Laura DiGirolamo: Exposing the Lipstick Industry's Big Dirty Secret

27:12Like now they call it a lip wardrobe. Ask a woman how many lip products she has in her bag at any one time. It'll give you an idea of just how big. It's a$14 billion industry. Lip, not beauty. Lip.

27:25Darin Olien:And what I didn't, I was completely oblivious to how young it starts now. Great point. Six years old, seven years old. So the fastest growing segment for lip is age nine to 17. and they're flavoring it like foods and and i have a i have a theory nine to 17 and i have a theory as to why this market this segment has grown so quickly and so so significantly um there was a big uh sort of awareness campaign a few years ago where young young girls were going into the beauty retailer and saying, mommy, mommy, I want that. Or they take their savings and they go and buy a retinol skin cream and they're screwing up their skin.

28:18So there was all kinds of reaction to that. The industry saying we need teen safe brands. And that's when you started to see these very specific niche brands coming up, targeting teens for safer skincare. But what the reaction was, and I think this is why the marketplace exploded. if your daughter or your son comes to you and say, I want that skincare, I want this, I want, and let's be honest, most of it is young girls. But you go in and you say, mom, I want this. And mom says, no, that's not safe for your skin. Pick out a lip gloss, pick out a lip product. And if it now has a food flavor and there's not that much color, it's just a tint.

29:00What's the harm. So we are not even seeing as parents, parents aren't seeing this blind spot. They think it's the safest beauty product that they can recommend their kids get instead of the skincare that's going to mess with their very young developing skin. What they don't realize is that 80 to 90 % of lip products are made with microplastics. So now you just look at that fact alone to 90 80 not 80 to 90 people think this is oh just one type of product or one if you see high shine polymers copolymers even on clean doesn't this is a very important point because people say well what do i buy and you know where do we go from here clean the intentions of clean movement were good but clean made a mess of people's minds because everyone defined clean differently and what did clean really mean?

29:55If you went to one beauty retailer, it meant one thing. If you went to a one brand, well, if I told you that a lot of the products that I was looking at were under the guise of a clean positioning and the first ingredient is a copolymer, which is a plastic, or you look at even synthetic waxes, where do they come from? How it because. So when you look at age nine to 17, consuming these, sometimes up to 40 times a day, they're putting it on their lips. This isn't twice a twice a day lip study from 30 years ago. And then you look at TikTok and they're doing taste tests. I love them. And you just see close up of this plasticky residue going in.

30:43And that's just microplastics.

30:47Darin Olien:That's, yeah, it's only one. It's only one. Okay, everybody, are you ready to upgrade your operating system? I know I am. I'm always game to do that. Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. That's what we're doing over at Super Life Patreon. This isn't just behind-the-scenes membership. It's a global experiment in conscious living that I am connected to, committed with, in every cell of my body. Each week, you'll get exclusive access to deeper podcast conversations, extended interviews, voice notes from the road of me personally, Personal reflections, behind-the-scenes footage, community wellness challenges, and even surprise drop-ins that I no longer do on social media.

31:40Darin Olien:Because I don't really dig it anymore. We're talking decentralized healing, reclaiming sovereignty, ancient wisdom meets future tech, and a tribe of people with you walking the path. If you love this podcast, the Patreon is where we go deeper, get more real, and reclaim our power together. Join us at patreon.com forward slash Darren Olean. That's Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash Darren Olean, D-A-R-I-N-O-L-I-E-N. Join the movement, support the mission, let's rise together. We can get into the others, one of them, which is even in organic products, because it's what they use to create an opacity for color.

32:34So whenever you see a colored gloss, a colored lipstick, anything with color in it, they use titanium dioxide. Now, titanium dioxide, as you know, a lot of people use it for like the topical sunscreen as a mineral sunscreen, better than the oxybenzone or the chemical stuff. But in Europe, they banned in 2022 titanium dioxide from food. It's completely banned. You can't add it. In the US, I still think there's a debate going on.

33:07Darin Olien:Yeah, it's not fully. Not fully, yeah. But in the EU, just to give you an idea of the blind spot, In the EU, the regulatory system for food has banned titanium dioxide full stop. You can't use even tiny amounts. Why? It is a genotoxin when ingested. And you know from all your research, genotoxin, it's a chemical that alters your DNA and it's a precursor to cancer. So they said there's no, we cannot recommend a safe level of titanium dioxide when ingested. so we're banning it in food. This is in the EU. What do you think one of the number one used ingredients in lip products are? Titanium dioxide.

33:51And so if you assume in the EU regulations that a woman is at least using it twice a day, how is your cosmetic regulation allowing it in a formula for lips but banning it in food in the same region?

34:05Darin Olien:Right, because they're pretending it's not ingesting. Exactly. Yeah. Nailed it. And they're also going back to the old, old application. Nailed it. Yeah. But even there, they admitted there's no safe level. So even at small amounts. In lip products, they tend to use quite a lot of it to make it more opaque and to have better color payoff. Right. So even in organic, if you use titanium dioxide, that's like the number one way to get payoff. Yeah. You should not be putting that on your lips if you're going to look at the science that was submitted to the EU to ban it in food. yeah it's it's yeah it's a lot yeah but but but you know listen the the only way uh dealing with this stuff is through it yeah you know it's like there's a lot of people that don't want to i don't want to know you know and and i always say people love their lip products like like it's an emotional connection they don't want to throw them away but what i say is is it loving you back we all love a lot of toxic things we do that don't love us back and we need to be awake so and i want to get into the other toxic compounds too because there's a lot however i want to bring up this big big point and that is what you bring up so much in some of the studies and everything else and that is the difference between quote-unquote regular skin throughout your body yes and it's like you're reading my mind the actual the actual lips yeah and this is such an important yeah such important discovery yeah uh rediscovery work a highlight research that you've gotten deep deep involved down the rabbit hole but for good reason yeah so So one of the blind spots is the usage rates and how lip products are classed as a topical, but they go in, right?

36:05Darin Olien:And we start to say that, right? So we've started to say that. Hey, what goes on goes in. However. When you're looking at lip skin. Lip skin is almost a completely different organ. Yeah. And transdermally susceptible. And for people, seeing is believing. And so what we've done on some of the campaigns, some of the pictures that I've taken, is to try and look at your lips very differently. So if you feel your face and you feel your lips, you can feel that. You can feel where it gets wet on the center part of it. Let's talk about this discovery. So rewinding back to the start, right? So I had this download and it was like, oh my God, this blind spot, this is significant.

36:55And I start quantifying it globally, going through all the different regulatory frameworks. And one of the things I saw was that the regulatory framework, no matter where you are, even in the strictest ones like the EU, they only, if you want to test for sensitivity or absorption rates, they use regular skin models. now in one of your podcasts that i listened to i was like yep clocked it regular skin isn't built like your lip skin you did this great segment on chapstick and how the lip skin behaves right lip skin is only so your lips nice lips different color to the rest of your face you know but most people don't it's a different color not because it's pigmented differently.

37:46It's because it's so thin you can see your blood vessels.

37:50Darin Olien:Yeah, capillary activity. That's why it's so thin. So if you look, the biological blind spot that we discovered is that lip products, if ever tested for absorption rates, like in China, etc., you use dermal models. Well, dermal models, if you look at your regular skin, 15 to 20 cells deep, it's got oil glands, it's got hair, the barrier is significant. to keep things out. Lips, science now tells us, it's a sponge. It's a sponge. So let's talk about how that equates, right? Look at testosterone. So the pharma industry knows this. They use the mouse and this type of tissue for drug delivery because it bypasses the gut.

38:33It goes right into the bloodstream. Nicotine, you name it. So let's look at testosterone. You ingest testosterone, 30 % uptake. put it here 80 uptake i just think about that for a second so the ingredients that are in lip products that we're exposing ourselves chronically to day after day hour after hour some people are reapplying them 40 times a day no one is looking at real biological absorption rates because you're looking at regular skin if it's even considered. Most countries in the world don't even consider absorption rates through lip skin or even dermal skin. This is just like kind of an EU-China thing that they talk about this.

39:22So lip skin, not like your regular skin, but cosmetics treat it like your regular skin.

39:29Darin Olien:Yeah, so you're applying all this stuff and basically it's going right into your bloodstream. Yeah, depending on particle size. And also, we'll talk about that test that we went on a limb for to look at microplastics and lip products, which will turn anyone's hair gray. But just looking at particle sizes, when you look at the nanoparticles in some of these formulas, cosmetics are not regulated in the same way a food and a pharma is, in the sense that when it's made, how it's processed, how it's stored. you can use a lot harsher chemicals to do all that that you don't need to worry about because it's a topical right but if you're ingesting this stuff or it's next to your blood your your oral mucosa where's the science where's the research well that's a gap it's a gap in knowledge and i always say yes science is important but let's stop here for a second and just use some common sense where's where did common sense go if you know that 80 to 90 percent of lip products have microplastics in them and you're putting it on your mouth and you're having conversations and eating it all day long and snacking and eating it and now it's flavored like food common sense says maybe you should take a beat re-evaluate what you should be putting on your lips yeah but we don't because it's being sold and because it's on the market or it's you know we can buy it so therefore someone some you know magical person has deemed it safe do you want to do you want to talk about where it actually where i see the best reactions in people and i think this goes i'm just going to say it goes to like self-love when people are saying oh you know it's i'm going to die anyway or There's microplastics everywhere anyway.

41:24OK, let's let's just put that over there for a second, because actually the amount of toxins that you're taking in internally, given the rates of exposure, we're not really looking at that correctly. So let's just put that over there. But what I found really interesting is when you would say this to a woman or a man and you would tell them about the blind spot, regulatory blind spot, biological blind spot, what's actually in lip products. And now looking at it with this new lens, they would go, wow, wow. Now, as soon as I spoke to somebody who had a young child, mom, dad, who had a young girl who's now nine years old and having sleepovers and wants their gift bags to have lip glosses in them.

42:13The anger that I get from these people. What? What? People are enraged when it comes to protecting their children, but yet don't have that same level of standard of safety for themselves. And I don't understand that. That's got to be like a psyche thing. You know? I just think that.

42:33Darin Olien:Yeah, the kids probably represent this vulnerability that we have to protect, which we do, right? While they grow up. But then the same level of protection of yourself. Like, listen, you could make that argument until you're blue in the face because can you avoid it at all times and all ways? No. But you can drastically improve it. Well, you saw the plastic detox, right? So seeing is believing. I think today people need to see the results because you can't see a microplastic. It's very hard to quantify. So that documentary showed infertility rife amongst all these couples. 12 weeks. It only took 12 weeks of them removing the microplastics.

43:17Lip wasn't even mentioned in that. So you can imagine what's happening with women and how much they're getting exposed to over a single day. We'll get into that. But let's just talk about the results. Many of them got pregnant after 12 weeks. Shocking. So common sense, but then what are the effects? Causation, right? a lot of women are going to go well i've been using this for the last 20 years so who cares what's the big deal and all i have to say to that is we don't have the proper research to quantify the causal connection between chronic ingestion of these toxins off the lip and absorption through lip skin and the high rates the disproportionately high rates of certain inflammatory diseases in

44:09Darin Olien:women of course yeah i mean and and by asking a lay person see i'm fine yeah but you also only know what you know at the time you know it and i mean i've been around many people who were not eating well and then they were started eating well and exercise and they're like holy shit i feel amazing yeah so if you ask someone they just get used to a set point of who they believe they are and how they feel. So they don't know. They can't quantify. If they didn't ingest this 50 ,000 times in their lifetime, the difference. Absolutely. Because they're in the effect of it. They're in the fishbowl already.

44:56And I think you probably, what do you think of this? I think we're not inherently lazy as humans, but we like to take the path of least resistance if possible. and so I think that when you overwhelm a person with too much information they shut down oh that's too difficult I can't do it so I like to look at it like quick wins right what are some of the quick wins you know from an exercise point maybe you advise someone just do 10 minutes a day jump rope 10 minutes just go walk 10 minutes quick win quick win yeah lip products yeah it is if you want to not expose yourself to things like microplastics lip products is the first thing that you can just replace what you can replace them with well this is what i've been working on so so so two years two years of research for me people say like why have you been so tight-lipped pardon the pun about this is because i didn't want to come to a podcast like yours or start talking to people publicly and not quantify the research and not have an answer so that there's an alternative.

46:04Yeah. Yeah.

46:05Darin Olien:So do we want to mention any of the publications that you're working on? Yeah. So this is the exciting bit. You know, when I had the discovery, I met my business partner who is just wonderful. She's an endodontist and she really got the mouth body health connection that a lot of people don't get. So she's, she's been just fantastic. She's sort of more like in the background. She doesn't like to, to do interviews and stuff. She's, but met her. We started off like a rocket ship. Okay, what do we need to do to quantify this? I said, I don't think it's enough because let's backtrack. I had the discovery and then I said, what am I going to do about this?

46:47Because this is quite a heavy load to now have on your back going, okay, this is important research. So I did two things. One, forming a nonprofit right away to house the research that needs to close the gaps. That's the Lip Service Alliance. And people say, lip service? Doesn't that mean like you're not going to do anything? No, we're in service of the lip. We have to treat it as the most important part of our bodies that it is. It's a portal to our health. Lip skin is different. We are clocking things in science today that we didn't 20 years ago. We need to catch up. So the Lip Service Alliance is surface level safety for lip products.

47:27Doesn't make sense. We need one, consumer awareness. And we need two, people like yourself, to create that awareness for consumers and pass on the important information that's going to arm them with the right data to make the best decisions for themselves. So if you know that your lip product has microplastics in it, a lot of them. Most. Are you going to want to go and purchase it? at least have that information. And so the LSA is there to quantify this data and to get this information in the hands of the people. Because I think that today,

48:06democracy has become the consumer. If you don't buy a product, the industry will find a way faster to evolve an innovation that will replace what you're not buying anymore. So you got to kind of pull together and go, I'm not going to buy those anymore. We need an answer. But the Lip Service Alliance is also about getting the scientists, the researchers, the toxicologists. And so one of the very first things I did was start identifying these pros. That's when I called you. Darren, you're doing this in super life and fatal conveniences. And do you want to be a part of the team? I felt like I need people who have been paving the way to see this and go, okay, we're quantifying this and now we're going to get research.

48:52So we have two publications that are right now in peer review that hopefully by the time this airs get pushed through and are published. And one is to quantify the global regulatory gap, which shows just how LIP is regulated if it's regulated the way we think it is. And quantifying also the market changes and how the regs just haven't caught up. and the second paper that we were publishing is really championed by my business partner the endodontist and the um the the science uh researchers the toxicologists the the chemists and biologists that came together um like dr esalt lynch who is part of uh an amazing university in the uk um who sat down and helped us quantify the biological difference of lip skin how different is it and how are other industries treating it why aren't cosmetics treating it the same way and what do we need to do how do we how do we now test without getting into animal testing because we're very anti-animal testing how do we test lip products in the right way and i'm happy to say like we came up with a solution and that's part of the lip service alliance and a we have a patent pending on it so that we can start testing lip products on the right kind of skin you know so those are the publications two years in the making now yeah and i mean and that and the data speaks starts speaking for itself right yeah so when we looked at absorption rates for example you look at certain ingredients the this area up to uh i think it was 389 times faster absorption than regular skin.

50:35I mean, it's a sponge. It's a sponge. Your lips are... So we say, don't look at your lips as a pout. Right? Cosmetics, how pretty and big and juicy can you make your pout? It's a portal into your body.

50:52Darin Olien:Yeah, because there's no magical door that says, okay, now you're passing through the door and you're in my mouth. You know what I mean? Oh, okay. Well, let's go there. Let's go there. Let's go there. So if I, because I did consult major beauty brands. And if I were to go to them and say, hey, let's discourage ingestion because this is not a food good. It is not made with food. It is a liquid plastic flavored like food. So why don't we flavor it like something disgusting? Let's flavor it with something disgusting so that people don't do this. So good. What would we flavor? Like give me something disgusting to flavor like petrol.

51:36Put like a petrol perfume in there or something so people smell it and they don't want to eat it. It would never sell. So if you just use common sense, how much and do I subconsciously ingest this stuff? Think of it smelling and tasting disgusting and see how much you enjoy wearing it.

51:57Darin Olien:yeah it's so it's so freaky and scary because we've only talked about a few talked about some heavy metals we've talked about a little flow agents titanium dioxide we talked about you want to talk about a big one of course let's talk about a big one and again this is something you've clocked already so like i'm very excited to be sitting here and talking with you because you get it and you've done a lot of the identification and trying to tell people hey, this is something we need to look at. So in the EU in 2015, there's a chemical association that put forth a recommendation to the EU, the European Commission.

52:42We should be asking lip cosmetic manufacturers to use food-grade mineral oil, food-grade mineral oil or petroleum-derived stuff. You know why? because there's separate research to show petroleum-derived ingredients when you ingest them they bioaccumulate in your body they're finding it in the spleen they're finding it in parts of your body it's like a microplastic in the sense that sometimes depending on particle size it goes in and it clogs your body so it's not just microplastics but when you think of going to a derm and they say, oh, you've got chapped lips, put some petroleum jelly on it. And then you're eating that right off your lips.

53:26And the EU has these studies saying you shouldn't be ingesting them because it bioaccumulates. We need a different sort of chain on the back of it. Let's make it a food grade petroleum product so that it doesn't bioaccumulate in your body. Tell me somebody who even knows that there's a food grade petroleum derived product or ingredient. It's so, so food grade, that gave me the aha. And that's when the second part of all this started. So the Lip Service Alliance was, let's create consumer awareness with solid research and let's have a safe place for experts around the globe to come and contribute to shift this industry overnight.

54:10That was the Lip Service Alliance. Yeah. But then the first thing that people were saying to me in the industry who I really trust, you can't make lip products without this stuff. We need it.

54:22Darin Olien:Of course. We need it. You can't do it. No way. So my partner and I created YAM to see, can we, one, create formulas that perform just as good, if not better, than these other versions using only 100 % certified food grade ingredients? okay there's something that you said in your comment on how chapsticks become addictive and how we feel like our dry chap lips and so food grade doesn't just mean hey we can bypass all of these questionable ingredients because if it's eu approved for food use and we're using an ellip product it's a pretty good objective standard if it's certified food grade and cosmetic grade but Okay.

55:19But as well, we looked at the packaging. You said, hey, wait, fatal convenience, beauty products, packaging is always plastic. So we went on a mission. Seventh generation food safe glass manufacturer mixed with these two amazing female founders in Finland, which you go to a lot. You know that they're really into nature there. they're very connected to nature they created a wood and plant pulp based material that biodegrades into zero microplastic fallout so we worked with these female founders we worked with these amazing tooling and we came up with packaging that doesn't have a lick of microplastics in either wow so it wasn't just about the formula which by the way will be the first microplastic free certified independently certified lip mask on the market we also looked at the packaging so oh people say isn't this convenient you created a product but the first thing that people said to me is you can't do this without all this other stuff and yam now exists to say yes you can and i'm bringing that blueprint to the lsa to show the industry how to do it so let's work together to do this right i could have had patents all day long on what i was doing and i was like nope let's give it to the lip service alliance let's get the industry to shift quickly so that consumers can get better products in their hands i love that nice nice work i didn't even know that about

56:52Darin Olien:the packaging well i mean i haven't i haven't used it well you should and you know even even the way yam stands for something really deep and meaningful our why is because of om you know om is inside out, outside in, everything's connected. So everything we make there is just to assume you want it to be an organic extension of yourself. Even the way the packaging is designed, everything was well thought out. Do you want to hint at some of the ingredients in y 'all? Oh, it's all, well, it's all 100 % certified food grade ingredients. It's very important to say, because I am a lawyer and I did a lot of research on how the cosmetic industry and brands might react to what I'm saying and doing.

57:39We don't, and in the research papers as well, we want quick changes for consumer safety, right? This isn't about saying, oh, lip product should be classed as a food. So I never say, oh, this lip product is a food, eat it for lunch. It's still a lippy, like you don't, you know, but it's food grade certified so that for that accidental journey in, you're okay, right? So things like -

58:03Darin Olien:For the inevitable. For the inevitable. It's the inevitable journey in, in two ways. And the medical paper calls it the dual pathway system. And this is what - The absorption. Absorption rates. And then the ingestion. And the ingestion. So double whammy. So unlike any other product that you put on your body, this is going in two different ways. One of the amazing law professors that helped on the regulatory paper said, well, it's actually a triple pathway, right? Like if you put it here and it's got perfume in it, you're inhaling the perfume all day. And I said, you're right. But my God, I mean, if I start stretching this, people already, la, la, la, they don't want to hear it.

58:39If I now say it's three ways of, but it is, it's three pathways in. Nose, mouth, oral mucosa.

58:46Darin Olien:Yeah, olfactory is really strong. It's strong. I mean, I don't wear fragrance anymore. Yeah, no. I just don't wear it anymore. So, you know, even the way we did, you know, talking about our ingredients, because this is important. I had invented a natural sweetener many, many moons ago. You know about this when we met, right? And it was about understanding the lack of transparency even in food ingredients, right? So if you see flavor, nine times out of ten, that flavor is put into propylene glycol as a solvent, as a carrier, right? Totally. 100%. Screaming matches with flavor houses over that damn thing.

59:24Right. So what we did was we picked it up. We worked. I hired directly two very, very, very senior people in flavor. And we just picked it apart. We said, okay, I don't want propylene glycol as a carrier for my natural flavors. I don't want any BHT. I don't want any of these solvents. I don't want anything hidden in my natural flavors. It truly has to be a natural flavor. And so we picked it apart. And we made a very, like I say, we made a natural flavor in great taste. we made it in great taste because we actually looked at all of the typically hidden ingredients in something that says natural flavor on your packaging we went that deep as well so truly the healthiest lipstick on the planet yeah this will we're a lip lip mask for now but we have in the pipeline five products that are ready to go so we looked at even doing bright beautiful lipsticks only food certified ingredients because of the synthetic dyes and the implications of chronic exposure to that over the lips which hasn't been studied

1:00:38Darin Olien:so the overall goal is to get these papers out to get legislation changed yeah so like some quick wins quick wins right um this is something you like because of you you've done development in um smoothies and powders like protein powders and right yeah you know the science of that is like and the regulations on food is much much more strict than than cosmetics so did you know like let's say you want to make a blueberry natural flavored protein shake and or let's say let's say actually um uh strawberry yeah and you're not going to use any synthetic dyes or anything in there and you know it's food right in food it's normal to use something like beetroot or cabbage powder to change the color yeah to affect the overall formula yeah yeah i mean it has its own antioxidants it has its own nutrients that's why we use it because it's also like functional but in food in the fda you can use any of this list of natural food derived colorants to color your food.

1:01:51Now, if you did the same thing with a lip cosmetic or any cosmetic and said, I'm using cabbage powder to color this, it's illegal. What? It's illegal. So this is wild. And this is why the LSA needs to exist because we need people to see this evolved in this weird kind of way. And now it's preventing innovation in lip products to use natural food colorants for color. So what do I mean by that? If I make a lip product and I say I've used beetroot to color it, that's illegal. If I say I use beetroot as an antioxidant, oh, and by the way, it happens to have color, it's legal. Now, why? This is what I'm saying.

1:02:38These regulations are slow to change, but why is that, right? Because as you know, heavy metal contamination in synthetic dyes is real it's a problem and the fda in all of the ingredients that exist on the market microplastic copolymers included okay the only one that gets pre-market safety you have to go to the fda and say hey is this synthetic dye okay they have to pre-approve it because of the contaminants in cosmetic coloring okay so that's the only so now Now, if you want to color a cosmetic, you need to go to the FDA for pre-market approval. Well, all of these amazing, innovative companies that we're working with who are taking beetroot and cabbage and making all these amazing alternatives to titanium dioxide, they can't get cosmetic grade approval in cosmetics for use for color.

1:03:37So one of the first things that we want to do, and we have it all set up, ready to go, is we've done the research. which, hey, look, in the FDA, in this section, you've approved all these, let's say, 15 colorants derived from food. Given that they're already safe for ingestion, can we just grandfather them in here for cosmetics so we can make lip products with these food-grade ingredients? That's one of the first things that we want to do.

1:04:00Darin Olien:Makes sense. Incredible. Two years of research. Two years of research and proof of concept. Well, you're such a, I mean, you know, my sense of view, Once you, I mean, you had that aha, but once you get your focus in on something, it's on. And I just love that you're an all or nothing. Like it's got a hit. But you have the brains, the background, and now with the heart of caring about what you're doing and lining all of that up. That's why I jumped in. Obviously, I'm not even using any of this stuff. Well, I brought some for you today, finally. Oh, my God. I brought some for you. That's great as that.

1:04:49And by the way, we were talking about this, because something you said about your chapstick, because it's really great. You were like, look, chapstick and the way it works and the types of products that you keep putting on, and it's petroleum, so it's an occlusive and your skin has no signaling. Food grade isn't just about what's not in there, right? So there's no microplastics. we're microplastic free certified all that stuff yeah great very important but the performance so if it's 100 food grade certified ingredients your lips they can instantly recognize every ingredient in there it's bioavailable so now it's your lips aren't working against something you're putting on it it's looking at it going oh can i use this what are these building it's it's bioavailable antioxidants right 100 100 but no i really appreciate what you said yeah you know because i look at i mean for years i've been watching what you're what you're doing you did a massive documentary that brought to light a lot of things that people just didn't know about and then you started doing soup like super life and fatal conveniences fatal conveniences for me was like oh yes break open the beauty business because it's like the regulations just aren't modernized enough even mocra mocra 2022 in the fda creates mocra modernization of cosmetic regulations act right do you know that still we don't have any modernization of lip lip lip

1:06:21Darin Olien:regulation that's the that's the dupe man i i was like when i was heavy i knew i used no ai I had 15 researchers. I was just consuming so much. I had a headache every day. But the funny, not funny. Like not ha-ha funny. Not funny, but going, what the? I was swearing so much when I finally... Because inevitably, if there was pressure on an ingredient or a PFAS or whatever, all of a sudden some agency would pop up and then going, okay, this is the anti-PFAS alliance. And then funds get run to it, but then really nothing happens. Or it's pushed off to like, okay, we commit to 2030 and inevitably not.

1:07:21Okay, you just touched a nerve now. Yeah, people forget. Yeah, you just touched a nerve. And then they don't do anything. Okay, so in the EU, REACH, this organization, we now in the EU, not the UK, the EU, there is a paper and legislation now mandated that by, this is going to really upset some people. You know, about four or five years ago, they announced no more microplastic beads and wash off products. Isn't that great? the same legislation it's hard for me to say this 2031 and 2035 are the dates for the lip category you're eating them off your lips inadvertently and even their regulations acknowledge that there's ingestion incidental ingestion okay very low rates but still by 2031 beauty brands need to put a warning on the box that says this is made with microplastics what year are we in yeah 2026 we have to wait till 2031 for the warning beyond the box that's number one number two not until 2035 are they banned from the actual formulas so we know that lip products have microplastics and we're waiting until 2031 to do something about it which leads me to something else that you touched upon because you're just like one up you're one ahead of me at this and i'm like you're leading me down the path which is great but i think now we have to go okay now what what do consumers do about it don't feel like you can't do something about it once people make noise together it's not enough just to make the noise when they stop buying it companies are going to innovate they will innovate they will say okay wait they're not buying this anymore we need to do something different happened with remember um uh aerosol cans yeah remember when that thing kicked off like i'm dating myself here but like that kicked off oh my god aerosol cans they're blowing a hole in the ozone we couldn't see it but we knew that it was happening and people got up in arms and there was a coalition that formed and within record time they got rid of the stuff inside of these cans that was causing the hole so if we work together we can absolutely do something that's why the lip service alliance exists people such as yourself who've done all this research and have we're calling don't take this wrong we're calling you the big mouths right like you guys have the megaphones where people are listening to you we have to create the consumer awareness once the consumer knows and they're they have the information then they can vote with their wallets don't buy that buy that totally yeah that's what

1:10:13Darin Olien:change is coming yeah and that's what you're doing and we're gonna do it together and that's where like we can't wait around for governments or regulatory bodies blah blah blah it's it's it's clearly they're not doing it and they're not doing it fast enough and it could just be budget and lack of and i mean i don't want to paint everyone out to be like they're out to kill you brands even don't even know some of the small founder brands they go to manufacturing facilities i'd like this lip gloss to have higher shine right do you know that it's a microplastic doing that right probably not yeah yeah could we make it so it doesn't wipe off oh my god how about a 70 how about a 72-hour lip stain coming out of you know China or Korea who tested that on lip vermilion yeah well it's gotta be this is where the research needs to start so that's what our lip service alliance is going to be doing is closing the gap on what are these ingredients that we're using in lip products that have access to your oral mucosa and we say oh but it's on the outside no like your your lip skin start to get like uh wet about halfway through and you're painting this stuff with forever like three day long peeling it off what's going into your blood and then you've got these women by the way a lot of these influencers that now want to join us they don't know where the inflammation's coming from so they say i'm going to clean up my diet i'm going to do this i'm just and they go out with high shine lip glosses and 72 hour stains and they're not making the connection that their oral mucosa is absorbing these things and they're ingesting chronically every day.

1:11:53Darin Olien:And yet they're trying to change the straws out. Right. You know, it's like... So we call this a quick win. Right. The quick win is how do I make really big changes? I mean, easy changes that give me a big result, right? You know, a lot of people aren't even using plastic water bottles anymore because they get it. The PFAS and the plastic and it melts and the sunshine and they got it okay switch to glass quick win i'm here by the way for your super life blue bottle i've ordered as shipping to london i don't even want to tell you what it's going to cost to ship to london but but the glass water bottle quick win right you don't have to drink from plastic lip gloss that's a really quick if you're if i okay i'm gonna just say this and we might have to edit this out.

1:12:45But because of the high amounts of plasticized ingredients on a lip label, if you look at things, and these are just red flags, I look at a copolymer, synthetic copolymers, or what copolymer, polymer is a plastic, okay. So I look at that, how many different times is a copolymer on a lip product? I mean, one of them had like three, four different copolymers, different copolymers to get the shine. Then you have polyisobutane. Yeah? So you start listing out all these supposed, maybe they're microplastics, maybe they're not. So I just said, well, let's see. So I rounded up three of the world's top-performing premium lip brands, and mass is just as bad.

1:13:31I just thought, let me just clock the three most popular. took them found the the state-of-the-art microplastics testing lab it's in austria and they are connected to a university and their lasers and their ability to decipher the difference between a plant uh a plant ester and a real microplastic and how we can and then they take out all of the in-betweens and they they they really conservatively conservatively estimated on these measurements okay and they they have it all it's all documented the methodology and the results came in and the guy called me said do you have any idea what you sent me and i said i had an idea but i didn't know and i need to know before i open up my mouth right okay in one application and when i tell you that nine-year-olds and ten-year-olds are wearing this i want to cry one application three thousand microplastics three thousand three thousand and it was flavored like food like a dessert okay that's just one now that's one application and what's one application it's about 0.0 0.024 grams okay and the EU assumes a daily ingestion rate of 30 years ago is 0.05 grams so that's that's right right two applications so one application of this 3 ,000 microplastics even my team who had been working with me on the research for the last year looked at that result and said, oh my God, this is bad.

1:15:23Darin Olien:It's like when you get real data, it's freaky in that way. Right. But we're being responsible and we don't want a fear monger. So what we're doing is when those results came back, he said to me, this isn't contaminated with microplastics. This is made with microplastics and we need to make sure that this whole process now is peer reviewed and published so that everyone can come test their lip products and the methodology is proven so you as a brand can be responsible forget about the regulations for now just be responsible as a brand contact me I'll tell you where to go get your product tested and then you can do your reformulations I'll help but that's how many in one application we saw in one product it was crazy yeah then if it's up to 40 a day yeah you're having a that's and these things are being put next to your bedside right you're applying it before bed for baby soft lips in the morning you're applying it and and by the way it wasn't just one type of product that we tested we tested glosses lip masks uh lip balms we tested everything they all had it so this is a problem.

1:16:39The test results are coming in and now we're going to quantify it. The Lip Service Alliance will work with this amazing state-of-the-art lab and say, now that we've got this methodology to measure the microplastics in lip products, can we make it available to all for them to test? Do some self-regulation. Don't wait for the government to catch up.

1:17:02Darin Olien:Alright, so lipservicealliance.com Yeah. So yeah. So it's it's lip service alliance dot org right now. It's just a holding page. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason for that, Darren. And that is that one of the things I didn't want to do is make people feel like I did all this research. I buttoned it all up. And now there's the lip service alliance and it's a done deal. No. If L 'Oreal calls me tomorrow and says, I want to join the lip service alliance, we're forming it now. Be one of the first adopters of that new way of looking at lip and let's work together. if Unilever, if, if any of these amazing brands sold at Sephora, if Sephora wants to join, we're forming this lip service alliance.

1:17:46Now what I'm doing though is populating it with the data and the research that we've quantified the gap with for the last two years. And then Yom is going to launch hopefully end of next month. And we have a holding page for that. So if people want to go to YOMbeauty.com, we're signing people up.

1:18:04Darin Olien:Run now. Get your clean lips. not clean food grade certified food grade certified yeah I love it well you're going to try it now I can't wait to put you on the spot see what you think thank you for all the work thank you for having me thanks for all the information can't wait for the peer review to come out I can't wait for you to be formally announced as part of our team on the lip service alliance we are going to change the world together Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. No, stop. Come here. Give me a hug.