Acne creams such as Estee Lauder’s Clinique, Toro Pharmaceuticals’ Proactiv and Reckitt Benckiser-owned Clearasil contain a chemical that has been linked to cancer, according to a lab that has tested dozens of consumer products that also were found to have been made with carcinogens.
Valisure, a New Haven, Conn.-based testing laboratory, filed a petition with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which said that it tested 66 different products whose main ingredient is benzoyl peroxide, a topical antiseptic found in creams and face washes that are designed to combat pimples.
According to the lab, the amount of benzene found in the products were up to 12 times the amount permitted in guidelines issued by the Food and Drug Administration — an “unacceptably high” level of the carcinogen which has been linked to leukemia.
Valisure said that over-the-counter products as well as those that are sold through prescriptions “can form over 800 times the conditionally restricted FDA concentration limit of 2 parts per mission for benzene.”
Other products that benzene was detected in include PanOxyl, Walgreens’ acne soap bar, and Walmart’s Equate Beauty acne cream.
Spokespersons for Target, Estee Lauder, Walmart and Reckitt were not immediately available for comment.
The FDA has not yet responded to Valisure’s petition.
In the summer of 2022, Banana Boat announced it was recalling three batches of its “hair and scalp” sunscreen after tests found that it contained trace amounts of benzene.
Weeks later, more than two dozen popular dry shampoo aerosol products sold by multinational giant Unilever were recalled due to “potentially elevated levels of benzene.”
In 2021, retail chain pharmacy CVS announced it was pulling two store brand products after Johnson & Johnson said it would be recalling five sunscreen products due to the detection of low levels of benzene.
Consumers filed a a class action lawsuit against J&J over its recall of the affected products, including the Aveeno Protect + Refresh aerosol sunscreen and four Neutrogena sunscreens: Beach Defense aerosol sunscreen, CoolDry Sport aerosol sunscreen, Invisible Daily Defense aerosol sunscreen and UltraSheer aerosol sunscreen.
But the detection of benzene in the acne treatment products was “substantially different” from the other cases, Valisure said.
“The benzene we found in sunscreens and other consumer products were impurities that came from contaminated ingredients; however, the benzene in benzoyl peroxide products is coming from the benzoyl peroxide itself,” said Valisure co-founder and President David Light.
High levels of benzene were not only found in the acne products, but also in the air around incubated products, indicating that the carcinogen could leak out of some of the packages, posing a potential inhalation risk, Valisure said.
Bloomberg News was the first to report the development.
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