Posted by admin in Health (Friday October 12, 2007 at 6:15 am)
Orlando (EON) - According to a research group, many brands of lipstick in the United States have found to contain toxic levels of lead.
The group is called Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and looked at 33 randomly purchased lipsticks in four different cities across the United States.
The four cities included Boston, Hartford, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. They purchased all of the lipstick in August and then tested them.
What they found was that 61% of the 33 brand name lipsticks tested has highly detectable levels of lead. The alarming thing was none of the companies labeled lead as an ingredient in the lipstick.
The testing was done by Bodycote Testing Group Laboratory in Santa Fe Springs, California. The highest levels were detected in products from Cover Girl, Christian Dior, and L’Oreal.
One-third of the tested lipsticks had levels which exceeded the limit for lead in other things such as candy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not set any limit on lead on lipstick though unfortunately.
Does Lead Cause Cancer?
There is some evidence implicating lead in causing cancers, but this evidence is not conclusive (Cocco, 1998; Hayes, 1997; Lundstrom, 1997; Singh, 1999). In particular, lead has been tentatively linked with cancers of the lung, brain, stomach, and kidneys.
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_1_3X_Lead.asp?