A new study led by Mount Sinai researchers in collaboration with scientists from Cornell University and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has found higher prenatal exposure to phthalates—manmade chemicals that interfere with hormonal messaging—to be connected with disruptive and problem behaviors in children between the ages of 4 and 9 years. The study, which is the first to examine the effects of prenatal phthalate exposure on child neurobehavioral development, will be published January 28, on the Environmental Health Perspectives website.

“There is increasing evidence that phthalate exposure is harmful to children at all stages of development,” said Stephanie Engel, PhD, lead study author and Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “We found a striking pattern of associations between low molecular weight phthalates – which are commonly found in personal care products – and disruptive childhood behaviors, such as aggressiveness and other conduct issues, and problems with attention. These same behavioral problems are commonly found in children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or Conduct Disorder.”

Phthalates are part of a group of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, that interfere with the body’s endocrine, or hormone system. They are a family of compounds found in a wide range of consumer products such as nail polishes, to increase their durability and reduce chips, and in cosmetics, perfumes, lotions and shampoos, to carry fragrance. Other phthalates are used to increase the flexibility and durability of plastics such as PVC, or included as coatings on medications or nutritional supplements to make them timed-release.

“Recently, the government instituted regulations limiting certain phthalates in things like child care articles or toys that a young child might put in their mouth,” continued Dr. Engel. “But it’s their mother’s contact with phthalate-containing products that causes prenatal exposure. The phthalates that we found most strongly related to neurodevelopment were those commonly found in cosmetics, perfumes, lotions and shampoos. Current US regulations do not address these kinds of phthalates.”

For the study, phthalate metabolite levels were analyzed in prenatal urine samples of a multiethnic group of 404 women who were pregnant for the first time. The women were invited to participate in follow-up interviews when their children were between the ages of 4 and 9. The mothers were not informed of their phthalate metabolite levels and the researchers were unaware of their exposures when testing the children.

Follow-up visits were completed by 188 of the women and their children. At each follow-up visit, the mothers completed validated questionnaires designed to assess their behavior and executive functions. The researchers found that mothers with higher concentrations of low molecular weight phthalates consistently reported poorer behavioral profiles in their children. The strongest trends were in the categories of conduct and externalizing problems, characteristics typically associated with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder and ADHD.

“These are high level, chronic exposures that start before the child is even born, but continue throughout their life. More research is needed to examine the effects of cumulative exposure to phthalates on child development. But what this study suggests is that it’s not enough to regulate childhood exposure to these chemicals. The regulations need to include products that moms use,” said Dr. Engel.

Reference: The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Mount Sinai finds prenatal exposure to certain chemicals affects childhood neurodevelopment, Jan. 28, 2010

A groundbreaking new book, Toxic Beauty: How Cosmetics and Personal-Care Products Endanger Your Health …And What You Can Do About It, issues a long-overdue wake-up call to the public on the dangers of ingredients in common cosmetics and personal-care products whose safety most people naively take for granted.

“We are all playing Russian roulette with toxic-laden cosmetics and personal-care products that we apply to our skin, and to the skin of our infants and children, everyday,” warns author Samuel S. Epstein, MD.

How many women know of the risks to their health by using lipstick, moisturizers or deodorants? Why do so few mothers know of the risks to their infants and children from using personal-care products, including sunscreens? How can the cosmetic and personalcare products industry recklessly continue to ignore these dangers?

Toxic Beauty is a fully documented exposé which reveals the wide range of avoidable health risks, some even life threatening, that Americans are unknowingly exposed to in their everyday cosmetic and personal-care products. “But there is also good news. These toxic exposures are 100 percent avoidable by taking just a few basic precautions,” says Epstein.

Toxic Beauty is written by Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, an internationally recognized expert on avoidable causes of cancer, besides other toxic-related diseases, and investigative reporter Randall Fitzgerald. And besides chronicling the pervasive marketing of dangerous products, Toxic Beauty also informs readers on the growing availability of safe products.

• In the pages of Toxic Beauty, you’ll find:
• The five categories of common toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal-care products.
• Toxic ingredients in these products have been incriminated in a wide range of diseases,
  particularly cancers. These include malignant melanoma of the skin, and lethal ovarian cancer.
• They also include birth defects in male infants.
• Safe synthetic and certified organic products as alternative to dangerous products.
• Dangerous exposures to employees from prolonged exposures to toxic ingredients in unlabeled products in poorly ventilated and unregulated beauty and nail salons.
• Tear-out sheets listing all major categories of toxic ingredients; also tables on five major classes of toxic ingredients that can be downloaded from the Cancer Prevention Coalition Web site: www.preventcancer.com

Epstein warns, “Unbelievably, the FDA has recklessly failed to protect us from toxic ingredients in cosmetics and personal-care products for the last six decades. What’s more, the mainstream industry has remained criminally indifferent to the dangers of their products. In sharp contrast, European regulations ban all products containing toxic ingredients.”

So, the reality is that protecting yourself and your family unfortunately is still entirely up to you. Toxic Beauty shows you just how.

***
Samuel S. Epstein, MD, professor emeritus of environmental health at the University of Illinois, Chicago, has published 270 scientific articles and authored or coauthored 15 books.

Dr. Epstein has been a consultant to the U.S. Senate and is frequently invited to give congressional testimony. He has also consulted for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. He has appeared on national TV shows including “60 Minutes,” “Face the Nation,” “Meet the Press,” “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show, along with major documentaries, including the 2004 prize-winning “The Corporation.”

Randall Fitzgerald has been an investigative newspaper and magazine reporter and author for 37 years. He has written features for Reader’s Digest, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. His most recent book is The Hundred Year Lie: How Food and Medicine Are Destroying Your Health.

Book Details: Title: Toxic Beauty: How Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Endanger Your Health … And What You Can Do about It.
Author: Samuel S. Epstein, MD and Randall Fitzgerald
Publisher: BenBella Books, Distributed by Perseus Distribution
Publication: April 2009, Cloth, ISBN: 97881933771625, General Trade, 224 pages. Available at bookstores everywhere

‘No Family History’ author makes compelling case for environmental link to breast cancer and urges women, advocates, and policymakers to focus on prevention.   

PHILADELPHIA – Has the key to reducing breast cancer gotten lost in the race for a cure? A new book, No Family History, presents compelling evidence that exposure to everyday products such as cosmetics and toiletries, hormones in food, household cleaners and pesticides is behind the dramatic increase in breast cancer and argues that the solution is simple: prevention.  

“Every three minutes, one woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. Yet, most women with breast cancer defy most or all of the risk factors, including weight, diet, whether they gave birth and breast fed, and family history,” says No Family History author Sabrina McCormick, Ph.D., a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. 

The incidence of breast cancer has increased at an alarming rate over the past 60 years. In 1940, around one in 24 women who lived to be 80 was afflicted. By 2006, that number rose to one in eight.  

In her book, McCormick cites compelling evidence showing that the reason for this dramatic increase is the rise in the production and use of cancer-causing chemicals women are exposed to on a daily basis.  

Breast cancer “hot spots” from Long Island, N.Y., to Northern California have two common threads—industrial pollution and agricultural pesticides. These “hot spots” are pockets of the United States where breast cancer has risen six times faster than the national rate. In Long Island, the incidence of breast cancer is 200 percent higher than the national average. 

“In our race for a cure for breast cancer, we have ignored the overwhelming body of evidence that demonstrates a link between products from cosmetics to pesticides and breast cancer,” McCormick says. “We must focus on prevention by demanding safer products, reducing our exposure to chemicals and urging our policymakers to ban cancer-causing chemicals in everyday products.” 

European governments responded to this scientific evidence by banning cosmetic products with certain chemicals from being sold in their countries. According to No Family History, one American cosmetics company known as much for its “pink ribbon” marketing campaigns as for its pink lipstick removed these chemicals from products sold in Europe, but these same chemicals remain in the products the company sells in the United States. 

“Women and girls should not have to check the ingredients in every stick of lipstick and each bottle of moisturizer. Better regulation to ensure that these products are safe would go a long way to reducing the incidence of breast cancer,” McCormick says. 

Many companies that profit from “pink” marketing campaigns or breast cancer treatments, McCormick argues, are the same ones fighting against tougher regulations of cancer-causing chemicals in everyday products. McCormick dubs this the “political economy” of breast cancer.

“In the case of breast cancer, many activists have unwittingly bought into campaigns leading down the road away from a cause, and instead into more and more breast cancer,” McCormick writes in her book. 

No Family History: The Environmental Links to Breast Cancer (Rowman & Littlefield) is a provocative glimpse into environmental links to breast cancer, profiling research as well as women’s stories. McCormick recommends that women reduce their exposure to many cosmetics and toiletries and urges policymakers to strengthen regulations to ban cancer-causing chemicals from being used in everyday products. 

Reference: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars, Are everyday products from cosmetics to household cleaners causing the high rates of breast cancer? June, 15, 2009 

For more information on the book (in stores in June) and a documentary McCormick produced on the subject, visit www.nofamilyhistory.org