Product Is Safe, but Its Contents a Bit Unsavory

Half the people in the United States are its potential consumers; retail sales of the stuff are already a billion dollars a year. No one swallows very much of it--at most, half of each helping, a matter of micrograms--but those who do indulge come back for more up to six times a day; who knows how much they take in over a lifetime?

What is it?

By law, a list of ingredients is supposed to be on or near each package sold to consumers, but in many stores the product is sold unpackaged--no box, no paper, no blisterpack--and if there was once a notice on the sales rack, it’s long gone.

Less than 5% of the product is made up of substances that require government approval before sale because of the possibility they may be health hazards. The rest are “self-regulated,” that is, their producers are responsible for screening them before sale, and no one investigates further unless consumers report trouble.

Come on, what is it?

Has Acids, Too

Apart from added flavor, fragrance or color, it’s all just goop, a combination of waxes and oils. Some of the more recognizable names might be lanolin oil, castor oil, sesame oil, avocado oil, petrolatum, cocoa butter, candelilla wax from candelilla plants, beeswax, carnauba wax and ceresin wax.

There are also a number of fatty acids (recognizable to those who know fatty acids), some preservatives (more anti-oxidants than anti-microbial agents, because the product’s inherent lack of water makes it unwelcoming to microbes), and a considerable list of dyes, including red dyes Nos. 3, 6, 7, 9, 21, 27, 30, 33, 36, blue dye No. 1, orange dye No. 5, yellow dyes Nos. 5 and 6.

So what are we eating here?

It’s lipstick--a common product whose consumers only once in a while read the ingredients and then are sometimes appalled by what they’re eating. They’re all pretty much the same from one brand to another: It’s the case and the marketing that makes the price range from $1 to $15 per tube. They’re also not discussed much: Cosmetics companies asked for anything other than a 5-by-7 glossy of a model wearing their brand are slow to return calls or provide information or talk on the record.

There are a few variations on the basic product, although even the variations are the same from company to company. Some lipsticks are “hypoallergenic,” which means, for starters, that they leave out perfume. Some are frosted, or pearled, or luminescent, which means they contain mica or guanine, a silvery pigment from herring scales. Some contain sunscreen--the current fad--although sunburned lips aren’t a common complaint, and even companies that are making sunscreen lipsticks admit that lipsticks without sunscreen already are inherently “sun-protective.”

Depends on Ratio

Some also are “long-lasting” (formerly called “indelible”), a characteristic achieved several different ways.

The length of time a lipstick remains on the lips partly depends on the wax-to-oil ratio: “the more oily, the more easily it flows off, and the waxier, the more it sticks,” says the product development director for a company that makes indelibles. It depends also on the kind of wax used: Some just have more “slip” than others.

Such lipsticks may also contain dyes that, while not literally indelible, do react chemically to bond with, and stain, the surface layer of skin.

The formula may also include various polymers that “modify the compound to give you a material that’s lubricious but has a nice adhesive quality,” says George A. Fioto, executive vice president of research and development for Revlon. “This gives it ‘stick,’ and it still has a good mouth feel.”

Apart from the sunscreen, which is categorized as a drug, the colors are the only components of lipstick that must be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration’s colors and cosmetics division before the product is marketed. “The origins (of colors) are such that they demand closer scrutiny,” says John E. Bailey Jr., the division’s acting associate director for colors.

Some coal tar dyes--the source of many lipstick colors since the late 1800s--have been found to be carcinogenic in animals. Indeed, artificial coloring of foods and cosmetics has historically been a problem: In the 18th and 19th centuries, chromium, lead and copper went into dyes, and they poisoned people. Furthermore, Bailey says, dyes were traditionally used for “coloring products that were quite substandard, and there’s still some public perception that color could be intended to deceive and is unnecessary in food.”

All “batches” of dye must be submitted to the FDA and certified for their use in foods, drugs and cosmetics. In the late 1970s, several red dyes were actually “delisted,” or removed from the list of dyes called “provisionally” safe--meaning they’re considered safe for use but are subject to additional testing and evaluation.

Generally speaking, “the FDA has responsibility for the whole product,” says John A. Wenninger, the division’s associate director for cosmetics, but only the colors have a “pre-clearance requirement.” For the other ingredients--widely considered inert, inactive and innocuous--and the product as a whole, “there’s no regulatory action,” says Wayne Stevenson, an FDA chemist in cosmetics, “unless they’re shown to be a health hazard.”

Lipstick is considered a low risk, and thus a low regulatory priority. It’s assumed that any problem would surface in consumer complaints, and the FDA gets very few involving cosmetics--in all, perhaps 250 a year, says Wenninger. If a lipstick drew four or five complaints, it would be a lot, and even then, they would probably be individual allergic reactions.

So while one probably shouldn’t make lipstick a dietary staple, even a heavy user is probably safe. At least as far as anyone knows now.