Lead In Lipsticks? A story of spinning, the truth about lipsticks and lead

I was perusing through my fellow beauty bloggers’ posts, and both BeautyAddict and Makeup Moxie posted Paula Begoun’s response to the much-blogged and over-hyped article that was released last week about lipsticks containing traces of lead.

Now, here at Temptalia, we chose not to alert you because we felt the so-called report was entirely misleading, unfounded, and purely using scare-tactics rather than real facts and science. Immediately upon reading the article, I found myself asking, “How much lead is dangerous? What lipsticks are they testing?  How are they testing it? What are the controls?”  had a gaggle of questions, and yet the article provided no answers! All it did was attempt to scare us into purging our makeup bags of tubes and tubes of lip goodness.

So what’s the verdict? No cause for alarm. It did not provide any knowledge unknown to us before, and it is not a true cause for worry. Indeed, one will find themselves more exposed to lead by doing everyday activities such as breathing the air or drinking from the tap (which already meets certain standards of how much lead per million parts and whatnot). Paula reminds us that dyes used in cosmetics are required to meet certain levels and practice a standard of care.

Wear your lipstick without fear of lead poisoning–there is still no proof that the trace amounts found in some lipsticks are the root cause of health problems. There are many other sources of lead exposure in our everyday lives, much higher in levels, than the trace amounts found in the lipsticks tested by the coalition.

You can check out Paula’s full response here.