Alert! Breast Cancer Hoax E-mail canular de cancer de sein

With all good intentions, my good friend Craig forwarded a message his wife had recieved. Usually I ignore these types of emails but this is good food for the blog. (There have been a few questions due to translation issues, so let me stress that the following is text from a hoax/"canular" email.)

This comes from someone who works in the breast cancer unit at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, Dr. N. Neman.

Recently a lipstick brand, called "Red Earth", decreased their prices from $67 to $9.90. It contained lead. Lead is a chemical which causes cancer. The lipstick brands that contain lead are:
1. CHRISTIAN DIOR
2. LANCOME
3. CLINIQUE
4. Y.S.L
5. ESTEE LAUDER
6. SHISEIDO
7. RED EARTH (Lip Gloss)
8. CHANEL (Lip Conditioner)
9. MARKET AMERICA-MOTNES LIPSTICK.

The higher the lead content, the greater the chance of causing cancer. After doing a test on lipsticks, it was found that the Y.S.L. Lipstick contained the most amount of lead. Watch out for those lipsticks which are supposed to stay longer. If your lipstick stays longer, it is because of the higher content of lead. Here is the test you can do
yourself:
1. Put some lipstick on your hand.
2. Use a Gold ring to scratch on the lipstick.
3. If the lipstick color changes to black, then you know the lipstick contains lead.

Please send this information to all your girlfriends and female family members. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer, especially breast cancer.

Lead is dangerous compound that wreaks havoc in the nervous system and lead is a suspected carcinogen. However, Dioxin is a Human carcinogen.

I never understand why people write things like this but there are plenty of them out there; from the improbable Wal-Mart Contributes 5% of Sales to Homosexual Group to the strange Live Frog Found in Packaged Salad (but it's in the picture!) and there are so many more listed on sites dedicated to hoaxes and urban legends; you'll find more here and here.

If the message contains the phrase 'Forward this to everyone you know!' Don't do it please it's killing the economy.