A study published in August 2018 by researchers at the George Mason University in the USA has demonstrated that exposure to chemicals in beauty and personal care products affect women’s reproductive hormones, and these effects may have an impact on women’s health.

What Did They Do?

In their study, researchers focused on chemicals commonly used in beauty and personal care products. These included bisphenol A (BPA), chlorophenols, benzophenones (a UV filter) and parabens (preservatives). They evaluated these chemicals in 143 women over two menstrual cycles. They also analysed the reproductive hormones oestradiol, progesterone, luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH).

The 143 women in this study were aged 18 to 44 years old, had no known chronic health conditions and did not use birth control.

Dr Anna Pollack, lead researcher, on this study noted that:

“This study is the first to examine mixtures of chemicals that are widely used in personal care products in relation to hormones in healthy, reproductive-age women, using multiple measures of exposure across the menstrual cycle, which improved upon research that relied on one or two measures of chemicals”

This is an important point to note as measuring mixtures of chemicals better reflects the real-world situation where women will be exposed to several chemicals.

What Did They Find?

The study found that exposure to these chemicals, even low-level exposure to mixtures of these chemicals affected participants’ reproductive hormones.  Specifically, they found that:

• BPA, chlorophenols, UV filters and parabens were linked with reproductive hormones
• Parabens were associated with an increase in oestradiol
• Phenol and UV filters were linked to a decrease in oestradiol, FSH and LH

What Does This Mean?

The results of this study are interesting as changes in reproductive hormones have been linked to a number of health conditions such as fibroids, breast cancer and cardiovascular disease.  Therefore, care must be taken when selecting beauty and personal care products.

Researchers noted that:

“We have early indicators that chemicals such as parabens may increase oestrogen levels. If this finding is confirmed by additional research, it could have implications for oestrogen dependent diseases such as breast cancer.” Dr Anna Pollack

Researchers therefore concluded that:

“What we should take away from this study is that we may need to be careful about the chemicals in the beauty and personal care products we use.”

You May Also Be Interested in These Stories

• My Haircare Nightmare: Help Us Start A Revolution
• More Concerning Research on Black Hair Products
• Latest Research on Hair Dyes, Relaxers and Breast Cancer
• Black Women, Relaxers and Fibroids
• Black Hair Products: We Want to Hear from You!

You can read the research paper describing this study here

Back in November 2017 we published a blog post where we summarised research on hair dyes, relaxers and breast cancer, and (sigh) we’re sorry to say we’re back here again writing about black hair products and their harmful effects.

A couple of weeks ago the results from another research study was published and this showed that 80% of black hair products contain endocrine disrupting and asthma causing chemicals. Endocrine disrupting chemicals are of concern as some studies have linked these chemicals to hormone-related health conditions including breast cancer and fibroids.

Latest Research

On 25^th April 2018, researchers from the Silent Spring Institute and Battelle Memorial Institute in the USA published the results from their study which investigated the endocrine disrupting and asthma-associated chemical content of black hair products. They tested 18 black hair products that cut across 6 types of products. These included hot oil treatments, anti-frizz/polish, leave-in conditioners, root stimulators, hair lotions and relaxers. Within these products they tested for the presence of 66 chemicals including BPA, phthalates (a solvent) and parabens (a preservative).

What Did They Find?

Researchers found that the black hair products tested contained 45 endocrine disrupting or asthma-associated chemicals. They stated that they found cyclosiloxanes (used for conditioning and spreadability), parabens and the fragrance marker diethyl phthalate (DEP) at the highest levels, and DEP most frequently in these products.

In their study, root stimulators, hair lotions and relaxers more frequently contained nonylphenols, parabens and fragrances whilst anti-frizz products tended to contain cyclosiloxanes.  Worryingly hair relaxers for children contained five chemicals that are regulated by California’s Proposition 65 or were prohibited from being used in the EU.

What we found particularly disturbing was that ingredients lists were incomplete, meaning that the researchers found chemicals in the products that were not listed on product labels. This is disturbing because many women do try to avoid chemicals such as parabens, but researchers found that butyl and ethyl paraben were never listed on labels and 12% of products with methyl paraben didn’t include this on their label. This is extremely misleading and means that women can’t make an informed choice about the products they purchase. Other chemicals that were frequently not included on ingredients lists were fragrance chemicals and cyclosiloxanes.

You can listen to  Dr. Jessica Helm from the Silent Spring Institute and Tola Okogwu from My Long Hair Journey discuss this latest study in the video below.

California’s Proposition 65 and EU Regulation

There are regulations in place to protect consumers and deter manufactures from including chemicals that are hazardous to our health in their products. Two such regulations are Proposition 65 and the European Union Cosmetics Directive.

California’s Proposition 65, more formally known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, aims to “help Californians make informed decisions about protecting themselves from chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” By law, all businesses selling products to people in California must ensure clear and reasonable warnings are included on items that contain harmful chemicals so that people are aware that they will be exposed these chemicals. Some chemicals that are regulated by Prop 65 are o-phenylphenol, BPA, phthalate, ethanolamine and benzophenone.  Businesses don’t have to include any warnings if the chemicals are at concentrations that don’t pose a health risk. Now, in this current study,  it was found that even though two no-lye hair relaxers for children contained a Prop 65 regulated chemical, no warnings were included, and researchers made the point that these would not meet the Prop 65 labelling requirements.

The EU Cosmetics Directive states that all cosmetic products sold in the EU must be safe and they prohibit the inclusion of chemicals in products that have been shown to cause cancer, female reproductive toxicity and developmental toxicity. Some of the compounds prohibited by the EU include BPA, phthalate, alkylphenol and ethanolamine. In this study, some products were found to contain products prohibited by EU law – BPA, phthalate, nonylphenol and diethanolamine. So these products would not be fit for sale in the EU.

What Can We Do?

Well… ladies, we must demand better from brands. We must see what we can do to get companies to remove these chemicals from their products. In the meantime, we have to be very selective and only buy from brands that sell products that are safe, but this can be hard to do if brands are not listing all the chemicals in their products on their labels.

 Here are some brands that we use, or have used in the past, and we believe are safe, but we recommend that you do your research too.

Afrocenchix
Almocado
Camille Rose Naturals
Pure Goodnes
Root2Tip
Shea Butter Cottage
Shea Decadence
Yaphene

Finally, we are currently in discussions with the team behind My Long Hair Journey to see what we can do to start addressing this problem. We’ll keep you updated and let you know how these discussions go. In the meantime, let us know your thoughts on this topic. How do you feel about this new piece of research and are you concerned about the hair products that you use?

More Information

You can download the full research paper below as well as the study’s supplementary material which lists the brands tested in this study and information about EU regulation and California’s Prop 65. And, you can purchase some of the products from the brands listed above on Amazon below.

 

 

Over the years there have been numerous questions and concern about the impact chemicals in hair products have on our health. This concern has been heightened in the black community for some time, particularly with respect to relaxers (chemical hair straighteners).

Several studies have been conducted exploring if there is a link between hair products and fibroids, cancer and other conditions, but these have been inconclusive. When a link has been shown researchers have been cautious explaining that association doesn’t mean causation – i.e. they couldn’t prove that relaxers actually contribute to the development of fibroids or cancer and therefore they all recommended that more research should be conducted.

Latest Research

In June of this year, researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey published the results from their research into specific hair products and whether their use is associated with an increase in breast cancer risk.  In this study, researchers looked at 4,285 African America and white women; 2,280 had breast cancer and 2,005 didn’t. The study compared those with breast cancer to those who didn’t have breast cancer to determine if differences existed that may  be linked to breast cancer risk.   The women were aged 20-75 and were from New York City and ten counties n New Jersey.

The study aimed to determine if hair dyes, relaxers and deep conditioners containing cholesterol or placenta were associated with an increased risk in developing breast cancer. In order to explore this researchers collected vast amounts of data on the women who took part in the study. This included socio-demographic data and their exposure to known risk factors such as family and personal history of breast cancer, smoking, alcohol consumption and more. They also asked participants about their use of the previously mentioned hair products, what shade of dye they used and  how long they used these products for.

What did they find?

The researchers found that for African American women there was a 51% increase in their risk of developing breast cancer among those who used dark brown or black hair dye. They also found that in African American women there was a 72% increase in oestrogen-positive breast cancers amongst those who used dark brown or black dyes and a 36% increase in oestrogen-positive breast cancers in those who used dyes more frequently.

In white women they found a 74% increase in breast cancer risk in those who used relaxers and a large increase in risk in women who used both relaxers and hair dyes. They also found that use of hair dyes resulted in a 54% increase in risk of developing oestrogen-positive breast cancers whilst relaxer use caused a 2.6 fold increase in oestrogen-negative breast cancers.

There was no link between deep conditioners and breast cancer.

What does this mean?

The researchers concluded that “these novel findings support a relationship between the use of some hair products and breast cancer.”

When speaking about their work, lead author of the research paper, Adana Llanos said

“Just because we found these associations doesn’t mean that if you dye your hair dark, or any colour, you’re going to get breast cancer, but at the same time, the study points to something else we should be mindful of.”

The results exposed a significant association with oestrogen-positive breast cancers so the current hypothesis is that the dyes may contain chemical compounds that are similar to oestrogen or stimulate pathways that cause the production of oestrogen. It was hard to determine this as women in the study weren’t asked what brands of products they used so researchers couldn’t explore the actual chemicals within these products that women were exposed to. But Alana Llanos said:

      “There must be some role for oestrogen for sure.”

Her research team recognise that there were limitations to the study and that further work is needed to truly understand the link between hair products and breast cancer risk.

Our Thoughts

The Lake Foundation is pleased to see more research in this area being conducted and this work needs to continue until we have a definitive answer as to whether hair products affect our health or not. In the meantime, we would advise that women take a look at this research and make an informed decision as to whether they should continue using hair dyes and relaxers.  We always say  people should exercise caution in the use of products where there is found to be a credible association with cancer, or any disease, until a clear answer can be provided on whether that association means that a particular product contributes to the development of a disease.

More Information

You can read the full research paper for this study here