Reproductive health

Walk through the personal care aisles of your local store and you’ll see dozens of products that promise to soften your skin, make you smell better, extend your lashes, decrease wrinkling, tame your curly hair, or even semi-permanently change the color of your lips, hair or skin. Remember the adage “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is”? Many of product promises like these are based on chemicals that can also be hazardous to your health, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can interfere with fertility and reproduction, fetal growth and infant development. That’s a big concern, because these products are heavily marketed to young women in the years before they might consider starting a family. Recent studies have demonstrated that college-age women use cosmetic products at higher rates than other groups. Additionally, many of these young women are unaware of the health risks from frequent use of popular products containing contaminan...

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Consumer products released more than 5,000 tons of chemicals in 2020 inside California homes and workplaces that are known to cause cancer, adversely affect sexual function and fertility in adults or harm developing fetuses, according to our newly published study. We found that many household products like shampoos, body lotions, cleaners and mothballs release toxic volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, into indoor air. In addition, we identified toxic VOCs that are prevalent in products heavily used by workers on the job, such as cleaning fluids, adhesives, paint removers and nail polish. However, gaps in laws that govern ingredient disclosure mean that neither consumers nor workers generally know what is in the products they use. For this study we analyzed data from the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which tracks VOCs released from consumer products in an effort to reduce smog. The agen...