KP’s question: Here’s a good one for you – a story about the dangers of lead in lipstick. I was forwarded this email from a friend (first red flag, unknown source!) What’s up with this??
The Left Brain’s reply:
I’ve posted KP’s email in the Beauty Brains forum so everyone can read the entire story, but the basic idea is that the dyes used in lipsticks made by LANCOME, CHRISTIAN DIOR, CLINIQUE, ESTEE LAUDER, and SHISEIDO contain lead and will give you cancer. Furthermore, you can tell if your lipstick contains lead by smearing some on a piece of paper and then rubbing a gold ring across it. If the gold leaves a dark grey streak, the lipstick contains lead.
There is lead in lipstick
Your skepticism is well founded, KP because this story is just another urban legend. First of all, all colorants allowed for use in cosmetics must pass rigorous testing by the US FDA. It’s true that dyes are allowed to contain VERY VERY VERY small amounts of lead (about 20 parts per million). But that’s far below the amount that could harm you, no matter how much lipstick you use. So lipsticks DO NOT contain dangerous amounts of lead.
Lead doesn’t cause cancer
Second, there’s no doubt that lead poisoning is a very serious illness. It can make you sick; it can even kill you. But it can’t give you cancer. So this is just another case where The Big “C” is used to scare people.
The ringer
Third, the gold ring trick is bogus too. Rubbing a gold ring across the right kind of surface will leave a dark streak. But so will a coin or any other metal object that has a bit of oxidation built up on it. Rubbing the metal (the ring in this case) can leave a dark streak whether you smear lipstick on it first or not. So clearly the streak is not from lead in lipstick.
You can read the entire debunking at Snopes.com. It’s one of The Beauty Brains’ favorite sites.
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Now that’s a relief! So I WON’T have to throw out all my two gallon size Ziploc bags, filled with lipsticks I no longer use but can’t quite part with, after all!
Snopes.com is a great website to check on the authenticity of crazy e-mails that might possibly be urban legends. This one is definitely there.
I started to panic a little bit myself when I read that, LOL!
I think I let out a sigh of relief now, LOL!
Karen, you might want to throw out some of them anyways…they do expire…sadly makeup doesn’t keep forever
Thank You so much for this post. I work for one of the companies listed and have heard this question too many times since this story first started making its rounds on the internet. The first time it was asked, I googled and found an article debunking it. After that I would look people in the eye and say “yes of course there is, we want you to get sick and die, because dead or sick women spend lots of money at cosmetic counters!” Or “If this were true I would have been dead years ago because I have literally worn pounds of it over my lifetime.” But then I would stop being fresh and share the article that I found, now thanks to you I have another site to send them to to find real sound reliable information. The lesson is just because its on the internet does not make it true. If it were al true we would be living in big plastic bubbles trying to protect ourselves from petrolatum, parabens, underarm deoderant, air, food, ect. ect….Another good website is Quackwatch. Thanks again for the voice of reason.
This website is a joke. There are reports that lipstick contains lead, but all of you sit back and sigh of relief because, oh there is nothing wrong with lead. Lead! Yes there are plenty of other ways to get exposed to lead out there but how many times do you reapply lipstick. If you use it everyday over the course of a lifetime that exposure builds up. The scientists of this website support the cosmetics industry, of course their not going to advocate you stop using cosmetics. You should all advocate that new standards be set for ingredients in cosmetics so that we can all feel safer. Yes, of course you could live in a bubble but maybe by advocating change we could all live longer healthier lives.
I need an answer…I took the ring test with several tubes of lipstick, some turned black and some didn’t. Clearly there was no build up of oxidation because I was using the same ring and cleaning it everytime. Then I thought about all the eyeshadow, and again the same thing some turned black and some didn’t. So what is that? I really don’t want to be using products on my face that contain lead. Can an authority please tell us why some turn black and some don’t?
Karen,
Did you read the post? The ring test is bogus. Gold doesn’t react with lead like that. If you are really still frightened to use perfectly good cosmetics, then stop using them. Nature created you without make-up. If the thought of exposing yourself to chemicals is too scary, stop using them. But know that people have safely used cosmetics for years without problems.
Kate,
You just read it here. If you are afraid of using cosmetics, STOP USING THEM!! You don’t need them to be healthy and if it is too scary for you, just quit using.
It would be great to remove all possible toxins from cosmetics, beverages and food. But it’s not. There are safe levels of carcinogenic ingredients. Did you know your own body produces cancer-causing formaldehyde? Should we all have our livers removed to prevent that?
First, kids dying from lead in toys. Now, they find high levels of lead in lipsticks. What’s next – lead in food? Are women going to start dying now too from using lipstick too much?
Freaky!
There’s a detailed report about it at http://www.myproductalert.com/lead-in-lipsticks.html
I agree with what Kate has to say. And the whole point of investigating whether cosmetics are harmful or not is because people -want- to use cosmetics. But if they contain toxic or unhealthy ingredients, then something should be done. As for your post, it doesn’t seem to be entirely valid. Your claim of the ‘rigorous’ testing is misleading. The cosmetics industry is unregulated by the FDA. Instead, the companies regulate themselves and simply report. That is a lot of room for loopholes and shoulder shrugging.
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics points out that while the colors may be FDA regulated the finished products are not. Nobody is testing these products for any hazardous contaminants whatsoever. Meanwhile, lead has been outlawed in such products oversees for years, some countries dating back to the 1920s. And we wonder why the US is the autism capital of the world? Not that there is any proven link here, but lead certainly doesn’t help. A Canadian health study found an even greater percentage of lead contaminated lipsticks than the random testing performed by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics here in the US. In one case 6.3ppm! Now does it spell c-o-n-f-l-i-c-t of interest here when one learns that the Canadian health authorities refused to release the names of the companies?
Furthermore, the Beauty Brains rebuttal to this “urban legend” neglects to mention that those FDA colorings are not the only ingredients in lipsticks. Colorings can come from mining processes too, and those ores and minerals may be contaminated! There’s no regulatory oversight of those.
The only people who suffer the effects of lead are women and children. Lead has been tied to miscarriages, lower IQ, learning disabilities and behavioral problems. Long before I learned that lead is NOT outlawed in US cosmetics, I read about a US prison study in which the blood levels of lead were found to be abnormally high in those who had a criminal history of violence. And what is America if not the capital of high incarceration rates too? Meanwhile, the US currently ranks something like 20 on the list of world’s most literate nations. We used to rank in the top 5!
With more women in the workforce, more women are wearing lipstick. And since lead builds up in the body and is not shed, and since women tend to be older when they have their first child compared to 100 years ago, it stands to reason that while the overall level of lead in lipsticks and cosmetics may be low, the cumulative exposure from this and other sources may not be. Women who unknowingly wear lead-tainted lipsticks put their unborn children at risk, and teenage girls reintroduce that risk 12-14 years after birth.
If we’re going to care about “cruelty free cosmetics”, why not care about *pure* cosmetics? Why not care about eliminating one small part of the many things that pose a risk to our health. If the cosmetic industry has nothing to hide, they surely won’t reject this idea. In fact, a smart cosmetic company could even market their products for being cruelty AND lead free, if they so desired. Yet they don’t. To the contrary, when the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics broke the news in 2007 that lead was detected in US-made lipsticks, the cosmetic industry rallied to defeat a bill in California that would have included cosmetics as part of the Proposition 13 lead disclosures. In California, shoppers cannot even enter an isle of dinnerware, crystal or pottery — let alone an eating establishment — without a posted notice stating that lead may be harmful to pregnant women and may pose a cancer risk. So contrary to being an Urban Legend, Beauty Brains is contributing to the confusion by stating that lead does not pose a cancer risk!
For crying out loud: We’ve taken lead out of house paint. We’ve taken lead out of gasoline. But we can’t take it out of women’s bodies?
Women. We have to respect ourselves more than that. And a smart cosmetic industry will capitalize on this notion — not spend millions lobbying the US and Canadian authorities to sweep it under the rug. Anyone who tells you that you shouldn’t “ask” and you shouldn’t “tell” is probably a shill for the cosmetics industry.
See, funny thing about this, it’s just been found out that, GUESS WHAT, there IS no SAFE amount of lead. Hmm imagine that. It’s like saying, small traces of rat poison won’t hurt you.
Besides this fact, if you’re going to wear lipstick everyday, then that “small” amount adds up even more. So regardless of how “safe” that small amount may seem, cosmetic companies lie all the time.
So YES, lead is POISONOUS, lead is DANGEROUS, and IT CAN HARM YOU. My advice? DON’T USE LIPSTICK WITH LEAD IN IT. Simple.
The small amounts of lead that the majority of cosmetics companies use in their lipsticks and lip liners claim to not be harmful, but I did this trick with a Stila brand lipstick and an Arbonne brand lipstick on the same area with the same pure gold ring (both red) – the Stila lipstick showed the dark grey streak whereas the Arbonne showed none. How can you explain that if you say that rubbing the right surface will show a dark grey streak regardless of lead content??
Wow, this is mind blowing to think that it would EVER be okay to put lead in lipstick or in any topically applied skin care product. Oh, that’s right…I forgot, were women the disposable second class citizens here. Wake up people! Find out the facts for yourself and not from someone who is obviously funded by the cosmetic companies. I manufacture my own bath and body products and laundry detergent for me and my family after my kids kept getting rashes and asthma attacks from synthetic fragrances and other garbage that the FDA says is “okay” to poison ourselves with. Our motto is “if it’s on your skin, it’s in your skin.” And yes, there definitely is something to the rubbing a gold ring on the lipstick/lip liner as well as consealers sticks and foundations thing! None of my products turn black on my skin and I find great relief in that. My family and I are aware of the FDA’s inability to keep up with contaminates in cosmetics. Do the research and find out the truth. By the way, lead in candy isn’t okay either!!
Char,
Did you know that there are acceptable limits for lead in drinking water? Yep, all the water we drink has a bit of lead in it. The amount of exposure we’d get from the concentrations that have been found in lipstick is even lower than what you’d get from perfectly safe drinking water. If you go searching for lead, you will find it. Laboratory tests for lead are extremely sensitive, can detect minute amounts. It’s out there. It’s not only from pollution, but naturally occurring in the earth’s crust. http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/AssessingRisk/upload/Natural-Occur-Inorg-at-AF-Bases.pdf You get more lead exposure walking down a city street than using lipstick. When you make your own cosmetics, there’s probably lead in them, because lead is everywhere. There’s no conspiracy here, except that of the people who went looking for tiny traces lead in lipstick in an effort to scare consumers. Wake up people! Trace amounts are not the same as toxic amounts! That is why we can eat table salt!
I’ll even be the guinea pig. Name me all lipstick brands you’ve been told have lead content, and as long as they haven’t been pulled from the market for *genuinely* unsafe levels, I’ll volunteer to use one of them each day and check back here once a year or so to let you know if I have any symptoms of toxicity.