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Toys from China aren't the only products under fire for potentially dangerous lead content. Now, a number of common department and drugstore lipstick brands are being targeted by a cosmetics safety advocacy group.

In lab tests performed for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics on 33 lipsticks purchased in five cities across the United States, 61 per cent were found to include lead in levels ranging from 0.03 parts per million (ppm) to 0.65 ppm.

One-third of the lipsticks tested exceed the Food and Drug Administration's 0.1 ppm limit for lead in candy.

The group posted the report, called "A Poison Kiss: The Problem of Lead in Lipstick," at Safecosmetics.org last week. In it, the group named names, many of them the industry's iconic deep-red shades. (One theory about how lead gets into lipstick is that the colorants may contain lead.)

Some of the highest lead contents belong to L'Oreal Colour Riche "True Red" and "Classic Wine" shades at 0.65 ppm and 0.58 ppm. Other brands at the top of the list include Cover Girl and Dior.

"The cosmetics industry needs to clean up its act and remove lead and other toxic ingredients from their products," said Stacy Malkan, a member of the campaign and the author of Not Just A Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, in a statement.

"Repeated, daily exposures to low levels of lead add up - and they add up on top of lead from paint and drinking water, which is especially a problem in low-income communities. There's no excuse for lead in lipstick or toys," Ms. Malkin said.

The testing was done by the Bodycote Testing Group laboratory in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., with a method called "inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry," in which sulphur and nitric acid were used to extract the lead from lipstick samples.

Lead has been linked with a number of health problems, including nervous-system damage, cancer and organ damage. It has been connected with infertility and miscarriage, according to the report. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says lead has been shown to reduce children's IQ scores.

Peter Wells, a toxicology professor at University of Toronto's faculty of pharmacy, says the findings are alarming on the surface.

"If the FDA has established that there is a safe limit, and this lipstick is six times that, [it] does sound like it would be a concern."

The campaign is urging the FDA to establish maximum levels of lead in cosmetics. Health Canada has been tackling the issue on a case-by-case basis. In 2005, Health Canada issued an advisory that many traditional kohl eye pencils contained harmful levels of lead, and were especially dangerous if ingested by children.

"Lead is forbidden and therefore any kohl product containing lead would be too," it read.

Some toxicology experts say it's hard to know the true extent of the risk to women who use the lipstick brands singled out by the campaign.

Dr. Wells says the FDA limits on lead in candy may have been calculated to project the amount of lead a child might ingest if they ate an entire bag. Even then, acceptable doses for children are presumably much lower than for adults.

What's more, it's difficult to determine exactly how much lead a woman might be getting from her lipstick: how much does she use, how often and how often does she lick her lips?

For now, Dr. Wells says he'd worry less about adult women than their teenaged daughters, whose brains are still forming until the age of 20. Parents might want to check out the lipsticks in the medicine cabinet to avoid all risk.

"Technically, you don't want any lead in a kid's brain. Young girls are wearing lipstick, so you do have to be worried about them."

Generally, though, Dr. Wells urges calm. He says there's an old saying in toxicology: The dose makes the poison.

He says lead levels may be irrelevant if they're so low they'll have no effect. So, "to say you can't have any lead in it is probably a bit hysterical."

Still, while scientists home in on exactly how much lead in lipstick might be dangerous, the issue is likely to gain traction with beauty companies and consumers alike, says Adriana Ermter, a beauty editor at Fashion magazine. She says lead is only one of a number of cosmetics ingredients on their way out, including sulphates, which aid in soapy lather; parabens, which are chemical preservatives, and various petroleum-based ingredients.

"It reminds me of the awareness in the 1980s about animal rights and testing standards," she says. "Now, it's about looking for alternative solutions for better health."

Ms. Ermter adds that until now, the issue of lead in lipstick has been mostly an e-mail-fed rumour swirling though inboxes. Before she bans red lipstick from her cosmetics bag, she wants more definitive research.

"I don't know how much of it is hype and how much of it is urban myth."