Carcinogens

International Agency for Research on Cancer PRESS RELEASE N° 167 WHO 29 July 2005

IARC MONOGRAPHS PROGRAMME FINDS
COMBINED ESTROGEN-PROGESTOGEN CONTRACEPTIVES AND
MENOPAUSAL THERAPY ARE CARCINOGENIC TO HUMANS

I was watching a CBC newsworld special on carcinogens ad environmental cancer risks in Canada and I was really struck by it. Part of what was mentioned was the level of known carcinogens in Canadian products and how many of them have no ingredients labels. There is a small lobby growing for labelling products as potentially carcinogenic (but they're not getting far, why am I not suprised?).

What is the press release about? Well, the WHO's IARC have come out with new recommendations on labelling for oral contraceptives and guess which country has not even reviewed the advice according the Mesley's report? Yup, our own.

Interesting to note: the EU has banned a list of potential and known carcinogens from products being sold inside its member countries. Many of these substances are still in Canadian products. The question is: isn't it better to err on the side of caution and take these products out of products than err on the side of industry and leave them in until a link between environmental exposures and cancer can be proved? Ethics prevent us from doing controlled human studies on these products and the industry will not accept animal models as evidence so... they in essence will never agree on their own to take these products off the shelves or remove these ingredients. We need to stand up for ourselves. Go to CBC to find out more about this subject.