Beware of Lead in Popular Lipstick Brands-Fiction!
Summary of the eRumor
The email says that several lipstick brands contain lead and
suggests a simple way to tell whether there is lead in your lipstick.
The Truth
We've spent a considerable amount of time looking into this one
and there is nothing to substantiate the claims of this email.
The most important thing that can be said is that in the United
States, the Food and Drug Administration regulates the lead content in food
and cosmetics.
The lead levels, if there are any, are tiny and not regarded as
harmful by the FDA.
The history of cosmetics does include products with lead
content.
According to the folks at Maybelline, certain ancient Greek
women were said to have coated their face, necks, and breasts with a white
powder before applying color make up.
They didn't realize that the lead content of that white powder
was toxic.
In England, Elizabethan women used white lead face paint along
with mercury sulfide for rouge.
The attempts at beauty were marked with falling hair, sickness,
and even death.
Some companies that manufacture what they call "natural
cosmetics" do sometimes claim that mainstream products contain lead.
Last updated 10/18/2003
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/l/lipstick.htm
Origins: This
terrifying warning about danger lurking in lipstick began frightening
the makeup-wearing public in May 2003, even as it apparently offered them a
way to protect themselves from dangerous products via a simple test which
could supposedly identify a lurking threat to their wellbeing.
Lead may not necessarily cause cancer, but it most assuredly is an
element dangerous to humans; one they should make every effort to distance
themselves from. Exposure to lead can cause a range of deleterious health
effects, from behavioral problems and learning disabilities to seizures and
death. Children 6 years old and under are most at risk because their bodies
are growing quickly, thus additional care has to be taken to protect them
from exposure to this common element. In the past, many house paints were
lead-based and the solder commonly used on plumbing joints contained lead,
bringing this killer into numerous unsuspecting households. But lead
awareness has improved in recent years, as have regulations restricting the
use of lead in goods or products average consumers might have contact with.
In this respect, our houses today are far safer than those of our parents
and grandparents.
But what about the presence of lead in cosmetics? Although many
dangerous substances (including lead) have been utilized as ingredients at
various times in the history of makeup, and some women of earlier days
caused themselves life-long health problems (or even managed to kill
themselves) with beautifers that amounted to death in a jar, what goes into
cosmetics these days is strictly regulated, controlled, and fully
understood. While in the past anything and everything got tossed into the
paintbox without anyone's knowing what could cause harm and what was safe to
use, our modern world at least has safe cosmetics going for it.
We spoke with a compliance officer at the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) about the possibility of lead being present in lipsticks. All dyes
used in foodstuffs or cosmetics have to be vetted by the FDA for safety, and
although some of the colorants the FDA grants approval to do contain lead,
it is present in such miniscule amounts that is has no adverse effects on
consumers. Manufacturers who wish to do business in the USA are restricted
to the use of FDA-certifiable colors only; otherwise their products will not
be allowed in the country or onto the shelves of American stores. Each of
these approved dyes has its own rigid set of specifications which must be
adhered to. For instance, F&C Red #6 cannot contain more than 20 parts per
million of lead (also not more than 3 parts per million of arsenic or 1 part
per million of mercury). As for how stringent these requirements are, every
time a manufacturer prepares a batch of dye for use in its products, it has
to submit a sample from that batch to the FDA for certification. The FDA's
certification process is exhaustive and exhausting. And only the FDA can
certify colors as safe - no one else has that authority.
The FDA further regulates the selection of dyes manufacturers can
incorporate into their products according to the proposed end uses of the
items in question. Thus, products intended for use on mucous membranes can
contain only certain FDA-approved dyes rather than drawing from the full
spectrum of approved dyes. Because the lips are considered mucous membranes,
lipstick manufacturers may make their colorant selections only from this
reduced pool.
Despite initial inability to see the resultant streaks (my eyesight is
not nearly as good as it once was, which may partially explain why I believe
my husband gets better looking with each passing year), further tests
conducted under strong light by rubbing various metals across lipstick
smears made on sheets of white paper produced dark brown marks. Rubs of
pewter, copper, silver, and gold across samples drawn from three Revlon
Colorstay Lipcolors left dark streaks in their wakes; rubs of stainless
steel did not. Even coins produced reactions, with dimes and nickels leaving
discernable streaks, although pennies did not. (Which is not all that
surprising, given the reaction to copper noted above. Pennies are 2.5%
copper and 97.5% zinc; nickels are 75% copper and 25% nickel, and dimes are
91.67% copper and 8.33% nickel.) All reactions were more noticeable against
streaks of lighter-colored lipstick.
Yet the interests of science carried me further, especially after a
call to Revlon failed to yield anything that would help explain what
component of the cosmetic was reacting to those metals. Remembering that
lipstick is (at its most basic) oil, wax, and color, I rubbed the four
metals across swipes of wax made on white paper, and again saw dark streaks,
albeit grey ones. Curiousity then inspired me to make yet another test with
the four metals, this time against plain white paper. And once again, the
grey streaks were there.
The streaks that supposedly herald the presence of lead in one's
lipstick are in reality dark marks produced by the testing agents
themselves. Gold, silver, copper, and pewter leave these trails no matter
what they're rubbed against, in the same way that pencils make marks on
whatever surfaces they are trailed along. That these marks appear more
prominent against a lipstick backdrop is attributable to contrast - streaks
that look grey against a white background seem brown against a reddish
background, and brown is a color more readily picked out by the eye.
One further bit of lipstick lore needs be mentioned: the fallacious
belief that over the course of her lifetime the average woman ingests 6
pounds of lipstick. We've seen this "statistic" blithely quoted as
authoritative fact at various times as 6 pounds, 4 pounds, and even 5.65
pounds, but we have yet to locate the study from whence this startling
tidbit of information was drawn.
Don't let the gob-smacking nature of the "statistic" prevent you from
questioning it. Consider this: the average tube of lipstick contains about
an ounce of the actual cosmetic. If women were swallowing 6 pounds of
lipstick, that would amount to their ingesting the equivalent of 96 whole
tubes. The average woman isn't even likely to own 96 lipsticks during her
lifetime, let alone use them right down to their nubs, with none of her lip
rouge ever being kissed off or left on the edge of her coffee mug.
Barbara "lip service" Mikkelson
http://www.snopes.com/toxins/lipstick.asp
