When the FDA recently issued an advisory to the US cosmetics industry regarding lead in their products, it may have seen to many women that they had just time-traveled back to the 1950s. Back then, house paints and the solder used on plumbing joints were lead-based, and found to have caused a range of deleterious health effects, ranging from behavioral problems and learning disabilities to seizures and death, in babies. In adult women, lead-sourced health problems included cardiovascular disease, nerve disorders, fertility issues, kidney problems, and high blood pressure. It didn't take long to get legislation – and public awareness – in gear, and fear of baby ingesting lead from peeling paint had seemed to go the way of The Red Menace and polio.

So how did lead in lipstick get to be a “thing,” way up here in the 21st century?

In 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics found that 61 percent of the popular lipstick brands at the time contained lead, with levels up to 0.65 parts per million. The FDA picked up the ball after that, casting their net wider than just lipstick, and reported that 685 cosmetics on the market at the time contained lead levels from 0.09 to 3.06 ppm. A year later another FDA report revealed the presence of lead in 400 lipsticks; the highest levels topped off at 7.19 ppm.

So is that bad?

Not really.

The FDA upholds that lead levels under 10 ppm are safe. Ninety-nine percent of the products they tested during this period hit that benchmark.

A study done at the University of California at Berkeley in 2013 indicated that lead was present in 24 of the 32 lipstick samples tested, but at levels that were within governmental safety guidelines.

The FDA – as you would well imagine – keeps a pretty sharp eye on products designed to be spread all over your mouth that could contain carcinogens. There are, however, some dissenting views in the scientific community (not least of which at the Centers for Disease and Prevention) who believe that deleterious exposure to lead is a cumulative process, and are cautionary about re-applying lipstick multiple times during the course of a day. If you want to play your lipstick application by the numbers, we recommend you consult the Environmental Working Group's cosmetics database and make informed and healthy purchases.

At the end of the day, draw solace from the fact that there is no record of a single case of anyone ever coming down with lead poisoning through lipstick use