A new study reveals that toxic chemicals have been found in hair products, specifically those that are made and marketed to Black women, can fuel breast cancer.
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Study Says Toxic Chemicals Found In Hair Products For Black Women Fuel Breast Cancer
The study was conducted by City of Hope, a cancer hospital and research center in Southern California. The researchers who performed the study presented their findings at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Atlanta earlier this month.
They found that hair care products mainly marketed to Black women contain parabens, which are a class of hormone disrupting chemicals.
Now, these chemicals not only being linked to raising the chance of getting breast cancer, but they also disproportionately fuel the spread of cancer cells in Black women.
While parabens are in fact commonly used as preservatives in hair care products, they opposingly allow for breast cancer cells “to grow, invade, spread and express genes linked to cancer and to hormone action.”
The researchers behind this study said in their press release, “Importantly, a survey looking for products that do not contain parabens and other harmful chemicals revealed that there are fewer paraben free options marketed to Black women.”
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According to lead researcher Lindsey S. Treviño, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Health Equities and Department of Population Sciences at City of Hope, Black women younger than 40 years old have a higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer than any other racial or ethnic group — and they suggest it may mainly be as a result of these here products alone.
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Treviño says:
“One reason for the higher risk of breast cancer may be exposure to harmful chemicals called endocrine-disrupting chemicals in hair and personal care products. These chemicals mimic the effects of hormones on the body.
Black women are more likely to buy and use hair products with these types of chemicals, but we do not have a lot of data about how parabens may increase breast cancer risk in Black women.
This is because Black women have not been picked to take part in most research studies looking at this link. Also, studies to test this link have only used breast cancer cell lines from white women.”
According to Treviño, the study tested the effects of parabens on breast cancer cells from both Black and white women. The results that Treviño’s team discovered showed that parabaens caused the cancer cells from Black women to grow, while the samples from white women did not show any effects.
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