Lipstick Gets The Lead Out

As those of you who clicked through our Statement Lips feature gleaned a few weeks back, lead has been a popular ingredient for creating the reddest red lipsticks since the dawn of the Greco-Roman empire. And while over time, it was determined that the pigment-enhancing particle was indeed toxic and possessed a high level of a neurotoxin that could cause behavioral, learning, or other problems when absorbed through the skin, it covertly remained in some cosmetics companies’ ingredient arsenals for years. According to today’s New York Times, it may continue to do so. Acceptable amounts of lead in lipsticks and its actual risk of harm to lipstick wearers is still apparently up for debate, the article argues. It also points out some unsettling information, like the fact that there are actually no FDA standards limiting lead and other toxins in lipstick. The agency leaves it up to manufacturers to decide which safety and efficacy tests to perform on products and only requires that they list their “intended” ingredients on labels (lead would be considered an “unintended” byproduct of the manufacturing process). Nonprofit research and advocacy organizations, like Bestinbeauty.com’s “Labels for Life” initiative and the Environmental Working Group’s cosmetics database, which lists the ingredients in more than 42,000 products, have popped up as a response, but the whole discussion seems to be another reason to go organic, no?

 

Photo: Getty Images

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