Some science behind the scenes
Lipstick
Lipstick has a very worrying record for containing heavy metals. Given that it is applied to the lips and inevitably is digested by either the woman or the men or women kissing her [or vice versa!], the potential for heavy metal poisoning is quite high if a woman wears lipstick for any length of time. The following papers show that quite a range of extremely poisonous heavy metals are used in lipstick. Lead............
J Cosmet Sci. 2012 May-Jun;63(3):159-76. Determination of total lead in 400 lipsticks on the U.S. market using a validated microwave-assisted digestion, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometric method. Hepp NM.
Four hundred lipsticks available on the U.S. market in the spring of 2010 were tested for total lead content using the FDA's validated method. The analyses were performed by a private laboratory contracted by the FDA. The maximum lead level found was 7.19 mg Pb/kg. Thirteen of the 400 lipsticks were found to contain levels greater than 3.06 mg Pb/kg, the highest amount found in the initial survey. The average lead concentration found in the expanded survey was 1.11 mg Pb/kg, which was very close to the average of 1.07 mg Pb/kg found in the initial survey. Some statistically significant associations between lead level and parent company were found. PMID: 23193690
and many more..
J Hazard Mater. 2010 Mar 15;175(1-3):726-32. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2009.10.069. Epub 2009 Oct 27. Spectroscopic detection of health hazardous contaminants in lipstick using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy. Gondal MA1, Seddigi ZS, Nasr MM, Gondal B.
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technique was applied to determine the concentrations of different toxic elements like lead, chromium, cadmium and zinc in four different lipstick brands sold at local markets in Saudi Arabia. These samples contain toxic elements like lead, cadmium and chromium which are carcinogen dermatitis, allergic and eczematous. Their extraction from human body takes over 40 years and accumulation in the body cause problems like disruption of nervous systems and kidney damage. They could trigger to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In order to test the validity of our LIBS results, standard technique like (ICP-AES) was also applied. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study where LIBS technique was applied for the measurement of toxic substances in lipsticks. The maximum concentration detected in four lipstick brands was much higher than the permissible safe limits for human use and could lead to serious health problems. It is worth mentioning that the lipstick is not a solid rather is in fluid state which is not trivial to analyze using LIBS technique. For this purpose, special treatment of the lipstick samples was necessary to analyze with our LIBS method.
(c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PMID: 19926220
many other studies are available on Pubmed that show that many other heavy metals are present as well.
Observations
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