Unlike Clayface, Toxic Facial Creams are Very Real.

 -Image from Fox's Batman The Animated Series

I consider myself fortunate to have been born at just the right time to be a part of the generation that had Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS) as not just after-school entertainment, but as a transmitter of moral truths in a language that my 11-year-old mind could understand. 

The reason I bring this up is because of the recent horror story of the toxic levels of mercury found in the popular Mexican facial cream, Crema Aguamary, that has caused serious health problems to some Valley residents.  I couldn’t read this story without immediately thinking about a story-line in the old BTAS where an actor is tragically affected by an addiction to a toxic facial cream.   

This is a very serious issue, and I’m in no way trying to make light of the matter, nor am I implying that the victims of these careless manufacturers did anything wrong, but valuable lessons can be learned from all of this. First being, we should never trust the manufactures’ word when they declare anything “safe” (especially from other countries). Second, in our attempts to keep ourselves from “aging” we might unfortunately end up causing greater damage to ourselves, unnecessarily sooner, than the God established, natural process of aging ever could… lessons, I’m grateful, a generation of kids learned almost two decades ago.