


Chapstick* wasn’t always filled with chemicals. A physician named Dr. C. D. Fleet first created the lip balm in the early 1880s, in Lynchburg, Virginia. The first chapsticks resembled small, wick-less candlesticks wrapped in tinfoil. Dr. Fleet decided the sales of his lip balms weren’t lucrative enough to be worth his time, so he sold his recipe for $5 to John Morton.

Chapped Lips Could Be Poisoning You

John Morton and his wife made their first chapsticks in their kitchen at home. The couple make the chapsticks pink and used brass tubes to mold the sticks. The Mortons sold their successful Chapstick* business to H. Robbins Company in 1963.

The H. Robbins company is responsible for adding flavors to lip balms (in 1971), adding SPF 15 sunblock to the sticks (in 1981), and in 1985- petroleum was added to the lip balm and remains as the Chapstick we know today.

Are You Absorbing Toxic Chemicals From Your Lip Moisturizer?

Active ingredient of Chapstick “Original” flavor:
White Petrolatum 45%

Inactive ingredients:
arachidyl propionate, camphor, carnauba wax, cetyl alcohol, fragrance, isopropyl lanolate, isopropyl myristate, lanolin, light mineral oil, methylparaben, octyldodecanol, oleyl alcohol, paraffin, phenyl trimethicone, propylparaben, red 6 lake, titanium dioxide, white wax, yellow 5 lake

Petroleum is a liquid mixture of geological formations from beneath the earths surface. The extracted liquid is refined to produce gasoline, diesel oil, kerosene and is also added to many beauty products like Chapstick. Recent studies published on the ChemTox website reports toxic side effects of petroleum ingredients: “Petroleum based chemicals are being found to cause significant attritional effects to the nervous system and immune system after prolonged exposure. Illnesses identified in the medical research include adult and child cancers, numerous neurological disorders, immune system weakening, autoimmune disorders [and more].”

Carnauba wax is obtained from the leaves of the Brazilian Carnauba palm leaves. Topical application of titanium dioxide-carnauba wax can cause dry skin, acne, rash, contact dermatitis, allergic reaction, skin irritation, and inflammation of the hair follicle. I’m not sure how this ingredient is an affective ingredient for treating/preventing chapped lips.

Isopropyl myristate is the ester of isopropanol and myristic acid. One of the uses of Isopropyl myristate is for the treatment of head lice. This ester dissolves the wax that covers the exoskeleton of head lice, killing them by dehydration.
When used in products like Chapstick, this chemical is absorbed deeply, clogging the pores. This may choke the supply of oxygen into the skin, resulting is dead skin, since the skin has been deprived.

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