Beauty doesn't come cheap. It can be costly, time-consuming and, according to historians, deadly. For thousands of years, we've been wearing makeup, some of it made with unsavory ingredients. While we still use some questionable ingredients in cosmetics today, it's nothing compared to the outright poisons that were once present at the beauty counter.
Ancient Egyptian royalty famously highlighted their eyes with a magical black eyeliner known as kohl. It symbolized a royal's place in society and a signal to the gods to protect wearers from illness. But the malachite makeup was made with lead-based ingredients found preserved in ancient Egyptian tombs. In a 2010 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry, researchers found that it was used symbolically as protection and literally as it contained ingredients like laurionite and phosgenite, used at the time for treating eye illnesses and skin ailments.
But the ancient Egyptians weren't the only ones to ...
