Applied Lipstick Lately? You Could Be Eating Nine Pounds of Lead.
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Apply. Lick. Repeat. Before meeting, after eating and, dangerously, while driving, I spend a lot of time applying lipstick or lip gloss to my lips. And according to the Environmental Working Group, all that licking means that I, an average woman, will eat more than nine pounds of the stuff over my lifetime.
Nine. Pounds.
All grossness aside, this fact wouldn’t be so alarming if it weren’t for another: In 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a division of the EWG, found two-third of lipsticks contained lead, a known neurotoxin that has been linked to brain damage and miscarriages, among other horrors.
Nine. Pounds. Containing. Lead.
That’s enough to make me sit up, take notice, and dump the contents of my makeup bags into the trash (fearful all the time that I should be disposing of the stuff as hazardous waste).
But the news has gotten better: This year, Canada banned lead in lipstick. In August of 2008, a single vote in the State Assembly barred a similar ban in California. With a new introduction of the bill on deck for 2009, the geniuses at Teens Turning Green launched a clever “Lips Against Lead” petition, in which people are encouraged to apply lead-free lipstick and kiss an organic cotton petition, that will then be sent to the Assembly when the teens show up to shame them into passing it.
Have you looked at the ingredients in your lipstick lately? Or the labels in your makeup bag? Check your brands at the Skin Deep Database!
