What Is The Price Beauty?
There have recently been several probing investigations into the safety of consumer products, and it’s about time. Consumer products are sorely under-regulated, and lo and behold, scrutiny from scientists and advocacy groups is revealing that everyday products contain toxic chemicals. In the latest, researchers out of the University of California at Berkeley sampled lipsticks and lip gloss products used by young women in the Asian American community, and found an array of metals including lead, chromium, titanium, aluminum, cadmium, and manganese. Several of these metals are known carcinogens. Other groups have reported similar results, such as the US Food and Drug Administration in a study that detected lead in every lipstick sample tested. These findings are quite disconcerting given that lead is toxic with no known safe level, and since the product under scrutiny – lipstick – is applied directly to one’s mouth, leading to ingestion.
The Berkeley researchers took their findings a step further by conducting an ad hoc hazard assessment in which they estimated the intake of metals a woman would get from a typical number of lipstick applications per day (2.4 times), the amount transferred to the lips (10 mg), and the average body weight in their study. Since metals in lipsticks aren’t regulated in the US, they compared the estimated intake from lipstick use to safety levels used by the California Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water. They found that with typical usage, almost 1/3 of the lip products they tested would cause chromium ingestion in amounts exceeding safe limits. With high usage (8.7 applications per day), safe levels for chromium would be exceeded for 2/3 of the products. A large proportion of products also contained levels of concern for manganese. The news was better for other metals they studied, including lead, nickel, and copper, for which estimated intake didn’t exceed safety thresholds. More research into the safety of consumer products is clearly needed, particularly since the number of chemicals in such products is vast – lipstick contains not only pigments, but other unregulated ingredients such as phthalates.
So, now that we know lip products contain hazardous chemicals, is there any evidence that lipstick use causes health effects? An estimated 60% of women in the US use lipstick several times per week, so even small risks from this exposure could have a broad impact. For such a widely-used product, however, there has been surprisingly little research on possible health risks. In fact, I could only find one epidemiologic study on the topic (from an admittedly cursory search). In a study conducted in the Boston area, women who regularly used lipstick (defined as 3 or more times per week) had 71% higher risk of developing lupus (an autoimmune disease) than those who didn’t use lipstick at all. This association with lupus was stronger for women who used lipstick more frequently and for more years, and for women who started using lipstick at a younger age. Findings from this initial study have not yet been followed by further research, although the recent detection of metals in lipstick certainly provides context to do so.
With so many unavoidable hazardous exposures in our lives, why would women continue to add to their personal exposures by using an optional product like lipstick? I’m curious to hear from others on this topic. Do you think you’ll reconsider use of lipstick based on this emerging information about possible health risks? Or in the balance of personal benefit versus risk, is lipstick use worth it for you?
Thank you for reading, God bless you!
1 comments:
Click here for commentsWhoa, I didn't know that cosmetic items for ladies have health hazards in them too. May be, women should put on less make-up items as they now discovering the presence of harmful chemicals in those beauty products. Thank you that you wrote such a useful information.
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