Lipstick: Which Brands are Safe?

The truth is, a lot of it goes into our digestive track. Some say that women ingest up to four pounds of lipstick in a lifetime.¹ All you have to do is lick your lips, and whatever is in your lipstick starts the voyage through your body. As you consume a meal, drink your coffee, or get lipstick on your teeth by mistake, you're getting toxins in your system. To make matters worse, lipstick can be absorbed right through our lips, directly into our bloodstream.

According to the non-profit group The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, "Lipstick products, like candy, are directly ingested into the body."²

Which Lipsticks are Safe?

Here are some of the safest lipsticks, as per studies done by The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.⁴

• bareFaced Mineral Cosmetics Natural Lipstick
• BioElements BioElements LycoPlex Lipstick (Papaya)
• Afterglow Cosmetics lipsticks
• Coastal Classic Creations lipsticks
• Cosmic Tree Essentials Lip Care Confections Lipstick
• ELUSYION Elusyion Vegan Mineral Lipstick
• Gourmet Body Treats aNTI aGING LIPSTICK
• Honeybee Gardens Truly Natural Lipstick
• Inika Mineral Cosmetics Mineral Lipstick
• Raw Natural Beauty, LLC Raw Color Primal Pigments Pure Botanical Lipstick
• Zosimos Botanicals

Many mainstream commercial lipsticks contain ingredients that Mama would never have put on our dinner plates. Can you imagine sitting down to a meal of phthalates (reproductive toxins), glycol ethers (neurotoxins), coal tar-based colors, petroleum, phenylenediamine (or its cousin, p-pehnylenediamine, aka PPD) which is a suspected toxin⁵, benzene (a known carcinogen)⁶, formaldehyde⁷, parabens (preservatives), and lead?^{3, 8}

How to Wear Lipstick Safely

The key to using safe lipstick is knowledge. Keeping up with the news out of consumer groups, reading cosmetic company websites - some makeup brands do disclose their ingredients on their sites - and staying away from makeup that you know nothing about, are all ways we can protect ourselves.

Another way to stay safe is to consider changing over to some of the new, natural or organic cosmetic companies. And there are a lot them cropping up to fill women's demands for safer and more health conscious beauty and body products.

More About Safe Lipstick Brands

Afterglow Cosmetics, for example, makes lipsticks from certified organic materials. They have full ingredient disclosures on their website, with jojoba seed oil, aloe leaf extract, and apricot kernel as the first three.

Mineral Fusion, a part of the Whole Body section of Whole Foods, is another all-natural cosmetic, with lipsticks made with natural and even nutritive ingredients. And "without anything you wouldn’t want to swallow."⁹

Other reputable lipstick brands that are accepted by watch groups as safe include Befine Lip Serum (a plant-based lip gloss), CARGO Cosmetics PlantLove™ Botanical Lipstick (the tube is made of 100% corn and the lipstick is made of Orchid Complex™, meadowfoam seed oil, jojoba, and shea butter), Gabriel Cosmetics lipsticks (top ingredients are jojoba oil, castor oil, candelilla wax, and sesame oil), and Bare Minerals' 100% Natural Lipcolor (made with natural waxes and plant extracts).

There's no reason to skip makeup in favor of health. You can have both beauty and health. Just do your research before eating any more lipstick.

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