Angry in the Great White North

A reader forwarded this email to me. It has to do with the hidden danger of lead in high-end lipstick brands:

Next time you go shopping for Lipstick......This comes from someone works in the breast cancer unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital , in Toronto .

From: Dr. Nahid Neman

If there is a female you care anything about, Share this with her. I did!!!!!

I am also sharing this with the males on my e-mail list, Because they need to tell the females THEY care about as well!

Recently a lipstick brand called 'Red Earth' Decreased their prices from $67 to $9.90. It contained lead. Lead is a chemical which causes cancer. The lipstick brands that contain lead are:

CHRISTIAN DIOR
LANCOME
CLINIQUE
Y.S.L
ESTEE LAUDER
SHISEIDO
RED EARTH (Lip Gloss)
CHANEL (Lip Conditioner)
MARKET AMERICA-MOTNES LIPSTICK.

The higher the lead content, The greater the chance of causing cancer. After doing a test on lipsticks, It was found that the Y.S.L. Lipstick contained the most amount of lead. Watch out for those lipsticks which are supposed to stay longer. If your lipstick stays longer, it is because of the higher content of lead. Here is the test you can do yourself:

1. Put some lipstick on your hand.
2. Use a Gold ring to scratch on the lipstick.
3. If the lipstick color changes to black,

Then you know the lipstick contains lead. Please send this information to all your girlfriends, wives and female family members.

This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer, Especially breast cancer

To her credit, the person who forwarded this to me was skeptical. And she was right to be. This lipstick email is well known to the rumour site, snopes.com. As explained in the website, the content of lipsticks is highly regulated. The "test" is bogus:

The streaks that supposedly herald the presence of lead in one's lipstick are in reality dark marks produced by the testing agents themselves. Gold, silver, copper, and pewter leave these trails no matter what they're rubbed against, in the same way that pencils make marks on whatever surfaces they are trailed along. That these marks appear more prominent against a lipstick backdrop is attributable to contrast — streaks that look grey against a white background seem brown against a reddish background, and brown is a color more readily picked out by the eye.

But the most telling problem in the email is that lead doesn't cause cancer. Lead poisoning is nasty and potentially deadly, but it is not a cancer (primarily it is a form of anemia caused when lead interferes with a cell's ability to incorporate iron during heme synthesis, though lead interferes in a number of other biological processes as well).

As for Dr Nahid Neman, he doesn't exist, at least according to the Canadian Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association. Of course, the CCTFA is not likely to say anything good about this email, but given that "Nahid Neman" does not appear to have ever been interviewed with regards to his finding concerning toxic lipstick, I bet the CCTFA is right. In any case, doctors don't publish their findings via viral emails.

So stay on guard for bad toothpaste, and think twice before buying any seafood products from China. But try not to get your information via unsolicited emails. And take a moment with your favourite search engine to check the information. If you get a hundred hits and every one of them says "Hoax!" then it's probably a hoax.

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