Parents Beware of Childrens Toxic Face Paint This Halloween

It has just been brought to our attention that some children's face paints contain lead, which is a neurotoxin that can harm the brain at low doses.  So, the face is the last place you would want to be applying this stuff ... and certainly not on our children!  This info comes from a report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of nonprofit health and environmental groups.

In some of the paints tested, the lab identified the heavy metals nickel, cobalt and chromium, which are skin allergens, even in products labeled "non-toxic" and "hypoallergenic."  Since these metals are not listed on product labels, parents shopping for Halloween makeup have no way of knowing which products are safe. The only way to know if a cosmetic product contains lead or other heavy metals is to test the product at a laboratory, which the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics did for their report.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics sent 10 children's face paints to an independent lab to test for heavy metals.

The lab test results found:

• All 10 of the children's face paints tested contained lead at levels ranging from 0.05 to 0.65 parts per million. 
• Six out of 10 face paints contained nickel, cobalt and/or chromium at levels ranging from 1.6 to 120 ppm - far exceeding industry safety recommendations of one ppm.
• Snazaroo Face Paint, labeled as "non-toxic" and "hypoallergenic," contained some of the highest levels of lead, nickel and cobalt found in the study.

"Lead is dangerous to the developing brains of children at any level. It is now widely accepted in the scientific community that there is no threshold level below which lead is safe," said Phil Landrigan, M.D., director of the Children's Environmental Health Center Mount Sinai School of Medicine. It is recommended that parents avoid using cosmetics on their children, to avoid any possible contamination with lead.