February 8, 2007, we’ve heard that private laboratory tests reveal
that popular children’s shampoos and soaps can contain a known carcinogen,
at levels above those allowed by the FDA. What does this mean?
Fortunately, childhood cancer is rare. Unfortunately, the National Cancer
Institute reports that it is less rare today than in years past. Lance
Armstrong sends an incredibly inspiring message about the ability of young
men to survive testicular cancer, but he also reflects a worrisome
trend—Rates of this most common cancer in young men are rising throughout
the industrial world. NCI reports that inherited germ line defects that
are passed on from our parents, explain less than one in ten cases of
cancer in young persons today. As was the case with Mr. Armstrong, we
can’t explain why most cancer in young persons occurs.
Clearly the things that happen to babies in utero have lasting
effects on their health. Studies in pregnant rodents find that exposures
to levels of plasticizers that can be found in personal care products can
cause defects in the reproductive tracts of their offspring. What about
us? Recent work by Professor Shanna Swann of the University of Rochester
found that the greater the amount of several common phthalate plasticizers
in the blood of mothers during pregnancy the greater the chance that their
baby boys will have birth defects of their anus.
Another study by Professor Frederica Perera of Columbia University,
found that the more diesel exhaust, pesticides and other contaminants that
young pregnant women inhaled walking around their neighborhoods of Harlem
or the South Bronx the smaller head size and lower birth weight of their
babies. Other work by the Jacobsons of Wisconsin found that intelligence
of children in middle school was determined by the amount of toxic
chemicals circulating through their mothers during pregnancy.
As a science epidemiology, tells us about the past. In all the cases
just mentioned, because studies were done on infants and children, results
were produced relatively quickly. But what about what we’ve heard today?
Steinman has provided disturbing analyses that have found an established
carcinogen in baby shampoos and soaps. Some would tell us that this is of
no concern. We don’t have proof of harmed humans. Yet. After all the
levels are really too small to be of any impact. But, the reality is
this: life is a mixture. We don’t get to choose the good and bad things
that we breathe and drink. Children are simply not little adults. Their
brains double in the first two years of life. Their immune systems and
bones grow. Pound for pound they breathe faster, live closer to the
tailpipe and have the potential to absorb relatively higher doses of any
pollutant that is in our common environment.
The soft, sweet, wonderful skin of our babies is just as sensitive as
we imagine it to be. The so-called testicular barrier of an infant is
actually one hundred times more absorbent. The combined effect of small
amounts of hazardous chemicals on our children is a matter that merits
serious concern. The absence of evidence at this point should not be
construed as proof there is no problem, rather it shows how difficult it
is to collect critical information on such a moving target. For many
complex exposures of modern life, we simply have no control group, that is
no group that is truly unexposed.
Some ingredients or contaminants of shampoos, soaps and creams can
get right through the skin into the bloodstream. Dr. Chandra Tiwary, who
is here with us today, headed up pediatric endocrinology for the Air Force
at Brooks Air Force Base, until his retirement recently. While there he
reported on a disturbing pattern. Baby girls as young as one year of age
had developed breasts, after their parents had applied creams that
contained hormones to their scalps. When they stopped using these creams,
the breasts went away. Others have provided similar observations.
We don’t know why more young African American women get breast cancer
than do young white women, nor do we know why girls are developing breasts
at younger ages. Perhaps the two are related. Our Center for
Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute is
releasing a pamphlet today that explains what we know and suspect about
environmental risks of breast cancer for African American women. Although
white women have the highest overall breast cancer incidence rates,
African-American women under age 40 have a significantly higher incidence
of breast cancer as well as a higher rate of death from breast cancer than
do white women. Furthermore, African-Americans with breast cancer die at a
younger age than women in other groups. In looking at breast cancer
incidence among African-American and white women in the United States from
1975 to 2002, we reported to the American Public Health Association
recently that the chances of getting breast cancer in newer generations
are about 21 percent higher in whites and 41 percent higher in African-
Americans than in previous generations of women.
In an article published this week in the peer-reviewed journal
Medical Hypothesis, Dr. Tiwary, Dr. Maryann Donovan and I explain why we
think that the use of estrogen and other-containing or hormone-mimicking
agents in personal care products account for some of these unexplained
patterns in African American women. In light of the growing numbers of
younger girls with breasts, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine
Society—the certifying board for pediatric endocrinology—in 1999
recommended that what is normal should be redefined to include breast
growth at age 6 for African Americans and age 7 for whites.
We believe that this would be a dangerous move. We agree with
endocrinologist Kurt Midyett and colleagues of Children’s Mercy Hospital
of the University of Missouri-Kansas City: if we say that breasts at
young ages are normal, we will fail to pick up serious disease 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, lay behind some of these patterns.
It should not be the job of scientists to find out what contaminants
or ingredients may be affecting the delicate endocrine systems of our
children and grandchildren. People have a right to know whether products
they use on themselves and their children contain compounds that increase
their risk of disease. Without such information, we turn our children
into lab rats in a vast uncontrolled experiment. I look forward to the
day when the right to know will be protected far better than it is at this
time. Science will advance and our children will be the better for it.
References provided on request
www.ehponline.org/docs/2004/6641/abstract.html
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CYP/is_17_112/ai_n15690597
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=56157
Medical Hypotheses
Volume 68, Issue 4 , 2007, Pages 756-766
Jacobson JL, Jacobson SW, Humphrey HE. Effects of in utero exposure to
polychlorinated biphenyls and related contaminants on cognitive
functioning in young children. J Pediatr. 1990 Jan;116(1):38–45. [PubMed]
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/111/1/47
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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