The National Cancer Institute Should Delay Its Collaboration With Love/Avon

In August 2009, the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) and the Love/Avon Army of Women announced that they intended to collaborate. Their objective is to develop a computerized initiative to recruit and study women is order to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer. What could be a more important and worthy objective?

Dr. Susan Love is a well-known and leading national breast cancer surgeon. The Avon Foundation is a non-profit organization of Avon Products, a leading global beauty company. Avon is the world's largest direct seller, which markets to women in over 100 countries through independent sales representatives.

Relating to a November 2008 prominent advertisement by Avon Products in The New York Times, I identified a wide range of toxic ingredients in their products:

--Benzophenone-1 (hormonal and penetration enhancer) in Nail Experts Nail Brightener.

--Methylparaben (hormonal), ethylparaben (hormonal), and imidazolidinyl urea (cancer precursor) in Wash-Off Waterproof Mascara.

--Ceteareth-20 (cancer precursor), and disodium EDTA (penetration enhancer) in Advance Techniques Body Building Conditioner.

--PEG-80 sorbitan laurate, and PEG-10 rapeseed sterol (cancer precursors) in Anew Beauty Youth-Awakening Lipstick.

I communicated these disturbing concerns to Avon's Chief Scientific Officer. However, she responded dismissively.

I then informed Dr. Love of these concerns. She replied reassuringly, but non-responsively, to the effect that this information "could be used for future research by Love/Avon."

However, and of major concern, is persuasive evidence that has accumulated over the last decade, that parabens are readily absorbed through the skin, and that they pose powerful hormonal or estrogenic effects even at very low concentrations. Parabens have shown to be readily absorbed through the skin of immature female rodents, and to stimulate premature uterine growth. Parabens have also been shown to stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells in laboratory tests, and incriminated as possible causes of breast cancer.

In should be further stressed that parabens are the commonest of all ingredients in cosmetics and personal care products. As disturbingly, it has been estimated that women are exposed to high levels, as much as 50 milligrams of parabens daily, from cosmetics and personal care products.

Of additional and generally unrecognized concern is that other ingredients, benzophenone, and EDTA, are "penetration enhancers." These facilitate their own absorption, and that of other toxic ingredients in any product, deeply through the skin.

These longstanding public health concerns have been further strengthened by an August 2009 publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. This warned of the dangers of unknowing exposures, and risks of "estrogenically active compounds" in women using moisturizing creams containing hormonal ingredients.

Based on these considerations, the NCI should insist that Avon reformulate its products to phase out all toxic ingredients and replace them by safe alternatives before proceeding with this important initiative. If Avon is unwilling to do this, the NCI should terminate its relationship with the Love/Avon initiative.

Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health; Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition; The Albert Schweitzer Golden Grand Medalist for International Contributions to Cancer Prevention; and author of over 200 scientific articles and 15 books on the causes and prevention of cancer, including the groundbreaking The Politics of Cancer (1979), and Toxic Beauty (2009).

Comments

[shelhol]

Kudos to you Dr. Epstein for pointing out the ridiculous hypocrisy in a main-stream cosmetics purveyor being in any real way committed to protecting women from cancer! Laughable to imagine that Avon should have some association with the NCI given their use of parabens and other toxic ingredients...

[Neco223]

Thank you Dr. Epstein and Thank you HuffPo for publishing this!!!!

Dr. Epstein has being showing us for years how corporate tie-ins get in the way of truly reducing cancer.

When I see those Avon breast cancer walks, I do think it's a great thing that women feel solidarity, etc., but really they are being used as pawns for free advertising for Avon and "cancer research." It seems to blatantly obvious that we need to reduce the actually toxins that have been linked to cancers. If we're looking for a cure but continuing to support the causes (Avon and many other companies) it is just plain ridiculous.

So glad that Huffington Post lets the truth be told. I hope we hear a lot more from Dr. Epstein. This kind of stuff has been avoided by most media outlets, and it is extremely valuable!

[kjstjohn]

Dr. Epstein,

You and I spoke on the phone about 20 years ago about Chlordane. I was very grateful that you were willing to speak to me about the health risks posed by that near pervasive and highly persistent chemical.

I am very pleased to see that you are still trying to educate the public about the dangers of chemical exposure. I am just recently becoming aware of the risks of parabens and am finding it in many of the personal products I use, including my shampoo. I recently checked every shampoo brand at my grocery store and did not find a single product without parabens. I had to shop organic in order to find a product that was paraben-free.

It is beyond deplorable that academia is generally so beholden to industry that voices like yours are muffled. This has resulted in a medical community that has been trained to downplay the risks of chemical exposure and has skewed our legal system (which relies on academics for expert witnesses). All I can say is, thank goodness for the Internet. At least we no longer have to rely on corporate-owned media to get the word out.

[jakiew]

Why isn't this on the 6 o'clock news. i didn't know all this. what is wrong with our media outlets. are they bought and sold to the highest bidder, just like half of everything else in this country. scary stuff!

[weatherwaxx]

THANK YOU!

Until researchers are given free rein to investigate the real causes of cancer -- which I don't think the corporations want to see -- there's no hope in ending it.

Of course, REAL cancer prevention would start with getting the chemicals out of our ecosystem, and (even if we manage to survive global climate change) our great-grandchildren would still be dealing with that.

Too much "cancer research" is just raising more money for the toxic and grueling industry of surgery, chemo and radiation. We need to see more on prevention and nutrition.

And this needs to be funded through NIH, not corporate handouts. I worked in a science department at a major university, and our educational system has been co-opted by corporations -- they lead science around by the nose with their strings-attached grants and pay grad students pittances instead of hiring their own qualified researchers.

[thnk4selfagain]

The word is getting out about the health implications of chemicals in personal care products thanks to EWG and its Skin Deep project, among others. Endocrine disruptors should be at the top of the FDA's list of chemicals that should investigated and controlled. Medicine is only beginning to understand the endocrine system and its overall role in birth and developmental defects, hormonal disorders like diabetes, syndrome X and obesity, immunologial disorders, heart disease and cancer. Yet, these chemicals are unregulated. Meanwhile a massive long term experiment in public health is taking place, with consumers and especially women and children as the unwitting test subjects. The Avon / NCI alliance seems a bit suspect in this light: A program to study breast cancer and womens health funded by a company that markets products to women containing these chemicals.

[RMankovitz]

Hi Sam - I completely agree with you, and this is just another tribute to the hypocrisy that I find rampant in the cancer research industry.

I self-fund university research in the field of illness prevention. One of my projects with the Cellular Biology Department at UC Santa Barbara is directed to a non-toxic plant-based sunscreen, based on anthocyanins such as those found in blueberries. The research to date is quite promising, and the objective is to provide an alternative to commercial sunscreens, many of which contain cytotoxic, if not carcinogenic, ingredients. This and other developments such as a non-toxic water bottle are described in the health-related invention section of my website.

In "The Wellness Project", I discuss in some depth non-toxic alternatives for skin care, as well as other nature-based approaches to illness prevention .

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com