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Home => Product Reports => Lead in Lipsticks (6 of 9)

Lead in Lipsticks

You Can Do It!

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Do you know that you can influence the manufacturers who produce lead-tainted lipstick to change their processes and start producing lead free lipstick? Here's how you can do it.

Everything in business is based on supply and demand. Manufacturers don't simply make lipstick because they have nothing else to do. They make it because women demand it. But women didn't know that some lipsticks had lead in it, until now. And manufacturers (since not governed by law) didn't have to worry about the lead levels in lipstick, whether intentionally or unintentionally added.

However, if all women start demanding lead-free lipstick, the manufacturers (if not otherwise forced by law) will have to change and start supplying lead-free lipstick because they will start loosing business to the companies who are switching over.

Since The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics showed that lipstick can be made without lead, why not make it? Let's see how you can voice your demand. Continue reading below.

Today, there is no way to really know if your lipstick contains lead. While the 33 lipsticks tested by The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics may or may not represent the overall problem of lead in lipstick, the results do show that lead is present in lipstick, and lead is not something that you want to absorb in your body. So what can we all do?

We can learn from the experience of lead in toys and the children who died from it, such as the four-year-old from Minneapolis who died from acute lead poisoning by swallowing part of a Chinese-made heart-shaped charm bracelet found to be 90% lead.

As Tickner, a specialist on exposure to toxic chemicals and a professor of environmental health at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell explained: "These levels of lead (in lipsticks) are not likely to cause poisoning. They are likely to be cumulative to other exposures and can cause subtle neurological effects you can't trace back to a single exposure."

But Dr. Mark Mitchell, president of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice cautioned: "Lead builds up in the body over time and lead-containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, can add up to significant exposure levels. The latest studies show there is no safe level of lead exposure."

Since it's out of our control to monitor what goes into making of the lipsticks, we can raise our voices and send the cosmetics industry and our elected officials a clear and important message that there should not be lead in lipstick. Period!

Here are a few things you can do to make sure that cosmetics companies and state and federal regulators hear this important message:

1) The easiest and the simplest thing that always gets the point across is to go to your favorite lipstick manufacturer's website and look for a contact e-mail address.

Write them an e-mail and ask them to tell you if the lipstick that you're using contains lead. If it does, ask them about the lead level. They cannot misinform you because they know that you can sue them for that.

If your lipstick contains lead, simply tell them that you will stop buying it until they remove the lead from it and you will start buying lipstick from their competition that provides lipsticks with no lead.

And, don't just say it, but actually do it!

This will start lowering the demand, and the manufacturer will be forced to change (if not otherwise forced by law).

2) Contact your governor and state legislators and ask them to support efforts to replace lead and other hazardous ingredients in personal care products with safer alternatives.

Cosmetics companies selling lead-free lipstick are already demonstrating that lipstick can be made without this dangerous ingredient.

3) Spread the word!

Let your friends, family and colleagues know about the lead in lipsticks and ask them to take these actions to protect us all from lead and other toxic ingredients in personal care products.

You could go to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics' website where they have already prepared a letter to L'Oreal, whose Colour Riche "True Red" and "Classic Wine" lipsticks were found to have the highest levels of lead. Click Here to go to that page.