Downstream Hazards of Conventional Perfumes & Cosmetics

>From The Christian Science Monitor
December 16, 2004

The downstream dangers of your perfume
By Robert C. Cowen

That morning trip to the bathroom - to brush your teeth, wash your hair, and
put on perfume or cologne - may not be as benign as you think.

Every day, those chemicals wash down the drain. While they are not
themselves poisonous, they may affect biological processes in unexpected
ways. Now, Stanford University biologists have the mussels to prove it.

Welcome to the new science of ecotoxicology in which scientists try to
understand how the synthetic chemicals we're pouring into our environment
affect the way earthly life goes about its business.

Recent research about musk fragrances and mussels illustrates this point.
When gills from live mussels were exposed to water with low concentrations
of six commercial musks, they were not poisoned, point out postdoctoral
fellow Till Luckenbach and Prof. David Epel of Stanford. That was expected.

But after two hours, the researchers washed the gills and put them in
musk-free water that also contained a red dye. Cells in the gill tissue took
up the dye. That was not expected.

Those cells have a mechanism to detect a foreign substance, such as the dye,
and keep it out. That worked for cells not exposed to the musk in the first
place. Cells that had been exposed lost this natural defense.

That finding has a disturbing global implication, notes the California Sea
Grant program, which provided part of the funding for the study. Cells in
many animal species, including humans, use the same protective mechanism to
ward off foreign substances.

These musks, used to improve the smell of everything from detergents and
soap to air fresheners and shampoo, are pouring into our environment. So are
other synthetic fragrances.

Sewage treatment does not remove them. They build up in human tissue as well
as in fish and invertebrates such as mussels. An unexpected question has
been raised about a possible health risk that now should be investigated.

Laboratory research that leads to wider study is a hallmark of
ecotoxicology. Scientists wouldn't know what to look for in the field
without it.

Yet, "it is a virtual certainty that other effects are occurring in the
field that we are presently overlooking in the lab," note the editors of
Environmental Science & Technology, an American Chemical Society journal,
which devoted a special issue to this new science. "How can all biodiversity
be protected from the myriad of chemicals they are now exposed to, when ...
we do not even know what is there?"

Japan has already banned the most common of these chemical compounds, musk
xylene, and Germany has put into effect a voluntary ban on the stuff.
Elsewhere, including the United States, musk xylene is still heavily used,
except in products applied orally, such as lipstick.

Developing nations struggling to build their economies sometimes criticize
such research as a rich country's luxury. The journal editors reply that the
international effort to build up that research is vital to everyone on the
planet "if we are to protect our living heritage from the cocktail of
chemicals present in all environments."