Watch your lips

Ladies, careful what you wear on your lips - your red as cherries lipstick might be full of lead!

The tests for lead in lipstick were conducted by an independent laboratory over the month of September on red lipsticks bought in Boston, Hartford, Connecticut, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

Twenty of 33 brand-name lipsticks tested contained detectable levels of lead, with levels ranging from 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million, ppm. None of these lipsticks listed lead as an ingredient, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of women's, public health, labor, environmental health and consumer rights groups.

. . .Eleven of the tested lipsticks exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candy - a standard established to protect children from directly ingesting lead.

The Food and Drug Administration has not set a limit for lead in lipstick.

Among the top brands testing positive for lead were:

• L'Oreal Colour Riche "True Red" - 0.65 ppm
• L'Oreal Colour Riche "Classic Wine" - 0.58 ppm
• Cover Girl Incredifull Lipcolor "Maximum Red" - 0.56 ppm
• Dior Addict "Positive Red" - 0.21 ppm

Disturbing - who knew that reapplication and ingestion of lipstick could result in accidental absorption of lead?!? What's interesting is that it's not something that necessarily happens with cheaper lipstick versus more expensive - in fact the more expensive lipsticks were found to contain higher amounts of lead.

So think before you pink, or dread before you wear red?

And thus concludes my post for Blog Action Day.