Sindoor holds a significant place in Indian society. The bright red or orange coloured powder, sindoor or vermillion is worn by married Hindu women in India for the longevity of their husbands’ age. But a new research highlights the sindoor to be unsafe for use. It claims it to contain high quantity of lead, which could have its adverse effects. Apart from the usage by females for cosmetic purposes, vermillion is widely used in Hindus festivals and cultural events, making the researchers worry about the lead contamination even more.
Sindoor powder sold in the United States and India could have unsafe levels of lead, warn researchers in the new study. According to the Reuters report, of the 118 sindoor samples tested in the survey, 95 were from South Asian stores in New Jersey. Another 23 came from stores in Mumbai and New Delhi, in India. Overall, about 80% of the samples had at least some lead, and about a third contained levels above the limit set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Vermilion is a brilliant red or scarlet pigment originally made from the powdered mineral cinnabar and is also the name of the resulting colour. But the new study has found that some manufacturers use lead tetroxide to give sindoor a distinctive red colour. The study author is Dr Derek Shendell of Rutgers School of Public Health in Piscataway in New Jersey.
He was quoted saying, “We are diverse here with a lot of individuals who emigrate or travel from many parts of the world through airports on a weekly basis. If there is a product that could be contaminated with lead, it’s of public health interest. There’s possibility of spread through ingestion or inhalation.” The FDA’s limit for lead in cosmetics is 20 micrograms per gram. 19% of the U.S. sindoor samples and 43% of the India samples exceeded that limit. Five samples – three from the U.S. and two from India – contained more than 10,000 micrograms.
Shendell’s team found that 83% of the U.S. samples and 78% of the samples from India had at least one microgram of lead per gram of powder. “There is no safe level of lead,” Shendell said. “It shouldn’t be in our bodies, especially for children under age 6.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns, “Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement and effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected. The most important step is to prevent lead exposure before it occurs.”