In this day and age people choose to inject horse tranquilizers into their forehead (botox) and shoot collagen into their lips. While these people are aware of the hamful effects, others have no idea that they are poisoning themselves with their own cosmetics. Many makeup products on the market contain lead and NO ONE seems to know!
Lead isn’t just found in Lipsticks, it’s also found in powders, eye makeup and foundations. Although cosmetic companies must abide by the FDA regulations of 0.1 parts per million. Some have exceeded this amount and gotten past this strick protocol.
The results, made public in a report last October, revealed 61percent of the lipsticks tested had detectable lead levels. One-third of the lipsticks exceeded the US Food and Drug Administration’s accepted level of lead (0.1 parts per million) for products that are ingested. The Dior lipstick was found to contain 0.21ppm of lead.
In Australia it is mandatory for cosmetics to list all ingredients on their labels and for cosmetics containing lead to carry warning statements and safety directions.
Cosmetics containing more than 250 milligrams per kilogram of lead are prohibited unless permission is granted by the Minister for Justice and Customs. The Dior lipstick does not list lead as an ingredient or carry a warning.
Peter Dingle, an environmental toxicologist from Murdoch University and author of the Dangerous Beauty booklet, has called for regulatory change to ban lead from cosmetic products to protect consumer health.
“It is ridiculous that we have any lead in our cosmetics at all,” he said. “For the last 50 years we have campaigned to get lead out of everything and here we are putting it in lipstick. It’s crazy.”
“We’ve known for 200 years that lead is toxic and the research now is showing that lead, even at the absolute lowest concentration, still has a toxic effect on our body … not to mention the cumulative effect it could have.”
Exposure to lead can result in intellectual and behavioural problems and has also been linked to kidney damage, infertility and miscarriage, among other adverse health affects. It has been estimated that the average woman ingests about 4.5kilograms of lipstick in a lifetime (source).
People go out of their way to drink filtered water, buy fresh water fish, and use products that don’t contain heavy metals. While companies fight these claims… the bottom line is that other products containing lead are not ingested nor are they worn on the skin. These minute amounts of lead have a magnified affect when used everyday and placed so close to mucus membranes.
In an economy where people are cutting back on costs and pinching their pennies; this might be the one time that people pay the extra buck to buy safe (possibly more expensive) make up.
* Test Your Make-up With the infomation from this video
Adria Ali
(CES, PES, CPT, BS)
Queenangel says