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Aluminium – too close for comfort?
Beauty and the chemicals | What's wrong with parabens? | Aluminium – too close for comfort? | Triclosan – killing too many germs? | Phthalates – how plastic are you?
All UK cosmetics and household products, and their ingredients, must be safety tested. The legislation includes a list of 769 chemicals which may not be included in cosmetics and it sets out maximum concentrations of 56 chemicals which can be used as preservatives, together with other restrictions on their use.
Since June 2007, companies which import or manufacture chemicals, including those used in cosmetics and household products, have been required to provide safety data on all their products, together with an assessment of risk, in order to register them under an EU-wide system for testing the effects of chemicals on human health and the environment.
Another chemical in deodorants which has been making headlines is aluminium. Research by the same group who suggested a link between parabens and breast cancer has shown that aluminium, like parabens, is capable of interfering with oestrogen activity. The researchers have also shown that, in tissue samples from 17 women with breast cancer, aluminium levels were higher in the outer side of the breast, near to where deodorants are applied.
Once again, Cancer Research UK is sceptical, pointing out that the study was small and it did not compare aluminium levels in the breast samples with those in other parts of the body, or with levels in healthy women without breast cancer. They say that, while breast cancers are more common in the upper outer side than in other parts of the breast, this is most likely to be due to the fact that this is the area which contains most breast tissue.
Beauty and the chemicals | What's wrong with parabens? | Aluminium – too close for comfort? | Triclosan – killing too many germs? | Phthalates – how plastic are you?
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