A Sacramento woman has been hospitalized in a “semi-comatose” state after using a face cream contaminated with mercury, Sacramento County health officials said. The unidentified woman reportedly obtained a container of Pond’s anti-wrinkle skin cream “through an informal network that imported the cream from Mexico,” the county said in a statement. The mercury was added to the cream by a “third party after purchase,” according to the statement. There have been 60 cases of poisonings linked to “foreign brand, unlabeled, and/or homemade skin creams” that contained less toxic forms of mercury across California. However, the methylmercury poisoning case in connection with the skin cream is the first of its kind in the United States, according to the county health department.
