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  • 2000-05-24 (xsd:date)
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  • Do Anti-Perspirants Cause Breast Cancer? (en)
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  • Breast cancer is scary stuff. It's the second most common type of cancer (after skin cancer) among women, and it's also the second most common cause of cancer death (after lung cancer) among women. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), in the current year about 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in the U.S., and about 40,290 women will die from breast cancer. Those numbers are enough to scare anyone, especially since we still don't know what causes breast cancer. Researchers have identified many risk factors (such as age, diet, cigarette smoking, alcohol intake, and family history), but the specific causes of breast cancer remain elusive. So when someone purports to have found a cause (maybe even the cause) of breast cancer, naturally we take note of it: An apparent large increase in the incidence of breast cancer in the years since World War II (which may in large part be due to more reliable methods of detection and diagnosis) has caused many to focus on changes in our society that have occurred since then as the primary causes of breast cancer, such as the increased use of pesticides, the advent of birth control pills, changes in diet, and different styles and materials in women's clothing. It's compelling to think that anti-perspirants might be one of these causes: their use (in their current formulation) is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the explanation given for how they might cause breast cancer (i.e., allowing chemicals to enter the body through nicks in the skin, and preventing the excretion of bodily toxins through sweating, thereby causing them to build up in the lymph nodes) seems to make sense to many, just as Sydney Ross Singer's 1995 book Dressed to Kill theorized that the wearing of tight-fitting bras has led to a concentration of carcinogenic compounds in the breasts and lymphatic systems of women. However, the ACS noted that many aspects of rumors linking anti-perspirant use with an increased risk of breast cancer were false or unsupported: Studies of possible links between anti-perspirant/deodorant use and breast cancer conducted in the years since then have provided conflicting results: The National Institute of Health's (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) currently notes that no conclusive evidence has yet been found between the function or ingredients of anti-perspirants/deodorants and breast cancer: (en)
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