Alright, so I just read this study that found a bunch of personal care products that people use every day actually contain a chemical that can give you cancer. Yeah, you read that right – cancer. The chemical in question is formaldehyde, which is known to be a carcinogen. But get this, companies still add it to stuff like shampoo, lotion, soap, and even eyelash glue to make it last longer on the shelves. Like, why would you do that? Cancer is no joke, man.
So, in the past, everyone was all freaked out about formaldehyde in hair relaxers. But now, it turns out it’s not just relaxers we need to worry about. A group of researchers from Boston University found that black women who used relaxers a lot were more than 50% more likely to get uterine cancer compared to those who didn’t use them as much. That’s some scary stuff right there.
This new study, led by Dr. Robin Dodson from Silent Spring Institute, goes even further. They had black and Latina women keep track of all the products they used for about a week and checked the labels for formaldehyde and preservatives that release it. Turns out, over half of the participants were using products that had formaldehyde releasers in them. And to make things worse, some of these women were using these products every day or multiple times a week. Yikes.
The most common formaldehyde-releasing preservative they found was DMDM hydantoin, which was in almost half of skincare products and over half of hair products. But Dodson is like, “Hey, this list isn’t even complete. There could be more stuff out there that we don’t even know about.” So, like, how are we supposed to protect ourselves if we don’t even know what to look for?
This study was part of a bigger project called the Taking Stock Study, where a bunch of smart people from different places are trying to figure out how chemicals in beauty products are messing with the health of black and Latina women in California. It’s like a real-life mystery, but with a scary twist.
Dodson and her team are all about getting the word out and pushing for better laws to keep us safe. They think companies should have to put warning labels on products with formaldehyde releasers, or even better, just not use them at all. I mean, that seems like a no-brainer, right?
In Europe and some states in the US, they’ve already banned or are thinking about banning formaldehyde and its releasers in personal care products. In 2023, the FDA was like, “Yeah, we should probably ban this stuff in hair straighteners,” but they still haven’t done anything about it. Typical government, always dragging their feet.
So, the bottom line is, watch out for those sneaky formaldehyde releasers in your beauty products, and maybe think about joining the fight for safer laws. Because who wants to risk getting cancer just from using shampoo, right?
