Some Eyeliners Contain Potentially Harmful Levels of Lead

Kohl and other traditional eyeliners can be made from a wide variety of ingredients, including plants or oils that are burned to produce soot, or minerals that are ground into powders. Some of these can contain lead, particularly the mineral lead galena, aka lead sulfide.

Due to the lead risk, the Food and Drug Administration has designated kohl, kajal, and surma (as well as tiro, al-kahal, tozali, and kwalli) as illegal color additives and prohibited their use in cosmetics in the U.S. But products made in other countries are easily purchased online or carried into the U.S. when people travel internationally. 

Things can get confusing here because many makeup brands sell nontraditional eyeliners but still use kohl, kajal, or other traditional names for their products. However, in these cases, they are marketing terms, not product descriptions or indicators of specific ingredients. These eyeliners are entirely different from traditional eyeliners, Hankir says, because they are made from different materials and are generally highly processed. 

Pure Earth conducted a small pilot study of kohl, kajal, and surma eyeliners from beauty companies that labeled or marketed their products using these terms. The report did not identify the brands. 

The group sent 56 eyeliner samples representing 39 different products to an independent lab for lead testing. For most of the products, only one sample was tested. 

Although not all the products were necessarily intended for sale in the U.S., they were easily purchased from online vendors, including Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and TikTok Shop, and shipped to Pure Earth’s U.S. offices or picked up in person at stores in New York City. 

“We can’t say that our study is representative of the entire market,” says Pure Earth’s Kinally. However, “we can very confidently say that our data shows there are dangerous eyeliners available in the U.S.” (Pure Earth consulted with CR scientists during its testing and data analysis.)

The FDA has advised cosmetic companies to limit lead in their products to 10 parts per million. In Pure Earth’s tests, more than half of the 56 samples tested above that limit.

Nine samples exceeded 100,000 ppm, which means they were made up of more than 10 percent lead. The eyeliner with the highest lead content tested at 380,000 ppm—or 38 percent—lead. (You can download a copy of the full report on Pure Earth’s website.) 

Concerningly, 17 samples in total claimed to be lead-free, but lead was detectable in all but two of them. The rest with this label had between 7.4 and 380,000 ppm, including two products geared to babies.

That’s a key takeaway for consumers from this research, says Drew McCartor, Pure Earth’s president. “A ‘lead-free’ label isn’t a guarantee of safety, which is why stronger consumer protections in the U.S. and abroad are so important.”

Research into lead contamination of traditional eyeliners (including Pure Earth’s study) isn’t always designed to identify the sources of lead found in the products. But experts we spoke with said it’s likely that products with extremely high lead levels—100,000 ppm or more—are made with lead galena. In products with much smaller amounts—up to around 100 ppm or so—unintentional contamination somewhere during the manufacturing process was probably the source. 

Lead in eyeliner may be absorbed through the mucous membranes in the eyes. It also likely enters the bloodstream via what scientists call the hand-to-mouth route. In other words, you get traces of the product on your hands as you apply it or after touching your eyes when you’re wearing it. You can then transfer the eyeliner to food you eat or ingest it when you touch your mouth throughout the day.

No level of lead is safe, especially in children. Elevated blood lead levels can have devastating health impacts, damaging children’s brains and nervous systems, slowing their growth and development, and causing learning and behavior problems and more. 

There’s plenty of evidence linking traditional eyeliner use to high blood lead levels. Case studies in New Mexico and Boston, for example, reported high blood lead levels in children whose parents used traditional eyeliner on them. Researchers ruled out other possible sources of lead exposure, including food or lead paint, and follow-up testing found that the children’s blood lead levels decreased significantly after their parents stopped applying the eyeliners to them. 

Larger studies have found similar results. In a 2024 study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers in New York City found high levels of lead in some products collected from brick-and-mortar stores and from people’s homes during lead poisoning investigations between 2013 and 2022. They also found that among children with elevated blood lead levels, those who wore traditional eye cosmetics tended to have higher blood lead concentrations than those who didn’t. 

While the risks appear to be greatest in children, adults aren’t immune to the potential effects of lead in eyeliners. “Small amounts of exposure from a variety of sources, such as food, water, and cosmetics, can add up to potentially harmful levels in the body over time,” says James. E. Rogers, PhD, director of product and food safety testing and research at Consumer Reports. 

Pure Earth says manufacturers, vendors, and regulators need to take stronger action to ensure that traditional eyeliners and other cosmetics sold in the U.S. and around the world are safe. 

CR asked the FDA for comment on its efforts to enforce the recommended 10 ppm lead limit in cosmetics and to protect U.S. consumers from potentially harmful cosmetics being sold online. 

“Companies and individuals who market cosmetics have a legal responsibility to ensure the safety of their products,” an FDA spokesperson told CR. Cosmetics and their ingredients don’t need to be approved by the FDA before they’re marketed. But kohl and other traditional eyeliner materials are an exception. The agency considers those color additives, which must be approved by the FDA for their intended use. (And these traditional eyeliner materials have been banned by the FDA.)

The agency spokesperson also pointed to the FDA’s power to place import alerts on products that violate the law, including cosmetics found to contain illegal color additives or excessive amounts of lead. Once a product is added to the import alert list, the shipment can be refused admission, and future shipments can be blocked from entering the U.S. 

The FDA has an import alert in effect for several products with color additive violations, but it appears that the last time any traditional eyeliners were flagged under this alert was 2018. The agency also pointed us to an import alert issued for cosmetics adulterated with heavy metals, but no traditional eyeliners appear on that list. 

The agency also told CR that the “FDA periodically buys cosmetics to analyze them, especially if we’re aware of a potential problem.” The agency can then have them tested and notify consumers and manufacturers if it finds a problem. But the spokesperson did not indicate whether the agency has any plans to take any such actions around lead-contaminated eyeliners. 

The best way to protect yourself from lead in traditional eyeliners is to avoid them. But for people who come from communities where they’re widely used, this isn’t a simple solution. “These are very culturally ingrained products,” says Paromita Hore, PhD, MPH, director of environmental exposure assessment and education at the New York City Health Department and lead author of the Pediatrics study. 

Culturally informed education can make a difference. In a 2025 study, published in PLOS Global Public Health, researchers tested traditional eyeliners purchased in Washington’s King County, or collected from homes of people who used them and found that some contained very high levels of lead. The researchers also interviewed members of communities who frequently use such products. They found that more than 90 percent of traditional eyeliner users said they didn’t realize that the products could contain lead, and many said they were open to switching to safer, comparable products.

“It’s not like they were using these eyeliners despite knowing that they were unsafe,” says Aesha Mokashi, MS, one of the study’s authors and a health and environmental investigator with the Hazardous Waste Management Program in King County. “They just didn’t know.” (Mokashi consulted with Pure Earth on its study but was not involved in the actual research.)

Nontraditional eyeliners may be less likely to contain high levels of lead. In the King County study, the median lead level in the nontraditional eyeliners the researchers tested was just 0.06 ppm, with the highest level being 1,800 ppm. For the traditional eyeliners, though, the median lead level was 10 ppm, and the sample with the highest concentration had 840,000 ppm—or 84 percent lead.

Ultimately, the problem isn’t the practice of using traditional eyeliners, Hankir says. “I think it would be tragic for us to give up these traditions because of these impure compositions in the market,” she says. Consumers who don’t want to forgo this important cultural or religious practice (or others who wish to use traditional eyeliners) can use these tips to reduce their risk. 

Wash your hands. This is always a good move before and after applying makeup, but it’s especially important if you do choose to use traditional eyeliners. It helps reduce the risk of accidental ingestion if you touch your face or food. 

Be savvy about terminology. In Pure Earth’s testing, products with more than 100,000 ppm of lead included samples labeled as kohl, surma, and kajal. But other research has found that kajal, if not totally risk-free, may be less likely to contain high levels of lead than kohl or surma.

For example, Paromita Hore at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says that in her Pediatrics study, products with sky-high lead levels were labeled “kohl” or “surma,” while those labeled “kajal” were much lower. Hore, who grew up in South Asia, says that the kajal she was familiar with from her childhood was usually made with soot, not lead galena.

The King County study found similar results. While a few samples of kajal did have lead levels above 100,000 ppm, most didn’t, and the average levels were much lower for kajal products than for kohl or surma. 

Prioritize ingredient transparency. Hankir advises caution with products that don’t have straightforward lists of their ingredients. “I would be wary of an imported product that doesn’t have packaging or ingredient labels or any regulatory information,” she says. 

Even in products with ingredients lists, the use of vague terms—such as “kohl powder” or “black surma stone”—is another red flag, according to Mokashi. She says that in her research, eyeliners with nonspecific ingredient names tended to be very high in lead. 

Don’t rely on a “lead-free” label. Pure Earth’s study wasn’t the only one to find that products specifically advertised as “lead-free” sometimes had very high levels of lead. The King County study also found extremely high levels of lead in such products. One product had 610,000 ppm lead, or 61 percent. 

Be wary of powder eyeliners. The products with the highest concentrations of lead in Pure Earth’s tests were powders. Just two of the 18 powder samples contained less than 10 ppm of lead. The others tested between 11 to 380,000 ppm. In contrast, the 38 cream eyeliner samples ranged from nondetectable levels of lead to 68 ppm; more than half of them contained 10 ppm or less.

Make your own. The state of Washington’s Department of Ecology, as part of its efforts to help people avoid lead-contaminated traditional eyeliners, has shared a few simple recipes using food-grade activated charcoal, oil, and sometimes wax. Check out its information sheet (PDF) and tutorial video for details.