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According to Swiss researchers, these new data should “finally convince” the health authorities to “formally recognize the risk that chronic exposure to aluminum represents for human health” and to “restrict its use by the cosmetics industry. ”.
While more than 50,000 new cases of breast cancer are detected each year in France, should we be wary of the aluminum salts present in deodorants? The role of these ingredients in the occurrence of the disease has been suspected for several years, and a new study published in September in the journal International Journal of Molecular Sciences tilts the balance in favor of this hypothesis.
Breast cancer and deodorants: “Aluminum alters cell DNA”
Led by a group of researchers from the Fondation des Grangettes, the Hirslanden Onco-Hematology Center of the Clinique des Grangettes in Switzerland and the University of Oxford, this study was carried out on hamster cells, including including those of mammary glands, “recognized experimental models in human regulatory toxicology”, specify in a press release the researchers Stefano Mandriota and André-Pascal Sappino. These cells were exposed to aluminum salts. Result: not only do they “assimilate this metal quickly“, Moreover, “within 24 hours, a genomic instability appears in these cells as an alteration in the structure and number of chromosomes”.
Interviewed by BFM TVAndré-Pascal Sappino specifies that these results have been observed when aluminum salts are applied “even in very small doses and for a limited time“. They Will Indeed”pass through the skin and accumulate in the mammary gland“. For the research team, “the research carried out shows that aluminum alters the DNA of cells in ways equivalent to those of recognized carcinogens”, such as asbestos or tobacco, “and thus confirm its carcinogenic potential”.
“Restrict the use” of aluminum in cosmetic products
They add that “these new results should finally convince the health authorities to formally recognize the risk that chronic exposure to aluminum represents for human health, and to restrict its use by the cosmetics industry”. Indeed, these are not the first studies carried out on the subject – among other things, work carried out in 2016 by the same two scientists had shown that “very aggressive metastatic tumors“can form on mouse mammary cells exposed to aluminum concentrations”equivalent to those measured in the human mammary gland”.
Suspicions around chemical substances in deodorants have arisen as the risk factors for breast cancer identified so far (obesity, alcohol, tobacco or exposure to the hormones estrogen and progesterone)”explain only a small proportion of observed breast cancers” and that the disease “preferentially develops in the outer parts of the mammary gland, near the armpit, where the skin is very thin and permeable”.
Breast cancer and deodorants: a hypothesis that remains controversial
However, this hypothesis remains controversial. First, the researchers recognize that it is not easy to conclude a cause and effect relationship, large-scale comparative studies being lacking.
Moreover, the health authorities do not conclude that there is an increased risk of breast cancer through exposure to aluminum salts in deodorants: in 2011, the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) affirmed that “the analysis of epidemiological data and studies in animals could not demonstrate a link between cancer and exposure to aluminum by the dermal route”. For its part, the European Scientific Committee for Consumer Safety (CSSC) estimated in 2020 that the use of aluminum was “safe” when its concentration did not exceed 10.6% in spray deodorants and 6.25% in others, percentages higher than what is found in products currently sold on the market.