(The product contained bimatroprost, a prescription drug used to to treat elevated pressure inside the eye). marshals seized more than 12,000 tubes of Age Intervention Eyelash, a product designed to promote eyelash growth, after the FDA determined it was an “adulterated cosmetic” and potentially dangerous. The cosmetic industry has responded, for the most part, that lead - if present at all - is only in trace amounts the FDA, which has not set a limit for lead in lipstick, is looking into the CSC’s findings.

cosmetic manufacturers list ingredients on the label.īut in October of 2007, the question of cosmetic safety surfaced yet again when the advocacy group Campaign for Safe Cosmetics announced that a third of the 33 red lipsticks it had examined by an independent lab contained what the group considered a “hazardous level” of lead. Further safety measures followed, such as the FDA’s 1977 requirement that U.S. Among other things, the new law brought cosmetics and medical devices under FDA control. In 1936, Ruth DeForest Lamb, chief education officer of the FDA, published a collection of these tragic tales of botched beauty in her book “American Chamber of Horrors,” a move that helped bring about the eventual passage of the revamped Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Other popular blooms, balms, powders and potions of the 19th and early 20th century such as Berry’s Freckle Ointment, Milk of Roses, Snow White Enamel and Flake White contained mercury, lead, carbolic acid, mercuric chloride and a handful of other “delightful” corrosives. In 1869, the American Medical Association published a paper entitled “Three Cases of Lead Palsy from the Use of a Cosmetic Called ‘Laird’s Bloom of Youth’” which outlined the symptoms (fatigue, weight loss, nausea, headaches, muscle atrophy, paralysis, etc.) caused by the regular use of the much-touted skin whitening lotion, advertised as a “delightful and harmless toilet preparation” which, incidentally, contained lead acetate and carbonate. When famous Irish beauty Marie Gunning (aka the Countess of Coventry) died in 1760, the press called her a “victim of cosmetics.” One way some people finally stopped was by dying, which eventually prompted members of the medical community and the press to sound the alarm about the dangers of certain cosmetics. It was a horrible process - once you got started you couldn’t stop.”

“And the way they covered that up was to apply thicker amounts of the makeup, which would then exacerbate the situation. “People would put whitening on their skin and over time, it would eat the skin away, causing all sorts of scarring,” he says. The “dead white” look was tres chic back then and as a result men and women painted their faces with a mixture of white lead and vinegar, peeled their skin with white lead and sublimate of mercury and used lead sulfate to remove their freckles (and hopefully nothing too vital, like a nose).Īccording to Kevin Jones, curator at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum in Los Angeles, the use of cosmetics packed with lead, mercury, arsenic and other dangerous elements made for a particularly vicious cycle. Of course, the use of white lead in ancient Rome paled in comparison to the workout it got during the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. According to scholars, the place was lousy with lead and some have conjectured that lead-lined viaducts, cooking pots and wine vessels - and the resultant poisoning - helped bring about the fall of the empire. Lead was also a major ingredient in the hair dyes of the day, either intentionally or otherwise. Their white lead face cream, according to a 2001 article in the journal Clinics in Dermatology, was designed to “clear complexions of blemishes and to improve the color and texture of the skin” and was such a big hit that lead-based face masks soon became all the rage.ĭespite lead's health hazards, ranging from skin ruptures to madness to infertility, upper-crust Romans went on to use white lead (or cerussa, the key ingredient in those once-popular lead paints) to lighten their faces, then topped that off with a bit of red lead (or minium, currently used in the manufacture of batteries and rust-proof paint) for that “healthy” rose glow. Men and women in ancient Greece took things a step further by slathering lead not just around their eyes, but all over their face.

Origins make up