Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Let's TALC about health!

Let's TALC about health!

From my humble observations it seems that the public awareness of what constitutes TALC is very low. It’s even lower when it comes to its long-debated toxicity. For many of us talc is simply talc. I hope the short text below will cast some light on the murky clouds surrounding talc. I decided not to give talc the benefit of the doubt and discontinued using it (and any other products containing it) long time ago. I use a minimal amount of cosmetics from well-established manufacturers of safe cosmetics (recently I seem to favour Urtrekram, but there are many other manufacturers whose products might be locally available in your areas, such as Jason, Burt's Bees, Weleda).  

TALC [(derived from the Persian tālk (تالک )] refers to both mineral talc and industrial mineral products that are marketed under the name talc and contain proportions of mineral talc that range from about 35% to almost 100%. Talc occurs naturally in many regions of the world and its softness has made it valued for centuries as a body powder. Mineral talc occurs naturally in a platy (flat) form, but may also occur as asbestiform fibers (which describes the physical form and does not imply the presence of asbestos). Mineral talc products prior to mid-1970’s may have contained asbestos fibers. Nowadays the purer forms of talc (approx >90%) are used in many cosmetic products, including those for feminine hygiene, baby powders, soaps, blushes, powder compacts and eye shadows, foundations and beauty creams.


Unfortunately, numerous pathological studies have shown that particles and fibres that enter the body can migrate to distant organs. Analogously, following perineal application, talc particles can migrate from the vagina to the peritoneal cavity and ovaries. The association between talc use in the perineal region and ovarian cancer was investigated by a number of research groups worldwide. A very large number of studies have found that women who used talc experienced excess risks of ovarian cancer; some results were statistically significant and some were not. Some studies linked the use of talc with other forms of malignant tumours. In 2006 International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of WHO) evaluated data available on TALC and classified it as a possible carcinogen (group 2B).

International Agency for Research of Cancer - evaluation of talc: 

Research report on perineal use of talc and risk of ovarian cancer:

Big businesses can afford strong lobby groups. Here is a European lobby group which clearly downplays the research findings about toxicity of talc:

EUROTALC






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