Everyone washes their hair, moisturizes at least occasionally, and puts on sunscreen when they go outside, right?
And we shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not these products are safe for us.
But now, a study done by the University of California, Berkeley says that we may have to worry more than we thought.
There’s a chemical preservative in consumer personal-care products called paraben. It’s found in products such as shampoos, body lotions, and sunscreens.
This study was done on human breast cancer cells in lab dishes, so it’s undecided whether or not the it would act the same in the human body, but the chemicals have been shown to mimic estrogen.
This means it can bond to the same receptors that estrogen usually binds to. When estrogen binds to receptors, it can increase breast cancer risk.
It’s doubly concerning because paraben is believed to act similarly to estrogen. Previous studies have found that they react weakly enough that it isn’t a problem, but now it looks like this may not be the case.
However in this study, they found that you can’t really just assume that the parabens will be working on their own.
When parabens were mixed with heregulin, another breast cancer growth factor, they found that the potency of paraben was 100 times stronger, and cancer cell growth was exponential.
So now these scientists fear that this may have a visible effect on humans.
More studies are needed, of course, but study author Dale Leitman says, “all we can say from our study is that in order to determine how safe the parabens are…[we need] to test them not by themselves but with other chemicals that stimulate cell proliferation.
“The study, like others published, only demonstrated the effects in the cells, which may not reflect the same scenario as in an intact biological system.”
So go ahead and keep using your shampoo for now. No need to make yourself smell over something uncertain.
