, it said.
Pasha said, "We will get some other products of different herbal companies tested in future. We believe that many of these 'magic fairness creams' have hazardous elements."
A field officer of Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), Mazharul Islam, who accompanied the mobile court, said they found around 30 workers in the Lata Herbal factory, and no-one of them was a chemist.
"The company has already expanded its market all over the country. Their products are popular particularly in rural areas, and it runs commercials in newspapers and TV channels and sponsors different sorts of programmes for publicity," he said.
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