Overview
Sánchez-Gutiérrez and colleagues screened 63 lipsticks and 366 eyeshadows from Morelia, Mexico, by portable XRF and analyzed a subset of 19 by ICP-OES, comparing high, mid and low price ranges. Arsenic was not detected, while cadmium reached 10.2 mg/kg in eyeshadow and vanadium and barium reached thousands of mg/kg. Low-price products carried more lead-bearing minerals, and high-price lipsticks had the lowest metal levels.
Key numbers
- Cadmium: lipsticks “<DL-6.9”, eyeshadows “<DL-10.2” mg/kg; arsenic “<DL” in both (Table III, p. 427).
- Lead in lipsticks by XRF: maximum 303, minimum 8, median 18 mg/kg (Results, p. 419).
- Vanadium in lipsticks: “51-3732” mg/kg (Table III).
Methods (brief)
Lipsticks and eyeshadows were scanned by portable XRF (detection limits 2 to 10 mg/kg). Nineteen were digested with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide in a microwave and analyzed by ICP-OES (lead quantification limit 5.7 mg/kg). XRD and SEM-EDS identified minerals and particles. An internal reference material checked XRF accuracy.
Evidence Fitness
Large XRF screen but semi-quantitative, with a small ICP-OES subset. Tables do not always say which method a value comes from, and the lead results conflict: Table III gives 6.2 mg/kg for lipstick while the ICP-OES text says lead was not detected in lipstick. Lipsticks and eyeshadows are a color-cosmetic proxy for cosmetic-clay, which is not linked.