The Lip Gloss-Skin Cancer Connection | Cosmetics & Makeup

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The Lip Gloss-Skin Cancer Connection

What’s on your lips right now? Gloss? Balm? Lipstick? Odds are in the last hour or so, you’ve applied some kind of lip product. Unless of course you’re reading this late at night in your PJ’s while watching Conan. Of course, even then you’ve probably applied an overnight lip balm in the not-so distant past. So what’s the point? We are obsessed with our lips. They need to be moist. They need to be shiny. They need to be kissable.

They also need to be cancer-free.

According to some dermatologists, our obsession with lip products could lead us to apply some products that we should stay away from. For instance, many lip glosses do not carry an SPF at all and the very nature of a gloss is to provide a deep shiny finish. Without a sun damage inhibiting SPF, that shiny finish could actually increase your risk of skin cancer according to Dr. Christine Brown, a Dallas-based dermatologist at Baylor University Medical Center.

“These lip glosses can make more of the light rays penetrate directly through the skin instead of getting reflected off of the skin’s surface,” she says.

It is estimated that 3,500 new case of skin cancer of the lips are diagnosed each year in the United States. Dermatologists like Brown believe that this trend is on the rise and is linked to the use of non-SPF lip glosses.

Not only do non-sSPF lip glosses fail to protect, but they may actually increase the prospective damage of the sun. Dr. Bruce Robinson, a dermatologist in Manhattan, believes that part of the problem with lip gloss is the moisture content. The hydration of a lip gloss compromises the skin’s naturally protective outer layer, allowing UV rays to penetrate the skin more deeply he says. According to this thinking, the sun’s rays may reach deeper into glossed lips than into unprotected skin. In addition, Dr. Robinson believes the shine of the glosses can add to the problem.

“Take a magnifying glass and put it over your lips,” he says, “that’s essentially what you’re doing.”

At the very worst, sun-exposed lips can produce potentially fatal forms of skin cancer, but some of the non-life-threatening effects of sun exposure can eye opening as well. If your lips are unprotected and exposed to the sun, you could be building non-cancerous deposits on your lips. Just the idea of building deposits of any kind on your skin is reason to become squeamish, but some of these deposits can actually cause small brown spots to appear on your lips or, even worse yet, cause the development of wart-like bumps from a condition called actinic keratosis.

While no hard research exists to definitively tie lip gloss to skin cancer of the lips, it’s a caution worth mentioning and a concern to think about. You certainly don’t want to develop skin cancer anywhere and the idea of bumps manifesting themselves on lips we try so hard to keep kissably soft is enough to send all of us to check the labels on our favorite lip glosses. If your gloss has an SPF of at least 30 (50 is better) you should be OK. If your variety doesn’t offer an SPF, look for one that does.

It’s just smart skincare to look for an SPF in every product you use on your skin – lips included!

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