How Safe are Cosmetics

[Guest guest]

CANCER: HOW DANGEROUS ARE OUR COSMETICS? From Rachel.org

 

By Devra Davis

 

We know that children are not simply little adults. With their quick

heartbeats, fast-growing organs and enviable metabolism, the young

absorb proportionally more pollutants than those who are older.

Exposures to minute amounts of hormones, environmental tobacco smoke

or pollutants early in the life of an animal or human embryo can

deform reproductive tracts, lower birth weight and increase the chance

of developing cancer. And yet results from an independent chemical

testing laboratory released last week found a probable human

carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane (also known as para-dioxane), in some common

children's shampoos at levels higher than those recommended by the

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Environmental Working

Group, a research and advocacy organization that ran the study,

estimates that more than a quarter of all personal-care products sold

in the United States may contain this cancer-causing agent.

 

The presence of a cancerous agent at levels above those suggested by

the FDA is disturbing enough. The idea that such a compound exists at

any amount in products that can be in regular contact with babies'

skin is even more disconcerting. Scientists have long known that

certain chemicals like para-dioxane can cause cancer. (The World

Health Organization considers para-dioxane a probable human carcinogen

because it is proven to cause cancer in male and female mice and

rats.) Now we're beginning to realize that the sum total of a person's

exposure to all the little amounts of cancerous agents in the

environment may be just as harmful as big doses of a few well-known

carcinogens. Over a lifetime, cigarettes deliver massive quantities of

carcinogens that increase the risk of lung and other cancers. Our

chances of getting cancer reflect the full gamut of carcinogens we're

exposed to each day -- in air, water and food pollution and in

cancerous ingredients or contaminants in household cleaners, clothing,

furniture and the dozens of personal-care products many of us use

daily.

 

Of the many cancer risks we face, shampoos and bubble baths should not

be among them. The risks of para-dioxane in American baby soaps, for

instance, could be completely eliminated through simple manufacturing

changes -- as they are in Europe. To remove such carcinogens, however,

would require intervention by the federal government, but the federal

Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act allows the industry to police itself.

Europe has banned the use of para-dioxane in all personal-care

products and recently initiated a recall of any contaminated products.

There's a problem with the way the United States and other countries

look at toxicity in commercial agents. Regulators nowadays often won't

take action until enough people have already complained of harm. This

makes little sense. Scientists can seldom discern how the myriad

substances, both good and bad, that we encounter in our lives

precisely affect our health. We need to be smarter about using

experimental evidence to predict and therefore prevent harm from

happening. A few decades ago, people accepted the fact that cigarette

smoking was harmful, even though no scientist could explain precisely

how this happened in any particular cancer patient. If we had insisted

in having perfect proof of how smoking damaged the lungs before acting

to discourage this unhealthy practice, we would still be questioning

what to do. By the same token, we now have to get used to the idea

that scientists are unlikely to be able to say with certainty that a

trace chemical in shampoo accounts for a specific disease in a given

child. But if we're to reduce our cancer risk, we need to lower our

exposures to those agents that can be avoided and find safer

substitutes for those that can't.

 

Scientists don't experiment on humans, for obvious reasons, but we

have found some clues from lab and wildlife studies. Medical

researchers have demonstrated that trace chemicals of some widely used

synthetic organic materials can damage cultured human tissue. The

effects don't just accumulate, they mushroom. UC Berkeley Professor

Tyrone Hayes has shown that very low levels of pesticide residues in

Nebraska cornfields can combine to create male frogs with female

features that are vulnerable to infection and can't reproduce.

 

Should we wait for these same things to happen to baby boys before

acting to lower exposures? There's plenty of solid human evidence that

combined pollutants can cause more harm together than they do alone.

We are not surprised to hear that people who smoke, drink and work as

painters have much higher risks of kidney cancer than those who only

engage in one of these known cancer-causing practices. We also

understand that women who use hormone-replacement therapy and drink

more than two glasses of wine daily have higher risks of breast cancer

than those who engage in only one of these practices. This tells us

that other combinations of chemicals in the environment can also lead

to other cancers. One in five cases of lung cancer in women today -- a

disease that kills more women than ovarian, breast and uterine cancer

combined -- has no known history of active or passive smoking

exposure. Rates of non-Hodgkins lymphoma and other cancers not tied

with aging or improved screening have also increased in many

industrial countries. New cases of testicular cancer continue to rise

in most industrial countries. While still rare, childhood cancer is

more common today than in the past, and most cases occur in children

with no known inherited risk of the disease.

 

The problem, from a scientific standpoint, is that resolving the

effects of miniscule levels of chemicals we encounter throughout our

lives is part of a complicated puzzle for which many pieces are

missing. What scientists need is data -- lots of it. Manufacturers,

however, tend to hold the precise formulations of products as trade

secrets, and the law allows them to withhold much information about

carcinogens even if they are known to be present. Of course, we should

continue to collect information to advance our ability to prevent

cancer and other chronic diseases. But when a chemical causes cancers

in both sexes of two different species of animals, we shouldn't

arrogantly presume we will escape a similar fate. Recent work on the

human and animal genomes shows us that humans differ from frogs and

mice by fewer than 10 percent of genes. We should not let the absence

of specific information on the health consequences for our infants and

toddlers of single cancer-causing contaminants like para-dioxane

become a reason to delay getting rid of such hazards.

 

The goal of public-health policy is to prevent harm, not to prove that

it's already happened. The Center for Environmental Oncology at the

University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute advises that personal-care

products that contain hormones may, in part, account for the

continuing and unexplained patterns of breast cancer in African-

Americans under age 40, and also may explain why more girls are

developing breasts at younger ages. The Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention found generally higher residues of some plastic

metabolites in African-American women, with children ages 6 to 11

having twice the levels of whites. Dr. Chandra Tiwary, a recently

retired military chief of pediatric endocrinology at Brooks Air Force

Base, found that African-American baby girls as young as 1 year old

developed breasts after their parents applied creams that they hadn't

realized contained estrogen to their scalps. When the creams were no

longer used, these infant breasts went away. Other work published

last week by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science,

shows similar effects in young boys who had been washed with some

hormone-mimicking soaps or oils. After their parents stopped applying

these products, their breasts also receded.

 

In light of the growing numbers of young girls with breasts, the

Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, the certifying board for

pediatric endocrinology, in 1999 changed the recommendation of what is

natural. We believe this would be a dangerous move. If we say that

it's now normal for African-American and white young girls to develop

breasts at ages 6 and 7, respectively, we will fail to pick up serious

diseases that could account for this. We will also lose the chance to

learn whether widely used agents in the environment, like those found

in personal-care products today or others that may enter the food

supply, lay behind some of these patterns.

 

It should not be the job of scientists, or of public-spirited leaders

or environmental groups, to find out what contaminants or ingredients

may be affecting the delicate endocrine systems of our children and

grandchildren. (The tests that found para-dioxane in shampoo were

funded privately by environmental journalist and activist David

Steinman, author of " Safe Journey to Eden. " ) Manufacturers have known

for years about how para-dioxane forms as a by-product of

manufacturing and how to get rid of it. Until now, they just haven't

need to do so. People have a right to know whether products they use

on themselves and their children contain compounds that increase their

risk of disease. They also have a right to expect that government will

prevent companies from selling products that are harmful to children.

To do otherwise is to treat our children like lab rats in a vast

uncontrollable experiment.

 

Regards

Caroline

http://www.alwaysnaturallygreat.com