If a chemical in a skin care product causes cancer, would you let your teen use it?

Question

A lot of the teens on the skin care board are really using a lot of benzoyl peroxide. Should these products maybe state on the label or something that benzoyl peroxide is used to induce skin cancer in lab animals for skin cancer research?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=2507187&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus
Department of Dermatology Skin Diseases Research Center, University Hospitals of Cleveland, OH.
It is known that the free-radical-generating compound, benzoyl peroxide (BPO) enhances malignant conversion of murine skin benign papillomas into carcinomas.

If there is such a difference between rodent and human skin, why are they using the rodents to test skin cancer drugs for humans? What, the results of the drug tests are okay and helpful for humans but how we get it is different?

FDA MedWatch...

Benzoyl peroxide has been shown to be a tumor promoter and progression agent in a
number of animal studies. The clinical significance of this is unknown.
Benzoyl peroxide in acetone at doses of 5 and 10 mg administered twice per week induced
skin tumors in transgenic Tg.AC mice in a study using 20 weeks of topical treatment.
In a 52 week dermal photocarcinogenicity study in hairless mice, the median time to onset
of skin tumor formation was decreased and the number of tumors per mouse
increased following chronic concurrent topical administration of BenzaClin Topical Gel
with exposure to ultraviolet radiation (40 weeks of treatment followed by 12 weeks of
observation).

http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/SAFETY/2005/APR_PI/BenzaClin_PI.pdf

If it is used to turn benign papillomas (like a pimple) to malignant papillomas in lab animals at ONLY 5-10% applied ONLY 2 times a week from ONE source, How can the chem manufacturer state that it doesn't?

Answer 1

That's horrible! All those companies care about is money and they don't care about people. They'd rather sell a dangerous product to millions of people, versus going out of business!

Anyways, no. I wouldn't let my kid use it.

And for the person who said that the FDA would take that off the shelves if it caused cancer, the FDA keeps lots of drugs on the shelves knowing that they're dangerous.

Answer 2

First of all, I want to state this, "ANIMALS AND HUMANS ARE NOT THE SAME" just because it causes cancer in an animal does not mean it does so for a human, as a matter of fact, if there was any evidence taht such a drug caused damage to a human, the FDA Would step in and pull it off the market.

Answer 3

to the person that said animals & humans are different, that's true, but honestly, FDA is full of greedy morons, and i bet they get a lot of money with BP sales, so they most likely wouldn't pull it off unless there was a lot of public outcry.
thankfully i use mostly natural products [i'm 15], but if i had a kid, i'd really recommend they don't use it, but it'd be kinda hard to enforce it.

Answer 4

"Benzoyl peroxide breaks down in contact with skin, producing benzoic acid and oxygen, neither of which are significantly toxic.

When applied to skin benzoyl peroxide has been shown to induce cancer, but only when used at 100% concentrations; it has not been shown to do this at the far lower concentrations used for treating acne, and at lower concentrations benzoyl peroxide has not been found to be mutagenic or carcinogenic."

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzoyl_peroxide

Answer 5

I use it and i never heard that it causes cancer...so where is the link that states such thing?

Answer 6

that causes cancer!
i've been using the product for over a year
im really scared now.........

why'd the heck did i get a thumb down for being scared?
geez people

Answer 7

no way

Answer 8

if it CAUSES cancer.. it wouldnt be available to purchase.