Styrene - Ingredient can cause cancer

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Environmental connections to public health >>

Expert Panel Confirms that Fragrance Ingredient 

Can Cause Cancer

By: Tina Sigurdson, Staff Attorney

Thursday, August 7, 2014

The Latest from EnviroBlog | Environmental Working Group

Last month (July 28) a committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences confirmed
 a federal interagency group’s conclusion that styrene, a chemical building block used to
 produce a wide variety of everyday products, can cause cancer.
In formal terms, the report issued by the Academy’s National Research Council endorsed
 the 2011 finding by the National Toxicology Program, a collaboration of scientists from
 several government agencies, that styrene is “reasonably anticipated to be a human 
carcinogen.”
The committee found “compelling evidence” for that conclusion. Moreover, it said that
some studies would support “a strong argument [for] listing … styrene as a known human
 carcinogen” (italics in original). That’s an even more definitive label – signaling a dangerous
 substance that should be strictly controlled.
News coverage largely focused on foam cups and some food containers composed of
polystyrene, a substance made up of long chains of styrene molecules linked together.
 Polystyrene contains small amounts of styrene itself.
Styrene also turns up in automobile exhaust, cigarette smoke and – you might be
 surprised to know – it might be lurking in the various sprays and liquids you’ll find in
 the cosmetic and cleaning aisles of your supermarket. That’s because it is an ingredient
 allowed in fragrances added to a wide variety of consumer products.
Which fragrances? Which products? Unless you happen to have a gas chromatograph
or mass spectrometer, you won’t know.
Although all other ingredients in your lip gloss, body wash and other scented cosmetic
 products must be disclosed on the label by specific name, the so-called “fragrance
 loophole” in federal labeling law means that ingredients added to provide a pleasant
 scent, or to mask a bad one, need only be listed under the generic term “fragrance.”
 We know only that styrene might be an ingredient in any given fragrance because the
 International Fragrance Association, an industry trade group, publishes an online
“Transparency List” of ingredients that perfumers say they use in formulas for consumer
 products. Styrene is one of the 3,000-odd ingredients on the list.
Besides cologne and other personal care products, fragrances are also used to scent
 household care products such as dish and laundry detergent. When you add up the
 number of products in your bathroom cabinets and under your kitchen sink that
 contain “fragrance” – and may contain styrene – the total could be many exposures
 to a substance we now know is “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.”
Right now, however, the only way to steer clear of styrene in personal care products
 is to avoid using any that say they contain “fragrance” but don’t list the perfume’s
 individual components. That’s because the federal Food and Drug Administration
 doesn’t have the authority or resources to evaluate the safety of risky ingredients
such as styrene – and respond accordingly. It will take a long overdue reform of
 federal law to ensure that these products contain only safe ingredients.
We at EWG believe that personal care products should never contain unnecessary
 ingredients that can cause cancer. This news is just one more reason we need to
reform the outdated federal law regulating these products so that it actually protects
 consumers from exposure to dangerous substances such as styrene.
 Thursday, August 7, 2014