The Beauty Brains get a lot of questions about the new science of nanotechnology. Most people want to know if cosmetics made with nanoparticles are safe. Now the US FDA says that these products (which include over 300 sunscreens, toothpastes, and shampoos) are safe and do not require special labeling.
Are YOU concerned about the tiny terrors of nanoparticles?
—Mid Brain
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Every time I have been reassured NOT to worry about these kinds of things…LEAD IN LIPSTICK et.al….I hear/read something to the contrary.
I think the reason that even rational people are concerned is that the effects of chemicals are often not detected for years. My feeling is that if the idea of LEAD IN LIPSTICKS or NANOS IN SUNSCREEN keep you up at night…do your homework and avoid the products that are cited.
isn’t the fda the same organization that approved aspartame in food after being pressured by its makers? i can’t say that i really trust the fda’s decision, especially considering all the money that is being funneled into nanotechnology.
For a full range of resources and views on this topic, have a look at http://www.nanocafes.org/nanoproducts_cosmetics
Well, Aspartame has been in food for years and there haven’t been reports of significant negative health effects. It was also tested for over 10 years before it was approved.
The FDA isn’t perfect but the FDA employs scientists (among others) to make decisions. There haven’t been any major health issues like food poisoning or outbreaks of disease I’d say they’re doing a decent job. Perhaps they’re just lucky but it’s the best we’ve got.
Trust them or not. There isn’t much else.
Judy is right. If you are afraid of things like Lead in lipstick or Nanotechnology, stay away from it. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking you are smarter than everyone else and expect others to believe you just because it’s right for you. There is no proof that either of these things (at the levels used in cosmetics) cause any problems. They might. But until it’s proven no one knows.
Aspartame was tested on laboratory rats for toxicity and carcinogenic ability.
The problem with these rat studies is that they only looked at the rats for 2 years and then sacrificed them which is common in all areas of animal research. The problem with a lot of the chemicals that we are exposed to is that they don’t show any negative effects until your defense mechanisms in your body break down like in old age.
They didn’t let the rats get old enough to see the ill effects, but an Italian group of scientists recently repeated the old studies and let the rats live until they died of old age. What they saw was no different than the rats in the previous study UNTIL they looked past the 2 year mark. Then the rates of cancer markedly increased. The types of cancer were all over the body and not specific to one organ.
If you think aspartame is safe, guess again. As a geneticist, I won’t touch it!
I appreciate your comments but as a geneticist you must know that animal studies aren’t always great predictors of human responses. What is your explanation for the fact that people have been ingesting Aspartame for the last 20 years and cancer rates have been decreasing?
Could you please site the reference that states that cancer rates are decreasing? I don’t believe that is accurate.
Also, animal models like rats and mice are good models for human toxicity because of their synteny with human DNA. It also depends upon the type of study to predict whether the response will be similar in humans as it was observed in animals. For toxicity and cancer induction, animal models are very predictive.
I’m not an alarmist and only stating the facts as they have been recently published. The authors of the paper said the amount ingested was equivalent to a human ingesting 20 cans of diet soda per day.
I do know that in my field, many of us won’t touch aspartame because of these and other studies.
So if you don’t think something is safe, sometimes it is a good idea to stay away from it.
If the cancer rate citation you have does indicate that cancer rates are decreasing, it would be interesting to note that while aspartame is on the market, many other cancer inducing agents have been removed.
There is no way to retrospectively analyze the data when too many variables are involved.
The only true study in humans would be to treat them as the laboratory animals in a controlled environment and do a randomized, double blind study. That simply is not going to happen.
To see that cancer rates are decreasing, all it takes is a little looking at the American Cancer Society web pages.
Of course, you are absolutely correct that correlation doesn’t imply causation. It was a bit of a red herring I was throwing you.
As you also know, actual human exposure is much more valuable than animal studies. People have been ingesting aspartame for nearly 30 years now. Where is the evidence that it is causing harm in humans?
Also, the studies from the 1970′s showed that the recommended highest levels of aspartame were equivalent to 19 cans of soda per day. You can see this on the ACS website too. What is new about the research you’ve cited?
Sometimes I find scientists to be the least skeptical people I know, and I’m a scientist. One study proves very little. You have to look at the weight of all studies. To say aspartame causes cancer without any real proof is just non-skeptical. That’s not to say that it isn’t a controversial topic, it is still being studied. But right now, the experts from the FDA, the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and the World Health Organization have all concluded that aspartame does not cause cancer or other adverse health effects in the general population.
Why are all those experts wrong and you are right?
Well I never said I was right and they (you) were wrong.
I merely stated my opinion about aspartame based upon the facts presented to me. The research I cited is in pubmed. Most likely it has not been included on the ACS website yet because it was just published in September 2007:
Life-span exposure to low doses of aspartame beginning during prenatal life increases cancer effects in rats.
Soffritti M, Belpoggi F, Tibaldi E, Esposti DD, Lauriola M.
Click here for this article and related articles
The safety of aspartame has been heavily debated over the past 30 odd years, however up until this lifespan study was completed, the long term effects were not known. This study is a hallmark study. Of course I would like to see it repeated (which will take time) with different strains of mice (some transgenic with susceptibility or resistance to cancer would be interesting) and rats to further validate their study. The study however, was quite large which in itself is a strength for their argument.
Here is an excerpt from their article which I think answers your question as to why we haven’t seen the toxic effects yet in humans (besides the obvious answer which is how do you prove what a human gets cancer from when there are too many variables?): “Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to APM begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.” The unfortunate fact about this is that if this model holds true to humans, we will not see any marked affect in our population until our children are elderly. The repair mechanisms against cancer start to break down around 40 years of age. In about 10 to 20 years, if we see an increase in cancer rates, we still won’t be able to blame aspartame bc of all of the other carcinogens that could be responsible. The only thing we have is controlled animal studies which are giving me a strong enough indication that I won’t feed aspartame to my children and I won’t ingest it myself.
Not to say that the government agencies that you have cited are to be trusted, but as a scientist I prefer to look at the actual publications rather than what has been dumbed down for the masses. Any scientist worth their grain of salt will be very skeptical of anything they are told and will review all of the data prior to making a conclusion. In fact, the scientific method is based upon that model. Scientific Method
Furthermore, a quick news search will help you find a lot of articles in which the FDA is coming under scrutiny for it’s own “scientific” practices. Many scientists that work for the FDA have come out recently in the news and stated that they have been pressured by pharmaceutical companies to massage their data to help the drugs pass FDA approval. Whether this is true or not is yet to be determined, however there are a few drugs which were recently pulled from the market (past 10 years) where the harmful side effects were seen in human controlled studies and the data was buried. There is an ongoing investigation as to the validity of the FDA’s finding and their scientific method.
Therefore, I have to believe the science of independent researchers who are not paid for their results vs. researchers whose validity has come under question (FDA).
As argumentative as you have been in your last post, I can see that I have thrown a few red herrings your way as well. Hopefully, ego aside, you can read the article I cited and at the very least begin to think for yourself.
Thank-you!
First, kids dying from lead in toys. Now, they find high levels of lead in lipsticks. What’s next – lead in food? Are women going to start dying now too from using lipstick too much?
Freaky!
There’s a detailed report about it at http://www.myproductalert.com/lead-in-lipsticks.html
I, for one, am not afraid of nanoparticles in cosmetics. I find all this sudden hoopla about “nanoparticles” crazy. “Nanoparticles” is just a new name for an old phenomenon. We used to call them colloidal particles and we’ve been using them for decades in all kinds of products.
Show me some toothpaste and I’ll show you some colloidal silica…er silica nanoparticles.
Maybe the reason that I’m not panicking is that I’m a scientist.
People who want to be scared will find some thing to be scared of. And since, for most of us at least, the wolf is not at the door, common fears are likely to be irrational.
My two cents: Toxicity in laboratory animals is not equally expressed in the human body. There are, for example, 127 effective “cures” for cancer in laboratory mice, but NONE of those treatments have efficacy in human being. In other words, we can cure mice, but not people.
Nanotechnology represents an entirely new field of biochemistry and microbiology because particle size does matter at the cellular and molecular levels. The particle size and chemical makeup of substances BOTH play an integral role in biochemical reactions within the body.
It is presumptive and quite simply, bad science, to issue a blanket statement “Nanotechnology not a problem in cosmetics”. Moreover, ongoing experiments have determined that the topical application of fullerene results in carbon-aborbtion at the cellular level.
Because carbon is the cornerstone of all organic compounds and has a high affinity for bonding, it is significant that carbon delivered in a nano form has a reactive effect within the human body. The implications – if you understand intracellular biochemisty – are staggering.
Therefore, I beg to differ with the Miss Beauty Brains and hereby suggest that nanotechnology has the potential to cause great bodily harm. Does that mean all nanotechnology in cosmetics is harmful? While I would like to say “probably not”, that would be the same as saying Russian Roulette is probably not dangerous because the odds of firing the live round are 1-in-6.