Parabens

[OakLeaf]

The Environmental Working Group has summaries and links to peer-reviewed medical journal articles on this and thousands of other cosmetics ingredients. In addition to the positive "hits," they point out where there are data gaps (i.e., where the safety of ingredients, alone or synergistically, is unknown. I don't know how Australia's environmental regulation works, but in the USA, the default is that companies may sell anything for ingestion or skin application until someone else has proved it's dangerous, which is obviously difficult to impossible).

As you may remember, the more reading I do about what I went through last summer, the more certain I am that I'm not going down that path again. But since I now know that I'm at high risk for breast cancer, I think that it would be silly for me to have that knowledge and not take any preventive measures (as the doctors would have me do).

Obviously avoiding parabens isn't the #1 step I'm taking. Most of the major steps were things I was already doing (activity, maintaining a healthy body-fat %, avoiding meat and hormone-treated dairy products, treating my depression, avoiding second-hand smoke; I'm beyond it now, but I never took birth control pills and never intended to take HRT). There were a couple of high-risk activities in my life (drinking alcohol, eating some corn-fed dairy products, eating large amounts of un-fermented soy products) and I've drastically cut down on those. In addition to those changes, not instead of them, I've taken steps to reduce my exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors. Methylparaben and bp-A, as well as household organophosphate pesticides, are so easy to avoid that it would be silly not to, IMO. Knowing that I'm at high risk, why should I increase that risk, even a little?