Dying to Look Good: Are you dying to see me or is that lead in your lipstick?

Yet another beauty aid/product/service has come under fire, and that’s the third in three months that has come to my attention. The first was Ginette 35 (Diane 35) the oral contraceptive with known severe side effects for every 1-1666 people like total blindness and extreme depression, being snapped up like candy by teens all over the world because of its touted anti-acne properties, (read more here). The second was thanks to Paula Abdul the risks of your local manicure salon for both you and the people who work there. With an average of 1-5 manicure salons failing basic hygiene standards and putting their workers at risk from continued contact of hard core chemicals, (read more here). This month see the exposure of millions of women to the accumulative effects of Lead through the use of their lipstick.

It seems somewhat ironic that whilst certain toys that have been recently pulled off shelves and generally caused great concern, the concerned mothers themselves have been at risk since their first smear of lipstick when they were five. 22 out of the 33 brand name lipsticks tested by an advocacy group recently were above the limits set for lead content in sweets by the FDA. Why was lipstick judged by the sweet limits? Well because in fact there are no limits set for lead content in lipsticks. Scary stuff, this means that your lipstick could practically be a soft bar of coloured lead. As a matter interest, when was the last time you saw a list of ingredients and concentrations on any lipstick, ever? From 0.03 parts per million or ppm to 0.65 ppm was the range of levels of Lead found in those 22 brand name lipsticks. Now this might not sound like much, but let me ask you, for how long and how often have you been using lipstick throughout your lifetime?

"Lead on lips can lead to lead toxicity. A lipstick that gives a bright colour to your lips may contain significant amounts of lead. Don't be mislead by the glow, and use chemical-free lipsticks, if you can" -Dr Joshi at FarAwaySister.com

It has long been thought that the use of lead for water pipes, cutlery, cups and plates in Rome (lead was also used to sweeten their wine) was a contributing factor in the downfall of the Roman Empire. Quite simply the Romans poisoned themselves slowly and gradually. Although it has been recently noted, calcium carbonate present in the water would have over many years built a layer in the pipes effectively sealing the water from the lead. So you were fine in old, like twenty years minimum, areas but not in new, but if you add all the eating utensils, wine, and lead was also touted then for various medicinal ailments. It certainly puts forward the idea that Lead indeed could have been a factor, however small, in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Lead is a soft heavy toxic metal, and humanity has been mining and using it for over 8500 years. Most of that time to our own detriment, but we were attracted to it’s qualities of anti-corrosion, malleability and low melting point. Leads toxicity to humans was first pointed out in 2000 BCE by the Ancient Greek, Nicander of Colophon. In 17th Century it was again noted by a anonymous medical scholar in Germany, that monk’s who drank sweetened wine, that is wine that had been sweetened by Lead Sugar aka Litharge or Lead Acetate, developed Colic which has similar symptoms to Lead Poisoning. In 1655 the people of Devon County in England began developing what became known as Devon Colic. For the next 100 years the people of Devon suffered from this mysterious localised aliment that started with abdominal pains and ended in an agonising death. A Dr George Baker in the 1760’s decided to take a closer look at this mysterious malady. The first link in all the known cases of Devon Colic he discovered was that they all drank the famed sweet Devon Cider. After much further investigation he found the root cause to be the very presses that the cider was squeezed from. Convenient for its relative weight and malleability, Lead was used as the main contact plate in the large juice presses and used to clean them in the form of lead shot scraped across the surfaces. After a bit of local upset at Dr Baker’s proven findings the Brewers removed the lead from their presses and incidence of Devon Colic rapidly declined. From these events in Devon it was accepted into medical practice that Lead could kill you, what the symptoms were and was named Lead Poisoning. Thus Lead seemed to pass from our general culinary use, but it was to be another 220 years before this understanding became accepted in terms of regulation in manufactured products that were or could be internally consumed.

The 1980’s saw the first real regulations on Lead content in terms of paints, solders, and water systems. But obviously not Lipsticks or other beauty products, this in hindsight seems like a rather glaring omission. The average human body contains less than 0, 00000001 grams of Lead that’s 100 ppb or less than 100 parts per billion. Lead Poisoning begins at levels above 100 ppb, but only people showing above 200 ppb are considered to have been exposed to high amounts of Lead. Which bring us back to the findings that 22 lipsticks tested out of 33 showed levels above the .1 ppm or parts per million, and that’s million, not billion, the 100 ppb at which lead poisoning occurs in the human body. For the worst offender, though not directly named I noticed in the news reports, at .65 ppm, that’s 34 ppm over the known rate at which poisoning takes place, if my dodgy maths is correct. In the beauty products industry lipstick accounts for over 2 billion dollars in yearly sales with over 270 million individual lipsticks being sold and this is in the US alone. At a rough guess if only one third of that, say you buy three lipsticks in one year, is a single customer, then 90 million people are exposed to this health risk every year, again this is all in the US alone, so who knows what the world wide total is.

Now the medical representatives of the Beauty products industry are quick to say:

"These levels, considering the products and how they're consumed, really don't present a concern," -John Bailey, executive vice president for science at the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association

But is this statement even vaguely correct for the average user who applies lipstick three times everyday for say the last twenty years? That would be roughly 21600 times the user has exposed lead content to their body through the very thin absorbent layers of the lips and mouth. One of the problems with lead which has no known function in the body is that it is often stored in the bone marrow. This is how the body first deals with lead intake, rather clever for it is the safest place to put it because the body doesn’t know how to separate lead out and excrete it. As a free floating element in our body lead is particularly dangerous because it mimics other metals the body does uses like zinc, calcium and iron. This means that lead binds to and reacts with the same proteins and molecules causing a disastrous effect as the reactions are vastly different to what the body expected from zinc and the likes. So the good news is that your body stores it away relatively safely in your bones for as long as it has the space to do so. The bad news is that if you break a bone or become pregnant the lead is released into the body again. This is bad news indeed for pregnant mothers because lead has been shown to have negative effects on developing foetuses at very low levels.

What this all adds up to is yet another industry knowingly flogging consumer goods that have negative health effect for their bottom line, profit. Yes sure they can say but there is no regulation governing the amount of lead in our product, but is that a sufficient human excuse. I say human because if your ultimate bottom line is profit and that is how a business is proven in success, then why care about peoples lives when there is no law you have to obey that says otherwise, and that is inhuman bordering on sociopathic. It amounts to the old dilemma of a soldier on the losing side of any war subsequently charged with war crimes, who’s only defence, I was so ordered, can account for the deeds they now are on trial for. Not that I am condoning war criminals but this is also the excuse of the employee in any industry that is proven to be guilty of the knowing sale of harmful products or services etc. Why does a company knowingly hurt people with their products? Perhaps one could ask the Germans living in pre-WW2 towns with concentration camps nearby enjoying the benefits of Germany’s newly thriving economy. Or perhaps ask IBM who serviced the IBM computers installed at those same concentration camps, monthly, with specialist technicians flown in from overseas.

My answer together with others of like mind to this question is this: The modern corporations ultimate goal is profit, and this blind profit seeking can be characterized by a common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, and an indifference to the rights and feelings of others except when so ordered to do so by the laws of a country, if it means a higher profit margin. And this is by the way the classic textbook definition of a sociopath.

With that in mind perhaps in this instance if you are a lipstick user you should review your use of lipstick and perhaps take it down to say, zero. At least until further evidence and actual action is taken on the part of the Beauty Industry to eliminate lead from this product entirely. Unless of course you quite knowingly and willing want to suffer the accumulative effects of your lipstick use and are Dying to look Good at whatever the cost to you health and that of your unborn children.