ÖKO-TEST regularly examines a wide variety of everyday products. Now the experts are applying lip gloss. The shocking result: half of the products fail the test – many of them due to a harmful ingredient.
Lip gloss provides gloss and color on the lips, it is available with and without taste and in all shades of color. Some of the ingredients, including titanium oxide, mineral oil components and plastic compounds, convinced the magazine’s testers “Öko-Test” (12/2021) but not at all. Half of the products tested received the grade “unsatisfactory”.
16 red opaque lip gloss products were tested in the laboratory, including seven certified natural cosmetics. The result: A total of 8 products, all of them conventional products, were rated “unsatisfactory”, and 5 other glosses were rated “satisfactory”.
The following products get the grade 6:
- Essence Extreme Shine Volume Lipgloss (103 Pretty in Pink)
- L’Oréal Brilliant Signature Plump-in-Gloss (Inflate 410)
- Manhattan High Shine Lip Gloss (350)
- Maybelline Lifter Gloss (009 Topaz)
dm is the test winner: You can buy this lip gloss without hesitation
Three products, all natural cosmetics and the only ones without titanium dioxide, scored “very good”:
The laboratory does not find any harmful substances here. But natural cosmetics also have their price. At 2.95 euros for 10 ml, the test winner from dm is still the cheapest product among the very good. The Benecos lip gloss is significantly more expensive at 3.99 for only 5 ml. Among the best, the Wala product is the most expensive at a whopping 15 euros for 4.5 ml.
You can read the detailed test report read for a fee at ÖKO-TEST.
Caution, titanium dioxide! Avoid other products
When it came to the ingredients, special attention was paid to the white pigment titanium dioxide. If the lip gloss contained this substance, there was a total of two grades deducted in the evaluation.
The reason: According to the latest assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), titanium dioxide is classified as a food additive as “no longer safe” – a mutagenic effect cannot be ruled out.
The EU Commission plans to ban the controversial additive in food from 2022. Absorption through the skin has not been proven, but lipsticks and lip gloss are quickly licked off and thus get into the digestive tract.
But other problematic substances were also found in the beauty products, including two azo dyes that are harmful to health and paraffins, which can accumulate in organs. A conventional product was contaminated with potentially carcinogenic mineral oil components (MOAH). It came last in the rating.
For a detailed test at ÖKO-TEST