Being a ‘foody’ person, when we first started the FreeFrom Skincare Awards I found myself wondering whether there really was a need for such an award. It did not take long for me to realise the error of my ways. Just drawing up the criteria for what would be acceptable in products entered for the awards made it very clear, very quickly, that there were all too many ingredients that appeared in high street personal care products that, if you thought about it, you would not want any where near you, let alone applied to the skin. How many people realise that applying something to your skin is, apart from injecting it, just about the quickest way to get that substance into your bloodstream?
So, when I saw this alert in a recent Natural News, I read on. This is not a new story. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics‘ report back in 2007, A Poison Kiss: The Problem Of Lead In Lipstick found that two thirds of the lipstick samples that they tested contained lead and that half of those contained more lead than is permitted in candy. But now the FDA (US Food and Drug Adminstration) has tested a further 400 lipsticks and found some lead in every single one of them; in 380 out of the 400 the amount was greater than the 0.1 ppm (parts per million) allowed in candy bars, in some up to 70 times as much. (Click here for the full report.)
The FDA say that we should not worry as we do not eat lipstick whereas we do eat candy bars. Clearly that that was written by a man! Of course we ‘eat’ lipstick – where else does it go and why else do women have to keep reapplying it. (I gave up wearing it years ago as I ‘ate’ it so fast that I needed to re-apply it about every ten minutes!)
It is true that 0.1 ppm is a very small amount but – lead is extremely toxic and given that we are subject to a certain amount of unavoidable environmental lead contamination every day, deliberately ingesting even 0.1 parts per million seems unwise. So, I suggest that if you want to wear (and therefore ‘eat’) lipstick, you go for the ‘freefrom’ and natural ones which are certainly the least likely to be lead lined!