Air Fresheners/Cleaning Products Could be Linked To Breast Cancer

[Rapture]

I was driving home from grocery shopping a couple of nights ago when I heard on some random little radio show about how women who use air fresheners and cleaning products have a higher risk of getting breast cancer. I was like So anyways, here's the article (or one of many on the net really):

Source:
http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20100720/cleaning-products-linked-to-breast-cancer


In most of the articles they talk about the study possibly being flawed, but if this is actually researched more and found out to actually be 100% true then this is pretty scary news. We all clean our houses and a lot of us delve into the nice smelling world of air fresheners. I hope they start looking into this a bit more...but until then I'm not going to stop cleaning my house or using my Wallflowers from B&BW

 

[Valvalis]

I've always disliked air fresheners and fragrances because they give me headaches and sinus problems, so this is kind of a good victory in my case if this is true XD I would've thought for sure it would be something more like throat or lung cancer, or something that affects the respiratory system, but breast cancer seems to be one of the most prominent types, so hopefully this will get a lot of attention.

Breathing anything too strong, whether a good or bad smell, has never been good for us (I actually heard that someone died from breathing in decaying fish fumes on an old ship once ), so maybe this will help them make more healthy air fresheners if they are still going to stay in use. A lot of them are way too strong, like unnecessarily strong, and just cover up odors anyway rather than neutralizing them; and when odors exist, it's generally a sign of bacteria anyway, which indicates that there's often a mess or something dirty that needs to be cleaned up. So for that reason, I actually kind of like bad smells sometimes, since they act as an alert system

I dunno, I've never kept air fresheners in the house so this doesn't really affect me much, though I do have to encounter them at work all the time If I get a chance I am going to mention this to them, and hopefully a comprehensive list will be released at some point of the exact air fresheners that do the most damage.

 

[Bambi]

Ah what an excuse to not do the housework

I rarely use air freshener, unless the cat does a massive stinking shite, which annoyingl;y shes just done one and it fucking hums

Tbh, I think pretty much everything seems to be linked to cancer these days. Cant say Id let it bother me either way

 

[Will Graham]

The study does sound very flawed, first of all they conducted telephone surveys which of course are going to be unreliable. They also seem to be making no proper scientific findings, for example the properties contained in these products that are carcinogenic. It's like that episode in House,

House: Excuse me ma'am do you have cancer?

Woman Drinking Mango Juice: No

House: There you go, mango juice prevents cancer

 

[Dee]

I've always disliked air fresheners and fragrances because they give me headaches and sinus problems, so this is kind of a good victory in my case if this is true XD I would've thought for sure it would be something more like throat or lung cancer, or something that affects the respiratory system, but breast cancer seems to be one of the most prominent types, so hopefully this will get a lot of attention.

Ditto. I've never been a fan of fragrances and I rarely use air freshners (unless it's something like to eliminate pet odor), so if there is a risk, I'm not being exposed to it through excessive use. My mom, on the other hand, might be. xD She's a clean freak and is constantly using sprays. But that's not funny. In any case, I hope it's not true. Sure, too much of something that seems to be good can be bad for us, but who knows.

 

[Sum1sgruj]

Car air conditioning could be linked to cancer. Permanent markers could be linked to cancer. Aspartame and color dyes could be linked to cancer. Hell, there are studies that even say bras could be linked to cancer.

Use all the air freshener and cleaning agents you want_

 

[Davey Gaga]

found out to actually be 100% true

Nothing in science will ever be 100% true.

A wise Psychology lecture once taught me, in reference to correlational studies, that just because something is correlated to something else does not mean they are linked.

You could carry out a study on people with lamps, and people who've had cancer. A very high proportion would probably have both, but that does not mean that lamps are the causative agent. You can ask if conception occurred in a dark room or a light room then ask what sex your baby was, but that does not mean that light intensity is related to sex determination.

Not the best examples in the world but neither's correlating air fresheners to cancer.

On the other side of the spectrum, cancer is caused by a large number of mutations in particular genes, caused by anything from the sun to chance. While it's extremely difficult to say if one thing causes another (particularly in humans - we're not the best model organisms for conducting experiments) we can say that things are linked (but again it does not mean that A causes B). So in surveys where women who use cleaning products have had cancer, even though they answer yes to both, all it means is they've answered yes to both, until some molecular biology can be applied to test it.

It's possible, just don't throw out the Oust just yet.