In the latest “Guess where we found lead lurking” news, The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics has found that more than half of 33 brand-name lipsticks tested contained lead. One-third exceeded the FDA limit for lead in candy (0.1 parts per million), the standard established to prevent the ingesting of lead. As the average woman will ingest 4 pounds of lipstick over her lifetime, the candy standard for lead seems appropriate.The entire report, including the entire list of tested products, is available in PDF format at www.safecosmetics.org. It is well worth the read.

The worst offenders were:

-L’Oreal Colour Riche “True Red” – 0.65 ppm
-L’Oreal Colour Riche “Classic Wine” – 0.58 ppm
-Cover Girl Incredifull Lipcolor “Maximum Red” – 0.56 ppm
-Dior Addict “Positive Red” – 0.21 ppm

However, don’t ditch your Dior just yet: in the test, lead levels were not consistent across brand, shade, or price point. In fact, Dior “Replenishing Lip Color Red Premier” made the “good” list, with less than 0.02 parts per million of lead.

In a somewhat-good news/bad news/worse news scenario:

Good news: there are lipsticks at every price point with no detectable levels of lead.

Bad news: there is no way to determine the lead content of a lipstick based on brand or price.

Worse news: In several cases, multiple tubes of the same lipstick (brand and shade) showed significant variations in lead content from tube to tube.

Thus, you can’t even bank on a lipstick from the “good” list today being “good” tomorrow.

(Wonder why two tubes of what should be the same lipstick can have different amounts of lead? Safe Cosmetics speculates that this may be due to “different amounts of contamination taking place during contamination or different levels of lead contamination of the lipstick’s individual ingredients.”)

But is leaden lipstick really a problem?

See the next entry, “Lead in Lipstick — Part II”