It looks so beautiful on our lips - pretty colors, glosses, matte lipsticks, and lipsticks with glitter. But what happens to the lipstick during the day, as it fades? Where does it go?

The truth is, a lot of it goes into our digestive track. Some say that women ingest up to 4 pounds of lipstick in a lifetime.¹ All you have to do is lick your lips, and whatever is in your lipstick starts the voyage through your body. As you consume a meal, drink your coffee, or get lipstick on your teeth by mistake, you're getting toxins in your system. To make matters worse, lipstick can be absorbed right through our lips, directly into our bloodstream.

According to the non-profit group The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, "Lipstick products, like candy, are directly ingested into the body."²

Lead in Lipstick

Okay, so what exactly are we eating, when we ingest lipstick? Some popular commercial brands actually contain lead in their red shades. The FDA's labeling requirements for lipstick are not adequate, so the only way to know if your lipstick contains harmful ingredients is to have it professionally tested. Tests conducted by The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found unacceptable levels of lead in L’Oreal Colour Riche “True Red,” L’Oreal Colour Riche “Classic Wine,” Cover Girl Incredifull Lipcolor “Maximum Red," and Christian Dior Addict “Positive Red,” among others.³ Consumer groups are calling on these companies to revise their formulae, and some of them are.

Lipstick: A Toxic Soup

But it's not just lead that we're eating. Many mainstream commercial lipsticks contain ingredients that Mama would never have put on our dinner plates. Can you imagine sitting down to a meal of phthalates (reproductive toxins), glycol ethers (neurotoxins), coal tar-based colors, petroleum, phenylenediamine (or its cousin, p-pehnylenediamine, aka PPD) which is a suspected toxin⁴, benzene (a known carcinogen)⁵, formaldehyde⁶, and parabens (preservatives)?⁷

How to Wear Lipstick Safely

The key to using safe lipstick is knowledge. Keeping up with the news out of consumer groups, reading cosmetic company websites - some makeup brands do disclose their ingredients on their sites - and staying away from makeup that you know nothing about, are all ways we can protect ourselves.

Another way to stay safe is to consider changing over to some of the new, natural or organic cosmetic companies. And there are a lot them cropping up to fill women's demands for safer and more health conscious beauty and body products.

Safe Lipsticks

Afterglow Cosmetics, for example, makes lipsticks from certified organic materials. They have full ingredient disclosures on their website, with jojoba seed oil, aloe leaf extract, and apricot kernel as the first three.

Mineral Fusion, a part of the Whole Body section of Whole Foods, is another all-natural cosmetic, with lipsticks made with natural and even nutritive ingredients. And "without anything you wouldn’t want to swallow."⁸

Other reputable lipstick brands that are accepted by watch groups as safe include Befine Lip Serum (a plant-based lip gloss), CARGO Cosmetics PlantLove™ Botanical Lipstick (the tube is made of 100% corn and the lipstick is made of Orchid Complex™, meadowfoam seed oil, jojoba, and shea butter), Gabriel Cosmetics lipsticks (top ingredients are jojoba oil, castor oil, candelilla wax, and sesame oil), and Bare Minerals' 100% Natural Lipcolor (made with natural waxes and plant extracts).

There's no reason to skip makeup in favor of health. You can have both beauty and health. Just do your research before eating any more lipstick.

      Footnotes

      ¹ AfterglowCosmetics.com

      ² "New Product Tests find Lead in Lipstick," The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, new release Oct. 11, 2007.

      ³ "A Poison Kiss: The Problem of Lead in Lipstick," Safe Cosmetics.org, Oct. 2007.

      ⁴ Scorecard: The Pollution Information Site.

      ⁵ Wikipedia

      ⁶ "Is Your Lipstick Safe" by Anuja Mendiratta, MsMagazine.com, summer 2006.

      ⁷ "Beware of Paraben Preservatives in Body Care Products: Cosmetic chemicals found in breast tumours," OrganicConsumers.org, Jan. 12, 2004

      ⁸ "Cosmetics: Choosing Beauty to Believe In," WholeFoodsMarket.com/WholeBody