Grecian Formula marketer Combe likens the process and calculations that informed FDA’s final rule against lead acetate to “a child’s game of telephone.” Environmental Defense Fund warns that if FDA grants Combe’s request – which the NGO suspects is unavoidable – it intends to cross-examine the company’s witnesses about consumer complaints and their handling in the firm’s past.

FDA’s final rule is specific to lead acetate’s use in hair-coloring products, but the agency’s recognition of current consensus – “that there is no safe exposure level for lead” – could spook the wider cosmetics industry, particularly given that some of the same NGO petitioners that drove the rulemaking are clamoring for an all-out ban on trace lead in lipsticks and externally applied cosmetics.

EWG – already seeking prohibitions on trace lead in cosmetics – joins with a slew of other consumer advocacy groups seeking a ban on lead acetate’s use in progressive hair dyes. The color additive was approved by FDA more than three decades ago before lead exposure risks were fully understood, they suggest.