Rant Thursdays: Etsy Sellers and Safety

Before my rant, if you do not follow Pixiwoo, here is a recent post that was awesome! So true, there can be a lot of talent behind a look, but it really only comes alive when there is a personality to match it.

Onto my rant.. I recently started following Phyrra, and stumbled upon this post. I had never heard of Hi Fi Cosmetics, but I was very interested. They have some amazing colors, and glitters, and at the time a great sale going on.. The color that I was most interested in was Live Large, so I followed the link and checked out their etsy store. They seem to be established with lots of positive feedback, cool names/pics/products.. so I figured they knew what they are doing.. Until I checked out Live Large (which apparently they took down, possibly because of my comment on Phyrra's blog?). Anyway, the ingredients listed were: "mica, titanium dioxide, carmine, red 33, cosmetic grade polyester glitter." You are probably thinking.. 'whats wrong with that?', well.. red 33 is not an approved colorant for eye products according to the FDA. The rest had this generic list:

“contains mica, may contain sericite, kaolin, iron oxide, zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, ultramarines, silica, carmine, ferrecyanide, fdc and lake dye, bismuth, and tin oxide”

which has now been changed to:

"contains mica and titanium dioxide, may contain sericite and magnesium stearate, kaolin and rice powder, fdc and lake dye, iron oxide and cosmetic grade glitter, calcium aluminum borosilicate and zinc oxide, ultramarines and silica, palmitic acid and carmine, ferrecyanide and bismuth oxychloride, tin oxide and boron nitride, magnesium myristate and hydrogenated polybutene, for a specific list of ingredients please convo or email"

I can understand having a generic list, that's fine.. But now she doesn't state what lakes/dyes that she uses, and I do not trust that they are the ones that are approved for eyes. I am not out to ruin her business or anything, but if you are going to go into business you should know the rules of safety. I hope for her sake that she has insurance, but if she can't learn the dyes that are safe for eye use (which are not very many), then I'm guessing that insurance may be too much of a bother too.

This bums me out because I was interested in trying her stuff, but I guess some things are 'too good to be true'. I have not spent too much time on etsy, but I suspect it is even worse with some other sellers. Sometimes I wish I didn't know so much about this, then I could enjoy those bright vivid colors.. but then again, I like my eyes, so safety first :)