Is your lip color safe?

Our Daily Green recently had the opportunity to review lip gloss from Vapour Organic Beauty. Vapour is the only color cosmetic manufactured to the USDA’s Organic Food Standard. Vapour is a proud member and champion company of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. Vapour sells several lines of lipsticks and glosses in fashionable shades that the consumer can feel safe and confident in using, as determined by Skin Deep from the Environmental Working Group.

Products like Vapour are reassuring after last week's news release from the University of California at Berkeley. Their lipstick study discovered that an average lipstick user might get 20% or more of their maximum safe daily intake of lead, aluminum, cadmium and manganese just from their lip product.

According to the study's principal investigator S. Katharine Hammond, professor of environmental health sciences,

Lipstick and lip gloss are of special concern because when they are not being blotted on tissue or left as kiss marks, they are ingested or absorbed, bit by bit, by the individual wearing them. The researchers developed definitions for average and high use of lip makeup based on usage data reported in a previous study. Average use was defined as daily ingestion of 24 milligrams of lip makeup per day. Those who slather on the lip color and reapply it repeatedly could fall into the high use category of 87 milligrams ingested per day.

Currently, there are no U.S. standards for metal content in cosmetics while in Europe, cadmium, chromium and lead are banned – at any level – in cosmetic products. Metal ingestion is linked to neurotoxicity, and can enter the body by absorption through the skin. Once in the body, the metals displace essential minerals such as zinc, copper, magnesium, and calcium, and interfere with organ system function.

Companies that use metal in cosmetics do so primarily to reduce costs, but often that savings is never passed onto the consumer. Instead, such companies take risks with their customers in order to increase profits.

Vapour has a much different corporate philosophy. From sourcing their ingredients in sustainable and ethical ways, to domestic production, to fair wages, Vapour is a cosmetic company whose beauty is well beyond skin deep. We are proud to endorse and recommend Vapour cosmetics to our readers.

disclosure: Our Daily Green received two beautiful lip glosses to test and review. Regardless, we stand by preference that we use cosmetics that do not contain potentially poisonous ingredients.  

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