Breast Cancer & Hair Care for black women

PrincessDiva

New Member
This is an article I found doing a search on hair products...I have seen a few threads on health & hair care so I thought it may be worth posting to my LHCF sisters..I was a little shocked at some of the products on this list because I have a few of them myself...this is just an excerpt..I thought I would share in case someone was interested.... Black Woman and Breast Cancer (Cont.)


So many of my friends have read an article that I have posted on this website from the the Center for Environmental oncology, part of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute on black woman and breast cancer. The majority of the readers would like to know which products to be concerned about. So I went back to the net searching. However this is what I have found, the Center for Environmental Oncology will work with Silent Spring Institute, a Massachusetts based cancer institute, to identify suspect contaminants and ingredients in hair care products and other personal products regularly used by African-American young women and their mothers.


More recently, attention has turned to estrogenic compounds in hair care products used by Black women as a possible explanation for higher cancer rates in this population. I've started to carry copies of the list in my purse and I am going to share it with you right here. The list simply says: The following is a list of products that have previously been found to contain hormones:


1. Placenta Shampoo

2. Queen Helene Placenta cream hair conditioner

3. Placenta revitalizing shampoo

4. Perm Repair with placenta

5. Proline Perm Repair with placenta

6. Hormone hair food Jojoba oil

7. Triple action super grow

8. Supreme Vita-Gro

9. Luster's Sur Glo Hormone

10. B & B Super Gro

11. Lekair natural Super Gro

12. Lekair Hormone hair treatment with Vitamin E

13. Isoplus Hormone hair treatment with Quinine

14. Fermodyl with Placenta hair conditioner

15. Supreme Vita-Gro with allantoin and estrogen plus TEA-****

16. Hask Placenta Hair conditioner

17. Nu Skin body smoother

18. Nu Skin Enhancer.


The majority of these products contain placental extract, placenta, hormones or estrogen. As early as 1983, Dr. Devra Davis (epidemiologist and director of the Center for Environmental oncology, part of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute) and co-researcher Leon Bradlow advanced the theory that xenoestrogens, synthetic estrogen imitators, were a possible cause of breast cancer.


Davis also says, "most cases of breast cancer are not born, but made and the more hormones a woman is exposed to in her lifetime, the greater her risk of breast cancer."


We need to be more cautious of the products that we use on our hair and our bodies and demand that more information about our health is shared.
 
Last edited:

dlewis

Well-Known Member
Thanks, I just bought the Hask Placenta Hair conditioner and I'm almost through with it. I'll never purchase that again.

bumping............
 

mightycute912

New Member
Thanks for the post. I am new to the board and I am learning about the carcinogens and parabens in products. I was seriously considering purchasing products that had those types of conditioners. Thanks so much.;)
 

Miss*Tress

Well-Known Member
Thanks for posting this, PrincessDiva. :up:

Maybe you could add your post to the sticky thread on ingredients so this information is not lost on page 100 by tomorrow.
 

mightycute912

New Member
I found another article on http://www.safecosmetics.org

Here is the article.

Care products may put black women at higher risk
to develop breast cancer
By Anita Srikameswaran

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Use of personal care products that contain estrogen or hormone-like compounds might help explain why young African-American women are at greater risk of developing breast cancer, local scientists say.
In an upcoming issue of the journal Medical Hypotheses, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute's center for environmental oncology point out that black women under 40 have a higher breast cancer incidence than white women of similar age, and they are more likely to die of the cancer regardless of age.
"We have to ask what else is going on," said senior investigator and center director Devra Davis. "We think that these products could be playing a role."
Personal care products like hair straighteners and deodorants may contain estrogens and preservative compounds called parabens that mimic hormones.
"Some of these compounds are widely used in the African-American community throughout life, starting at very young ages," Dr. Davis said.
In a report from the mid-90s, black toddlers began to develop breasts and pubic hair when their parents applied hair pomades to their scalps.
"When they stopped using these products, the breasts went away," Dr. Davis said. "Now anything that can make breasts grow in an infant has got to be problematic."
Manufacturers do not have to list product ingredients, so "I can't tell [people] anything about what's in them now," she said. "I do not know. Nobody does because they're not required to make it public."
Dr. Davis said she would like to get manufacturers to stop using the questionable compounds. As she put it, "We don't want to just study the problem. We want to make the problem go away."
More research needs to be done to verify or refute a link between the products and breast cancer risk, said Maryann Donovan, scientific director of the environmental oncology center and leader of the study.
"We don't really know yet, but we certainly can document that these chemicals are definitely causing changes ... that are biologically important," she said.
In addition to conducting experiments to see how breast cells behave when mingled with the compounds, researchers must try to reconstruct exposures that might have put black breast cancer patients at greater risk, Dr. Donovan said.
Suspicious chemicals also can be found in everything from suntan lotion to milk, she noted. Puberty is occurring at lower ages, the ratio of male to female births is changing and other such shifts are raising concerns.
"We need to look at these as wake-up calls and do something differently," Dr. Donovan said. "If we don't wrestle with this beast, and do something about it, it's never going to go away."
Scientists from the environmental oncology center and Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health reviewed breast cancer rates among black and white women from 1975 to 2002.
Invasive breast cancer incidence declined overall, but African-American women still remained at higher risk, they said. The findings were presented this week in Boston during the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.
 

StrawberryQueen

Well-Known Member
Not to be crass and take away from the topic, but why would someone buy/use something that has "placenta" in it? Or says it does?
 

PrincessDiva

New Member
StrawberryQueen said:
Not to be crass and take away from the topic, but why would someone buy/use something that has "placenta" in it? Or says it does?
Placenta supposedly strengthens the hair & it is very common to find in hair products .....example: Hask Placenta can be found at Walmart or any drug store...another article..Sorry if its long but I think this info bears repeating if I can help at least one person be informed. My sister & my aunt had breast cancer so I know first hand how devastating this can be.






BlackHairCare.Com & EthnicHairCare.Com

In the no hype zone we will dispel all the myths and misconceptions surrounding black and ethnic hair care. These web sites will give you the facts, no hype, no glitz, no glam just the facts. This is by far the most significant quanity of advice assembled on the subject of Black & Ethnic Hair Care on the internet. The information contained within these pages will help you make better hair care choices, from relaxing to perming to coloring to cutting to styling to shampooing or conditioning it's all here, This is the real deal, not knowing what products to use and how to use them can do more harm than good. The first step to a healthy head of hair is education and knowledge and we're here to give you both. To quote Barry Fletcher, "while new hair relaxers and other products are entering the market every day, there is little or no emphasis on researching the companies that produce these goods or the long-term effect they have on our hair".

Black Hair Care Products Linked to Breast Cancer
Lifestyles Report...Hair scare
by Debbie Norrell

At least two months ago WPXI contacted me to do an interview about
ingredients in hair care products used by African-Americans possibly
leading to breast cancer. I was selected because I am a 15-year breast
cancer survivor.
I agreed to do the interview. However at the end of the taping I didn't
know anything more about the study than before the cameras started
rolling.
Recently WAMO news anchor and New Pittsburgh Courier freelance writer
Allegra Battle did a story on this same subject and it was a feature on
the May 9, 5 p.m. KDKA news. But at the end of these stories we still
did not have a list of the products.
Battle gave me the list that didn't make her feature during a recent
visit I made to the WAMO studio's promoting the Pittsburgh Race for the
Cure. So many of my friends have seen the stories on television or read
about this issue in the paper and they want to know which products to
be concerned about.
However I wanted to give you more so I went to the Internet and looked
for articles from the Center for Environmental Oncology and found one
titled: Why Healthy People Get Cancer: Center Examines Environmental
Suspects (update spring 2005).
The article stated, one of immediate research priorities of the new
center is the puzzling phenomenon of breast cancer in African-Americans
under the age of 40, who have nearly twice as much breast cancer as do
white women.
The center will work with Silent Spring Institute, a Massachusetts
based cancer institute, to identify suspect contaminants and ingredients in
hair care products and other personal products regularly used by
African-American young women and their mothers.
More recently, attention has turned to estrogenic compounds in hair
care products used by Black women as a possible explanation for higher
cancer rates in this population.
I've started to carry copies of the list in my purse but we're going to
share it with you right here. The list simply says: The following is a
list of products that have previously been found to contain hormones:

Placenta Shampoo, Queen Helene Placenta cream hair conditioner,
Placenta revitalizing shampoo, Perm Repair with placenta, Proline Perm Repair
with placenta, Hormone hair food Jojoba oil, Triple action super grow,
Supreme Vita-Gro, Luster's Sur Glo Hormone, B & B Super Gro, Lekair
natural Super Glo, Lekair Hormone hair treatment with Vitamin E,
Isoplus Hormone hair treatment wit Quinine, Fermodyl with Placenta hair
conditioner, Supreme Vita-Gro with allantoin and estrogen plus
TEA-COCO, Hask Placenta Hair conditioner, Nu Skin body smoother and Nu Skin
Enhancer.

The majority of these products contain placental extract, placenta,
hormones or estrogen. As early as 1983 Dr. Devra Davis (epidemiologist
and director of the Center for Environmental oncology, part of the
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute) and co-researcher Leon
Bradlow advanced the theory that xenoestrogens, synthetic estrogen
imitators, were a possible cause of breast cancer.
Davis also says, "most cases of breast cancer are not born, but made
and the more hormones a woman is exposed to in her lifetime, the greater
her risk of breast cancer."
We need to be more cautious of the products that we use on our hair and
our bodies and demand that more information about our health is shared.
Ladies and gentlemen beware.
 
Last edited:
Top