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Breast cancer isamong the scariestsimply because its the most commonand it kills more than 40,000 women a year.
Jocelyn Runice
But is there really anything to that worry?
Here’s what scientists do and don’t know about deodorant and breast cancer.
you could see that for yourself righthere.
But that doesnt mean its always been a silly concern to dismiss.
But the weight of evidence is minimal, and really none of it in humans is very thorough.
More on this in a bit.
In 2001, a researcher named Philippa Darbreproposedthat underarm cosmetics might contribute to cancer.
She has since publisheddozens of papersbased on laboratory studies (i.e.
cells in petri dishes) that claim to support her hypothesis.
Darbre was right that more cancer shows up in that upper outer quadrant firstaround half start there, actually.
But breast tissue isnt spread equally among the four quadrants of the breast.
The upper outer one has the most breast tissue.
As for the increase in deodorants/antiperspirants and breast cancer, lots of things have increased over that time.
Or women wearing pants.
Its possible to match up somepretty crazy correlationsthat obviously arent related.
Plus, greater awareness andbetter testshave led to better detection of cancer.
So a correlation isnt enough evidence on its own.
The hubbub about deodorants and antiperspirants surrounds two ingredients in them: aluminum and parabens.
Deodorants and antiperspirants work in different ways.
Bacteria love those fats and proteins, and its the byproduct of their feast that produces your BO.
Deodorant covers up the stink, but antiperspirants stop you from sweating in the first place.
Aluminum is the active ingredient that helps antiperspirants plug up the sweat glands and reduce your perspiration.
Both aluminum and parabens areendocrine disruptors, which means they can mimic estrogen and mess with your hormone levels.
Besides, most major brands of deodorants or antiperspirants dont have parabens anyway.
(you might check the ingredients of yourfavorite brand here.)
Aluminum does appear to activate acouple typesofbreast cancer cellsbut only in a petri dish, just asparabens do.
Three have been done, with one finding some supportive evidence and two finding the opposite.
Whats more, the science in some of those reports is of questionable quality, Naik says.
Not having a control group in research is a big nope when it comes to taking research results seriously.
The other two studiesthe ones thatdidn’tfind a linkused much more reliable methods.
In astudy of 104 womenin Iraq, half the women had breast cancer and half didnt.
Thebiggest and best studyinvolved 813 women with cancer and 793 women without.
Once again, more of the womenwithoutcancer used antiperspirant regularly.
Therefore, no link between deodorant/antiperspirant and breast cancer showed up.
Beyond this, women encounter all kinds of synthetic chemical compounds each day, and most arent easily avoidable.
So freaking out about whether or not they’re contributing to an increased risk is kind of pointless.
At least until we know much, much more about them.
The genetic makeup of each person kind of trumps everything.
