anti-perspirants suspected of causing breast cancer

maybe so.

The Cancer-Antiperspirant 'Myth'

Dec. 5, 2005

(CBS) If you've checked out the back of your antiperspirant lately, you might have noticed something different: new labels required by the Food and Drug Administration. They point out that antiperspirants are "drugs" containing "aluminum" ingredients ? that's what stops the sweat.

The aluminum is also what concerns some people, including Dr. Kris McGrath.

"I personally feel there is a very strong correlation between the underarm hygiene habits and breast cancer," McGrath tells CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

McGrath, an immunologist and instructor at Northwestern University, has been intrigued by a potential breast cancer link since medical school.

It got personal when his wife ? a frequent shaver and antiperspirant user ? got breast cancer.

"She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987," McGrath says. "She died in 1989."

People who don't believe in a link point to this 2002 study that finds no connection.

But it didn't take into account how often a woman shaved and used antiperspirant, which McGrath considered crucial. So he did his own study of breast cancer patients and found this: The more these women shaved and used antiperspirants, the sooner they got breast cancer.

Is he trying to say all cases of breast cancer could be linked to antiperspirants and shaving?

"Absolutely not," McGrath says. "Breast cancer has existed since Hippocrates. But when you plot the sales of antiperspirant deodorants with the incidence of breast cancer in the United States, they both have grown in almost a parallel fashion."
...