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Parabens & Breast Tumors
by Dr. Dennis
T. Sepp, ShiKai Products
I am writing this letter in response to
the many people who have expressed their concern over a
recent study that found paraben preservatives present in
human breast tumors. I personally can appreciate your
concern and will try to explain the facts as well as my
opinions as clearly as possible.
First let me qualify my position with
ShiKai Products. I am the founder and owner of ShiKai
Products as well as its chief formulation chemist. I
have a PhD in Chemistry (Univ. of California at Santa
Barbara) and 4 years of research experience in Medicinal
Chemistry (Univ. of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy.) I
regularly read the current literature in both
biochemistry and medicinal chemistry. And I am also a
cancer survivor who shares the same concerns about
parabens as many of you do.
I have read and fully understand the
study under question. The research took place in
England and was published in the Journal of Applied
Toxicology, 24, 5-13 (2004). The investigation was
carried out on 20 samples of tissue from human breast
cancer tumors. Using standard procedures the
researchers pulverized the solid tumors, extracted the
mass with assorted organic solvents and isolated a final
fraction that they analyzed for the presence of methyl,
ethyl, propyl, butyl, and benzyl paraben. For the sake
of future brevity I will refer to this whole collective
family as “parabens.”
They found a mean average of 55 nanograms
of total parabens in their samples. Be aware that one
nanogram equals one billionth of a gram. This is a
small amount. They also simultaneously ran a blank
sample (a sort of check on their procedures) using the
exact same isolation, extraction and measurement
conditions on samples that contained NO TUMOR TISSUE.
Obviously, there was an expectation that these blanks
should show NO presence of parabens. But this was not
the case. The blanks showed an average mean presence of
34 nanograms of total parabens. These results were
bewildering, not only to me but also to the
investigators. They had no explanation for the presence
of parabens in the blanks. And they were also bothered
by the relatively high value in the blanks. (34 in the
blanks vs. 55 in breast tissue.) They theorized that
these results “. . . probably relate to the ubiquitous
use of parabens as preservatives even in laboratory
detergents and personal care products of the operators.”
It is entirely possible that all of the
parabens, both in the tumor samples as well as the
blanks came from contact with laboratory solutions
preserved with parabens; instruments washed in lab
detergents, storage containers washed in lab detergents,
surgical tools washed with lab detergents, etc. For
example, the scrub used to wash a patient’s surgical
site, the surgical tools used to remove the tumor, the
stainless steel tray used to collect, transport and
store the excised tumor and the tools used to handle the
tumor during the ensuing biopsy. The list is endless.
There obviously is a multitude of opportunities for
tumor tissue to come into contact with instruments that
have been cleansed in paraben containing wash solutions.
The
fact that the difference between tumor and blank was so
small (55 vs 34) personally makes me suspicious. Had
the difference been orders of magnitude larger I would
have looked at the results differently. In fact one of
the 20 tumors tested actually showed the presence of
less parabens than the blank. Furthermore, finding
parabens (alkyl esters of the parent para-hydroxybenzoic
acid) in the first place rather than the parent product
itself is problematic since all human cells contain
enzymes that hydrolyze paraben into its parent
para-hydroxybenxoic acid Both these factors suspiciously
point towards the parabens having contaminated the tumor
in some way after removal from the patient. |
