[Pharmwaste] Cancer: How Dangerous Are Our Cosmetics?

[DeBiasi,Deborah]

Cancer: How Dangerous Are Our Cosmetics? 

Toxic chemicals don't just hurt us in big doses. An environmental
oncologist argues that myriad tiny amounts of cancer-causing agents in
our environment-and even in our shampoo-can make us sick.

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Devra Davis
Special to Newsweek

Updated: 9:49 p.m. ET Feb 15, 2007

Feb. 15, 2007 - 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, www.ewg.org, 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.

Davis is director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and is a professor of
epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public
Health. A National Book Award finalist for "When Smoke Ran Like Water,"
she is completing "The Secret History of the War on Cancer," from which
this work is adapted, expected in October from Basic Books.

(c) 2006 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17177813/site/newsweek/


Deborah L. DeBiasi
Email:   dldebiasi at deq.virginia.gov
WEB site address:  www.deq.virginia.gov
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Office of Water Permit Programs
Industrial Pretreatment/Toxics Management Program
Mail:          P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA  23218 (NEW!)
Location:  629 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA  23219
PH:         804-698-4028
FAX:      804-698-4032