Can Beauty Be Dangerous?
By Suzanne D'Amato
The Washington Post
January 27, 2008
Lipstick tainted with lead. Mascara that
contains mercury. A hair-straightening treatment
that slicks your tresses with protein...and
formaldehyde? As three recent controversies
show, sometimes the world of beauty can be
downright ugly.
Take the lipstick debate. Last fall, a study
gave women reason to worry about their war
paint: The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33
lipsticks for lead, from Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer
to L'Oreal Colour Riche. They found that 61
percent of the lipsticks tested contained a
detectable amount of the contaminant. In fact,
several lipsticks exceeded the Food and Drug
Administration's lead limit for candy. (The
study used candy as a benchmark not only because
women ingest both candy and lipstick -- albeit
in vastly different amounts -- but also because
the FDA does not set lead standards for
lipstick.)
Even a minuscule amount of lead is a big
problem, says Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
spokeswoman Stacy Malkan. "What the companies
will often say is, 'There's a little toxin in
one product and you can't say it causes harm,' "
she says. "But none of us uses just one
product." Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates
in the body over time, which is why tiny amounts
ingested regularly (or in the case of lipstick,
multiple times per day) could be hazardous.
Not everyone sees lead in lipstick as quite
the issue Malkan does. "Lead is in our
environment, even without all the industrial
production of chemicals," says John Bailey,
chief scientist for the Personal Care Products
Council, a D.C.-based trade association. "It's
part of the earth...I don't think it really
warrants these alarmist conclusions."
Right now, concerned lipstick lovers don't
have a lot of options. "The only way to find out
if your lipstick has lead is to send it to a lab
and pay $150," Malkan says. "I think that's
ridiculous, to expect consumers to do that."
It's considerably easier to find out if your
mascara contains mercury. Traditionally added as
a preservative, the substance is rare in
cosmetics these days. When it exists, it's
generally in cake mascaras, such as those made
by Paula Dorf and La Femme, rather than wand
versions. You may see it listed as "thimerosal,"
a mercury-based compound.
In eye-area cosmetics, the FDA allows mercury
if no other effective preservative is available.
The concentration can be up to 65 parts per
million. That may not sound like much, but the
presence of mercury in any amount worries some
people. This month, Minnesota imposed a ban on
many products containing the substance,
including thermostats, medical devices and, yes,
mascara.
"It's a potent neurotoxin that can cause
brain damage in developing fetuses," Malkan
says. "Many women get mercury from fish and
other sources. We don't need any more."
Bailey says that the FDA uses a voluntary
reporting program for cosmetics ingredients; the
program has no current registrations that report
mercury being used in the eye area, he says. "We
certainly can't count on a voluntary reporting
program," Malkan says. "We need a real reporting
system." To see whether any products you use
contain mercury or other potentially hazardous
ingredients, she recommends the Environmental
Working Group's Skin Deep Web site (http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com),
which lists information on more than 27,000
cosmetics and personal-care products. That may
seem like a high number, but it's a small
fraction of what's on the market, Malkan says.
The Skin Deep site is a useful resource: It
gives each product a 1-to-10 "hazard score" and
offers detailed information on its ingredients.
But the site analyzes only over-the-counter
products. Salon treatments are not examined --
and for controversial ones such as the Brazilian
Keratin treatment, that's unfortunate. The BKT,
as it's known, is a hair-straightening process
that has smitten women in search of silky,
frizz-free tresses. It also contains
formaldehyde, a carcinogen.
"It is really, truly what I consider the
miracle cure for hair," says Dennis Roche, who
offers the treatment at his two Roche salons in
the District. Roche says his salons use a
formulation that contains "under 2 percent"
formaldehyde. But he says the percent
concentration is irrelevant -- what matters is
the amount of formaldehyde that gets released as
fumes when heat is applied. Roche says he
minimizes that amount by using cool-air hair
dryers and flat irons wrapped in heat-protectant
tape.
"I'm going to continue doing this because I
see the benefits from it, and I don't believe
there's any health risk -- nothing more than
hair color or fake nails or anything else,"
Roche says. "I don't think a little hair color
is going to hurt anybody."
The issue, of course, is that it's hard to
know. Beauty products and treatments don't have
to get FDA approval before hitting store
shelves; the FDA mandates such approval only for
color additives in cosmetics. Sure, most people
probably would agree that you shouldn't eat your
lipstick or put mascara on a baby. But beyond
that, the definition of "dangerous" comes down
to different people's ideas about the effects of
accumulated toxins. How much is too much? If
experts can't agree, consumers can't be
confident either.
"I love the way my hair looks. I'm so happy
with it," says Roche client Lauren Stempler, who
lives in the District and has gotten the
Brazilian Keratin treatment twice. "But it's a
hard choice....There is that nagging feeling in
me that it might not be worth it." Return to Miessence
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