Don't Eat Your Lipstick

Your lipstick may be killing you! At least, that's what Joy Sewing of the Houston Chronicle wants you to think. Her article in Friday's paper ("An ugly discovery: Lead in lipsticks a concern") is just the sort of bad, alarmist journalism about science that drives me crazy.

More than half of 33 top-brand lipsticks recently tested contained detectable levels of lead, according to a report released Thursday by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of environmental and public health groups advocating toxin-free products.
...

Lead in high doses has been related to learning and behavioral problems in children and has been linked to miscarriages and other health issues in adults.

The study compares lead levels found in lipsticks to the federal standard for lead in candy, which is .1 parts per million, since there is no current standard for lead levels in lipstick, Malkan said.

Oh, where to begin? Let's start with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The article says that this is a "coalition of environmental and public health groups," but it doesn't list what those groups are. The Campaign's website lists its founding organizations, and a lot of them sound like advocacy groups to me: Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, Breast Cancer Fund, Clean Water Fund, Commonweal, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, National Black Environmental Justice Network, National Environmental Trust, and Women's Voices of the Earth. Not surprisingly, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics sounds like an advocacy group, too: among other things, it apparently wants the FDA to regulate cosmetics and other personal care products and for cosmetics companies to sign its Compact for Safe Cosmetics. It's not that research funded by advocacy groups is inherently unreliable, but it ought to be subject to a heightened scrutiny because advocacy groups obviously have an interest in presenting only evidence that supports that which they are advocating. If there existed a trade group consisting of the cosmetics manufacturers of America and this group released a study purporting to show that all cosmetics on the market were perfectly safe, shouldn't such a study be subjected to more scrutiny than such a study put out by an unaffiliated university? Well, why shouldn't a study put out by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. But there isn't a whole lot of evidence that Joy Sewing has done this. The story reads like a press release from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, with a couple of fig leaf quotes from L'Oreal and the FDA.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics prominently mentions on their website that L'Oreal, Estee Lauder, and Avon have refused to sign their Compact. Is it any wonder that products from these manufacturers are singled out in their study? It seems to me that one of the purposes of this study was to generate bad publicity for companies that had refused to sign the Compact.

But what do motivations matter if the study was properly-conducted and shows that there are problems? So, the question is whether the study actually does show a problem. In the study, the standard of comparison for lead levels in lipstick is the FDA-permissible lead level in candy. But this doesn't seem reasonable to me. Candy is a food product largely consumed by children, who apparently have more lead sensitivity than adults. Lipstick is not a food product, and it is not primarily used by children. A more appropriate standard, it seems to me, is that of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which says:

The scientific community generally recognizes a level of 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood as a threshold level of concern with respect to lead poisoning. To avoid exceeding that level, young children should not chronically ingest more than 15 micrograms of lead per day from consumer products.

The big loser in the Campaign study was L'Oreal Colour Riche True Red, which had 0.65 parts per million lead. That means that it contains 0.65 micrograms of lead per gram of lipstick. A quick Google search reveals that a standard tube of L'Oreal Colour Riche lipstick weighs 0.13 ounces, or 3 grams. In order to reach the CPSC maximum lead consumption number, a child would have to eat more than seven tubes of lipstick daily. And remember that lead is more of a danger for children than it is for adults.

Unless you're eating the lipstick rather than wearing it, and unless you're eating it in massive quantities, the lead levels reported in this study don't seem alarming to me. Rather, they, and this story, seem calculated to alarm consumers for no good reason. The Campaign study is meaningless, its hyping of the study's results is dishonest, and Joy Sewing has allowed herself to be manipulated. A shameful performance all the way around.

Today's Shoes

Alden half-brogue bluchers in dark brown suede with commando soles and antique tan edge and heel trim (Barrie last). Like the boots yesterday, these shoes were special orders, although these were from Adam Knott at Alden of Carmel instead of Alan White at the Alden Shop in San Francisco. Also like the boots yesterday, the suede used on these has a longer nap than the standard suede that Alden uses on their shoes. I don't understand why the shops that make up special runs of Alden shoes don't use these suedes more often -- they're so much more visually appealing and tactilely impressive than the standard Alden suede.

Within a week of receiving these (after maybe six or seven months of waiting for them -- when Alden did one-off special orders, they weren't exactly zippy about it), I was in a grocery store sampling some olive oil on bread, and wouldn't you know that I of course dripped it on my new suede shoes. The standard advice for such crises is to use white vinegar on the oil spot, and that's what I did. It helped; but if you look closely, you can still see the spot, about the size of a dime. Alas, alas. Don't sample olive oil when wearing non-waterproof suede shoes.

Last Night's Tipple

There are those who say that Americans should try to make American-style alcoholic beverages, not to attempt to ape European-style ones. The most obvious example of this argument is Paul Draper from Ridge Vineyards, who has famously emphasized American grapes like Zinfandel and Petite Sirah (American grapes in the sense that they have not been major wine-making grapes anywhere but in America for the past 100 or 150 years, not in the sense of ultimate origin) as part of field blends like Lytton Springs and Geyserville and even more famously ages all of his wines, including his top-of-the-line Cabernet Sauvignon (Monte Bello) in American oak instead of French oak. Though this argument is less prominent in the world of spirits, it's still there. Chuck Cowdery, who is a prominent writer about American whiskey, thinks that it is absurd for American distilleries to try to make Scotch single-malt-style whisky. We've evolved an excellent whiskey-making tradition in America, he says, just as the Scots have in Scotland. We should honor our own traditions, not automatically think that they're inferior to the traditions in other countries.

Paul Draper and Chuck Cowdery might not like the motivation behind Clear Creek Distillery's Eau de Vie de Pomme, then. Clear Creek is in Oregon; and Steve McCarthy, Clear Creek's distiller, is explicitly trying to rival the best Calvados with this product. He distills it using an alembic pot still, just like Calvados. He ages it in ex-Cognac casks, just like Calvados. The time in barrel is 8 years, which is common among better Calvados. The only difference, aside from his scale of production, is that he uses local Golden Delicious apples rather than the Norman cider apple varieties like Rouge Duret, Ramboult, Mettais, Saint Martin, and Frequin (thanks, Wikipedia!) that Calvados producers use. And, indeed, the result is a very Calvados-like apple brandy. It's more lightly-colored than I remember Calvados of similar age to be and it has less of the unctuous caramel-cinnamon flavors that the best Calvados has, but it is very good. The only thing that I have to complain about is the fact that every now and then, I get an aroma like nail polish remover, which is off-putting. It's not consistent, though, which is a good thing. While I respect the argument made by Draper and Cowdery and while I think many Americans could benefit from not reflexively assuming that European is equivalent to better, I can't fault anyone who wants to make apple brandy that tastes like Calvados, which is undoubtedly one of the world's most sublime spirits. This brandy is not inexpensive at $21 for a 375 ml bottle, but it is a very good attempt.

Old No. 7

Sara calls my attention to a recent article in Business Week magazine by David Kiley about the way that Jack Daniel's is marketed overseas ("Jack Daniel's International Appeal"). JD is the best-selling American whiskey brand in the world; and alone among all American whiskey brands, it sells more whiskey outside of the US than inside, with Brown-Forman (the owner of the JD brand and distillery) expecting to sell 4.8 million cases abroad next year.

Given the weakness of the dollar and the fact that American whiskey is easy to like with its luxuriant sweetness, it's not that surprising that JD's overseas business is booming. But one aspect of their success is a bit unusual. The marketing message emphasizes JD's rural roots and the quality and honesty of the product, and that marketing message is remarkably similar throughout the world:

It's all a matter of emphasis, but Lynchburg's homey roots play some role in every market. To make sure, Brown-Forman, unlike a lot of spirits marketers, contractually has the last word on ads in all world markets and generates all ads from its U.S. agency, Arnold Worldwide, in Boston. To drive home the brand strategy, Master Distiller Jimmy Bedford travels abroad around 100 days a year, educating new hires at distributors and in the bar trade about Jack Daniel's and American whiskey, going as far as to conduct tastings of Jack Daniel's with and without its signature charcoal filtering.

The marketing isn't identical in every country, of course: ads in Britain play up the ruralness of Lynchburg, where the JD distillery is located, while that's not done in Indian ads because most JD consumers there don't have the positive associations with rural life that Brits do. However, the ads all look the same and all convey the same sort of message regardless of where they are printed. The ad pictured could easily be translated and run otherwise unaltered in an American magazine or on the side of a British bus. Not only that, but the marketing message has remained essentially unchanged for the last fifty years.

Jack Daniel's isn't my favorite American whiskey, not by a long shot (although I really like the JD Single Barrel), but I have to respect them for their constancy and their refusal to retreat into the gimmicks that American brewers and white spirits makers (Bacardi mojito, anyone?) have traditionally resorted to. The downside to their success has been a reluctance to let the whiskey mature as long as it needs to and a growing problem with the quantity of their water supply. But still, JD is an American classic, and I am happy for their ability to sell their product at the ends of the earth.

Today's Shoes

Alden two-eyelet plain-toe chukka boot in tobacco suede with a reverse welt and a mini-lug rubber sole that Alden calls "commando" (Barrie last). Standard Alden suede is dark brown with a very short nap. This suede is a rust brown with a significantly longer nap. It's much richer-looking and -feeling than the standard offering. I don't quite understand why Alden doesn't use it except for retailer make-ups or one-off special orders (like this one was, although Alden has suspended one-offs for the time being). Heck, I don't understand why more retailers don't do make-ups in it.

Last Night's Tipple

I like pumpkin. Or, to be more accurate, I like sugar and the spices that are typically used in pumpkin pie. To be honest, when I bought the bottle of Buffalo Bill's Brewery Pumpkin Ale, I was hoping to get alcoholic pumpkin pie in a bottle. It's not. It reminded me of a hefeweizen because it tasted so strongly of cloves and not much else. I don't like cloves in isolation. I like cloves when they're combined with sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. This beer could have benefited from more malt and more cinnamon and nutmeg.

I've never heard of it before, but apparently Buffalo Bill's Brewery is a microbrewery and brewpub in Hayward, California. There are some interesting looking beers in their line-up. Let's hope that the others are more appealing than the pumpkin ale.

Attack of the Killer Cell Phones

The Telegraph of London ("Britain's No. 1 quality newspaper website") reports about a study purporting to show that cell phones are dangerous and must be kept out of the hands of children (it's always for the children, isn't it?):

People who have used their phone for a decade are twice as likely to be diagnosed with a tumour on a nerve connecting the ear to the brain, according to a group of scientists who have surveyed the results of 11 different studies.

Prof Kjell Mild, of Orbero University, Sweden, who is a Government adviser and led the research, said that children should not be allowed to use mobile phones because their thinner skulls and developing nervous system made them particularly vulnerable.

This news story is an example of the kind of science reporting that drives me crazy. I realize that there isn't the space is a newspaper story to explore all of the nuances of the underlying data presented in the study or the methodology that the researchers used, but how can a reader form a reasonable opinion about the soundness of the study without any information at all about how it was conducted. Okay, it's not strictly true that there is no information about how this study was conducted, but just saying that it was a survey of 11 other studies provides next to no information other than that all of the data used is derivative. And what about the conclusions? What if it is true that heavy cell phone users double their chances of developing a nerve tumor than those who aren't? What is the chance of developing this tumor without a cell phone? If it's 1 in 10 million, doubling it is insignificant and should not cause any rational person to alter his cell phone usage at all. If it's one in four, then it's an entirely different situation. This article is good for nothing but causing unwarranted alarm, and I suspect that that was the entire point.

(No, I don't read the online version of The Telegraph regularly. This story caused a flurry of radio "news" blurbs, and I went looking for their source.)

Today's Shoes

Day

Edward Green half-brogue bluchers in antiqued tan calfskin (Edwardian Antique, I think) with single leather soles (Cardiff model, 89 last -- these shoes were made for Ralph Lauren, hence the RL-specific last).

Evening

Crockett & Jones Handgrade plain-toe monkstrap in antiqued tan calfskin with single leather soles (Mortimer model, 330 last). The designation "handgrade" for these shoes is nothing more than marketing hype. They are factory-made with Goodyear-welting machines. It may be (and almost certainly is) the case that certain steps are performed by hand and that it takes a good deal of skill for an operator to do even the machine-facilitated steps, but this isn't a handmade shoe.

Last Night's Tipple

The stated age of 1792 Ridgemont Reserve is 8 years, although it is possible that some of the constituent barrels are older than that (something that is true for every age-denoted bottle of spirits except for single-barrel bottlings and those that specify the date of distillation). It's not because Barton, which distills Ridgemont, is cheap or a low-quality operation. It's because the master distiller doesn't believe that additional age will benefit his Bourbon. He's not alone: there are a number of Bourbon distillers who don't like super-aged whiskeys and who wouldn't sell them if there weren't commercial pressures to do so. Jimmy Russel at Wild Turkey is one of these. While it is true that WT offers twelve and fifteen year old bottlings (for overseas consumption), Russel makes no secret of the fact that he doesn't think that Bourbon can benefit from that much age. I can see both sides of the argument. It's difficult for me to imagine Ridgemont getting better with more age because it's pretty outstanding right now as it is, and yet Van Winkle 15 year old is about as close to perfect as I can imagine a spirit being. Perhaps it has something to do with the mashbill (Ridgemont is a ryed Bourbon with an unusually high malt component, while Van Winkle is famously a wheated Bourbon), maybe the distillation process, maybe the types of rickhouses that each is aged in. I don't know. But I do know that it doesn't pay to be an age worshipper. Older is not necessarily better.

Today's Shoes

Day

GJ Cleverley bespoke split-toe bluchers with a handsewn apron and toe seam in Russian reindeer calf with double leather soles.

See those shoe trees? They're made from the last that these shoes were made on (to provide an exact fit for the shoe) out of light-weight unvarnished wood. I don't know who actually made the trees (Cleverley almost certainly did not), but there's a reasonably good chance that it was Spring Line. Spring Line is a Northampton company that is an integral but little-known part of the British shoe industy, providing products for both the ready-to-wear and bespoke trade. In addition to lasted shoe trees, they also provide finished lasts and rough-turn lasts (the latter being the basic last shape that a lastmaker then works down to produce the finished lasts) to bespoke makers (none of the big-name West End bespoke makers use the finished lasts). For the ready-to-wear makers, they will grade lasts (ie, duplicate a particular "master" last in all of the different sizes and widths that the maker needs) and duplicate lasts (because ready-to-wear manufacturers need lots and lots of lasts) in either wood or plastic.

Evening

John Lobb Paris split-toe penny loafer in dark brown pebble-grain calf with a single leather sole (Campus model, 3198 last).