The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently updated its Q&A regarding lead in lipstick. In that Q&A, the FDA announced that it has developed a new method of testing lead in lipsticks and retested all lipsticks reported to contain high amounts of lead.
In response to the report published in October 2007 by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, the FDA reported that it was not able to determine if a method validated for the analysis of lipstick was used to generate the data in the report. It, therefore, developed a validated and highly sensitive method for the analysis of total lead content in lipstick and applied the method to the same selection of lipsticks.
The FDA found an average value of 0.97ppm in the lipsticks, an expected level for lipsticks formulated with permitted color additives and manufactured under good manufacturing practice conditions. The FDA's findings and details on its test method will be published in the July/August issue of the Journal of Cosmetic Science. Following publication, FDA's testing method will be available for use by any suitable analytical laboratory for the determination of total lead in lipstick.
FDA concluded that although it did not find dangerous levels of lead in any of the lipsticks tested, it will continue to test a larger group of lipsticks to confirm its findings.