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.