Lead and other metals in lipstick requires more research, says the health industry

In 2007 a report announced a level of lead in lipsticks. A Poison Kiss, the title of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics report, was the first of its kind to come to the public’s attention.

The United States Food and Drug Administration published an extensive follow-up in 2011. Its findings revealed traces of lead in 400 lipsticks (The Global Edition of the New York Times, August 21, 2013). Both the FDA and the cosmetics industry insist that levels of lead in lipstick pose no real or unusual health risks to users. The levels are too small to be a safety issue, they say.

However, lead tends to accumulate in the body, say researchers at the Boston University Medical Center. Researchers also note that some users re-apply lipstick, glosses and balms as much as 24 times a day.

A new study has found that many brands of lipstick contain as many as eight other metals, such as cadmium and aluminium. Researchers don’t yet know what happens if these metals are ingested on a daily basis, although they don’t believe that users should panic. The study, released in May 2013 in the Environmental Health Perspectives journal, was conducted by environmental health science researchers at the University of California at Berkeley. The UC researchers examined 24 lip gloss brands and 8 lipstick brands popular with teenagers at a community health center in Oakland, California.

The 2011 FDA study found that deep floral pink lipstick had the highest lead levels while a neutral lip balm had the lowest. A European study found that brown lipstick tended to be higher in lead. Saudi Arabia researchers reported that dark colours averaged 8.9 parts per million (ppm) of lead compared with 0.37 ppm in light-coloured lipsticks. Researchers, health agencies, and the cosmetic industry all agree that the metal contained in lipsticks, glosses, and balms - and the effect of their daily intake - require further studies.

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