Monday, 6 September 2004

Parabens are common preservatives in personal care products, and can mimic estrogen in the body. The potential health risks raised in relation to estrogenic chemicals include breast cancer and altered pregnancy outcomes. Although such links have not yet been studied in human populations some, these relationships are firmly borne out in laboratory studies.

EWG's assessment of product ingredient labels identified parabens in 57.3 percent of 7,500 products (Table 1). By this assessment, parabens are used in more personal care products than any other synthetic ingredient, and are second only to water in their overall prevalence in products.

Despite the cosmetic industry's contention that parabens are quickly metabolized and excreted from the body (CIR 2003), a recent study identified parabens in human breast cancer tissue, raising obvious questions about the abilty of parabens to bioaccumulate in the body (Darbre et al. 2004).