Our founder, Ada Hsieh, often talks about how and why she founded this company to her friends and business partners. When she goes deep into the topic of toxicity levels in lipstick, most of the responses often sound like this, "What? Really? I never knew that! I never thought about that!" That's the problem with the beauty industry. Ingredient transparency is still a bit of a mystery across the table.  If you landed on this page, chances are you are looking for natural alternatives to regular run of the mill makeup (much like organic food vs processed food).  If you don't know yet, here's a quick intro to what this site is all about.  Ada Lip Beauty is a clean beauty brand. Our goal is to keep our entire product line as natural as possible. Our lipstick line is 100% naturally derived and our lip scrub is at 96% respectively.  We are thoughtful in our formulations to make sure there is integrity. 

So what’s our problem with traditional lipstick? Research has shown women that wear lipstick ingest at least 4 POUNDS of chemicals into their system from the lipstick over their lifetime. It makes sense, we’re eating and drinking. The lipstick is bound to be ingested during those times too.  Our bodies don’t know how to flush out some of these chemicals and so it just sits there wreaking havoc on our lymphatic system and God (and science) knows what else inside of us.

At Ada Lip Beauty, we aim to make our products as “edible” as possible so our body can process it like food and flush it out of the system. In our years of research for product development, we came across countless articles detailing the harms of traditional lipstick.  Yet, everyone continues to turn a blind eye. The times are changing though. Consumers are more intelligent about ingredients and more conscious about what's going on and in our bodies. 

A research done in 2007 called A Poison Kiss, tested 33 common brands of lipstick and 61% tested positive for lead. That’s about 20 lipstick brands. Wait. Don’t automatically assume that it’s the drug store brands. Think again. Brands that produce in the masses like Loreal and Covergirl, to the elite high end like Dior all tested positive for lead. We hope that since this report was released some of the brands have rethought their formulations, but why when it doesn’t hurt their bottom line and clean products were never a part of their branding or mission?

Lead exposure can lead to learning and behavioral problems, delayed onset of puberty, reduced fertility in both genders, and hormonal imbalances. The list goes on and on, and sometimes even death. The FDA has taken steps to limit lead in cosmetics, but that doesn’t make any sense to us...limit the amount of lead? How about just ban it?  Seems like a no brainer. Lead = bad. Bad = don’t use it. Duh.

Image courtesy of Gregory Buzdyk

You can read all about it here on the FDA website. CLICK

Let’s be really honest though, since we’re here already. If anyone thinks lead is the only bad ingredient in lipstick, we’re really sorry to burst your bubble. There’s sooo many other chemicals and toxins in traditional lipstick. We would have to write a novel on everything and it’s causes and effects on our health.  Don’t forget we’re EATING this stuff.  It’s really quite frightening. It made us horrified and prompted us to create a better product, a truly clean product. Out of every bad thing in this world, you can always choose to do better. So we decided to do better.