Lifestyles Report...Hair scare

 By Debbie Norrell

 

A little over a year 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 entitled: 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

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.

(Email the columnist at debbienorrell.Com.)