A Poison Kiss: The Problem of Lead in Lipstick

Overview

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics commissioned Bodycote Testing Group to measure lead in 33 unopened red lipsticks purchased from U.S. retail stores in four cities in August 2007. The report found detectable lead in 61 percent of tested lipsticks, with source-reported concentrations ranging from 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm), while 13 lipsticks were below the 0.02 ppm laboratory detection limit. The report is a nonprofit advocacy publication with an independent ISO 17025 laboratory, a small convenience sample, incomplete dissolution in some samples, and an average spike recovery of 53 percent; use it as B-tier occurrence/context evidence rather than as a representative U.S. market distribution.

Key numbers

• Sample frame: 33 unopened red lipsticks purchased in August 2007 in Boston, Hartford, Minneapolis, and San Francisco from local drug stores, big-box discount chains, high-end cosmetics shops, and department stores.
• Overall detection summary: 61 percent of the 33 lipsticks contained detectable lead; detectable concentrations ranged from 0.03 to 0.65 parts per million (ppm).
• Non-detect group, Appendix A: 13 of 33 lipsticks had lead <0.02 parts per million, the lowest level detectable by the lab.
• Detectable but below the report’s FDA-candy comparator, Appendix A: 9 of 33 lipsticks had lead values below 0.1 ppm; the values listed were 0.03, 0.03, 0.03, 0.03, 0.04, 0.06, 0.06, 0.09, and 0.09 ppm.
• Above the report’s FDA-candy comparator, Appendix A: 11 of 33 lipsticks had lead levels higher than 0.1 ppm; the values listed were 0.11, 0.12, 0.12, 0.18, 0.19, 0.21, 0.28, 0.50, 0.56, 0.58, and 0.65 ppm.
• Matched-product variability: the report says repeated purchases of the same brand/color in different cities showed little difference for four matched sets, but two matched sets differed by 0.15 ppm and 0.44 ppm; four tubes of one same brand/color spanned 0.12, 0.18, 0.27, and 0.56 ppm.
• Regulatory context quoted by the report: the FDA had no finished-product lead standard for lipstick at the time, while FD&C color-additive lead limits were stated as 10 to 20 ppm on a colorant basis and colorants were described as being used around the 1 percent range in highly colored products.

Methods (brief)

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics members purchased red lipsticks from retail stores in four U.S. cities during August 2007 and sent 33 unopened products to Bodycote Testing Group in Santa Fe Springs, California. The report states that the laboratory was ISO 17025-accredited and used inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry for quantitative lead analysis. For each sample, 0.5 grams were extracted with sulfuric and nitric acid. The report gives a detection limit of 0.02 ppm, notes that some samples did not completely dissolve, and reports that spike recovery averaged 53 percent.

The public report does not provide per-sample replicate results, blanks, uncertainty intervals, or a laboratory report appendix beyond the product-result table. It explicitly cautions that the 33 lipsticks may or may not represent the entire lipstick market and that lead levels are not consistent by brand, shade, or state of purchase.

Related evidence

• Lip products (lipstick, gloss, lip liner, adult lip balm)
• Lead

Update history

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