Hey, guys! It seems lead content issues are becoming a bigger dilemma. First, children’s toys including those from mattel and thomas the tank engine series (my sons’ favorite, ). Now, I just found this news article from Reuters about lead content in lipsticks. I know most of us would be very much concerned, especially all the pretty ladies out there, since lipstick is one of the things we can’t go without.

Lead is a highly toxic substance and exposure to it could bring a wide range of adverse health effects. At even low levels, lead could bring adverse effects to our kids such as, delayed growth and development, decreased IQ levels, hearing impairment, and of course, death. Although childhood poisoning is much frequent, adults can also suffer from the risks of lead poisoning. For adults, some of the damaging effects include: hypertension, erectile dysfunction and impotence, and increased risk of cancer.

There are many other sources of lead not just mainly from paints such as, leaded petrol, PVC items, and even in soil, air, and water. The list could go on and on, you’d be surprised that lead is present in most consumer products, even in the emblem on Michael Jordan’s Nike joggers! My gosh, I should’ve known that before I bought a pair of Nike Air Jordan for my husband around 3 years ago in Melbourne Nike DFO and he just wore them for the first time this summer when he went home for a vacation!

Now back to the Reuters news, it says more than half of lipsticks tested by the US consumer rights group contained lead, popular brands like Cover Girl, LÓreal and Christian Dion had more lead than the others (geez, I checked on my lipsticks and I found that the lipstick I use as a cheek taint whenever I go out of the house is a LÓreal). I also found some web articles naming other lipstick (and lipgloss) brands that contain lead, such as Lancome, Clinique, Estee Lauder (huhu, I got this one, too) and Red Earth ( now I wonder why it closed shop in Bourke St,Melbourne).

Ok, ok, before anybody freaks out and throw all our lovely lipsticks in the bin, I should tell you that lead (or Pb in our periodic table) was one of the first metals produced by man around 3500 B.C., making it virtually part of the human history ever since. Having discovered thousand years later the risks of lead poisoning to human, various lead content guidelines and limits were established to minimize those exposure. So I think, unless our kid accidentally munched a block of lead, and as long as manufacturers adhere to these lead content limits, we shouldn’t worry much - and no more recalls.

However, the only issue here is that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has yet to set a lead limit for lipstick, and one-third of the lipsticks tested contained an amount of lead that exceeded the FDA’s 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candies. I hope the FDA would act on this quick so that other countries would also follow suit, and thank goodness, I haven’t heard of anyone who died because of wearing lipsticks.

So for now, the best thing to do is keep beautiful, put on those lipsticks (hopefully lead free) and live life to the fullest!!!!

Sources/Additional info about lead:
http://www.lead.org.au/fs/fst7.html
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/lipstick.asp

               

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Healthy Life . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.