Quote:
Originally Posted by ssipes
remember the mantra of toxicology is "the dose makes the poision."
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Paracelsus, the father of modern toxicology, said this. We learned all about him in my studies in college of toxicology.
Just to clarify (and I'm in NO way defending this article. I've gotten myself into futile arguments with people who will believe what they want to believe), the above statement, "the does makes the poison," is not ENTIRELY true. When it comes to cancer-causing agents, there is NO threshold or safe dose. I repeat: The dose DOES NOT make the poison when it comes to carcinogenic chemicals. Theoreticlly, one molecule of a carcinogenic chemical is enough to set the cancer wheels in motion, eventually ending up in a tumor. Luckily, we have all kinds of effective biological systems in place to keep DNA damage from turning into a tumor, and it's a crapshoot whether or not the MILLIONS of chemicals each day we are exposed to lead to cancer. But there is no "safe dose" of any carcinogenic chemical. The same is also true of reproductive or developmental toxicants (such as ethanol, lupin, lead, etc).
As far as I know, neither parabens nor SLS is on Prop 65 (I don't have access to my work databases at the moment or else I could very easily check both prop 65 and mutagenic assay results for these chemicals to shed some light on this). But I bet, as is often the case with these kinds of "newsbreaks," I'd find just as much evidence reporting they DON'T cause cancer as I'd find they might cause cancer. Trash the government and CDC and EPA and OSHA and ACGIH all you want, claim they don't know diddly squat when it comes to protecting their consumers, claim their evidence is all a conspiracy theory and tainted with money and selling out, but I'd say they've done a pretty damn good job of recognizing and reporting a heavy number of chemicals (and DONE something about regulating their uses) in our favor, and they continue to investigate and review a fair number each year. If SLS and parabens haven't made their more severe lists by now, I'd put my energy towards worrying about those that have.