The Secret Danger In Makeup Every Kashmiri Woman Should Know

By Azra Khan

I remember the morning I noticed the mascara brush felt different. I had just applied it, as I always do, tracing my lashes in the mirror before heading out. A thought lingered: what if the very products I trusted to make me look awake, confident, and ready were doing something else, silently, inside my body?

Across Srinagar, women, teenagers, and mothers perform the same rituals, applying foundation, lipstick, or eyeliner, often imported from distant markets, often promising perfection.

Few know these products may contain PFAS: per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, called“forever chemicals” because they never leave.

PFAS make makeup long-lasting, smudge-proof, waterproof. They cling through rain, tears, and endless days. They linger inside us in ways we cannot track.

Research links them to cancers, hormonal disruption, weakened immunity, pregnancy complications, and developmental delays in children.

Each application becomes a silent accumulation, a daily risk that we choose without knowing it.

A 2021 study in North America found PFAS in more than half of 231 tested cosmetics: 82 percent of waterproof mascaras, 63 percent of foundations, 62 percent of liquid lipsticks. Almost none of them listed the chemical on the label.

Many of these same products are sold in India, available in Srinagar's malls and markets. Independent tests reveal at least 26 popular cosmetics with PFAS on local shelves, reaching teenagers and pregnant women.

India has no law restricting these chemicals in cosmetics, leaving millions exposed without consent.

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