You may have heard about this already in the news over the last few weeks. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (who also operate Skin Deep, our favourite cosmetics safety database) released a report earlier this month. 61% of 33 lipsticks tested were found to contain surprisingly high levels of lead, although it was not listed as an ingredient. These included lipsticks from L’Oreal and Christian Dior. On the good side, 39% of the lipsticks tested had no detectable levels.
Why is lead a concern? It is a proven neurotoxin that can cause learning and behavioural problems. Because lipstick is applied to the mouth up to several times a day, it may be easily absorbed through the skin of the lips or ingested when licking your lips, and swallowing food or beverages.
Lead is banned from cosmetics in Canada and it cannot be intentionally added as an ingredient. Lead may enter lipsticks through the colorants and as a by-product from other raw materials such as zinc oxide, petrolatum, mineral oil or paraffin. While cosmetics sold in Canada may not contain more than trace levels of lead, unfortunately there are no set maximums for the amount of ‘trace lead’ found in cosmetics.
Bottom line: consider switching to natural and/or organic lip care products to save yourself worrying about potentially high levels of lead in your lipstick.
Green byte: As of November 16th 2007, Health Canada’s regulations will require all cosmetics sold in Canada to be labelled with a list of ingredients in descending order of content, similar to food ingredient labels. If you cannot find the ingredients listed in your products, you can request a list from manufacturers.
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