Hairdressers Found To Have Carcinogenic Compounds In Blood From Hair Dyes

Gabriella Johansson Occupational and Environmental Medicine Lund University Hospital Lund, SwedenMedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Gabriella Johansson
Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Lund University Hospital
Lund, Sweden

 

MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study?

Answer: Our main focus was to study hairdressers’ exposure to carcinogenic aromatic amines. We found that the concentrations of the carcinogenic compound o-toluidine in blood increased with the number of treatments per week of light color permanent hair dyeing and hair waving treatments. Another aromatic amine, m- toluidine (assessed as not classifiable as carcinogenic to humans owing to a lack of data) in blood, increased with the number of treatments per week of light color hair dyeing and all other hair dyeing.

MedicalResearch: Were any of the findings unexpected?

Answer: We did not expect that the concentrations of o-toluidine to increase with the number of treatments per week of hair waving.

MedicalResearch: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Answer: We will continue measuring aromatic amines in hair dye products and hair waving products for the same aromatic amines that were measured in hairdressers’ blood, to further confirm our results.

Citation:

Exposure of hairdressers to ortho- and meta- toluidine in hair dye
Gabriella M Johansson, Bo A G Jönsson, Anna Axmon, Christian H Lindh, Marie-Louise Lind, Mats Gustavsson, Karin Broberg, Anders Boman, Birgitta Meding, Carola Lidén, Maria Albin

Occup Environ Med oemed-2013-101960
Published Online First: 9 June 2014 doi:10.1136/oemed-2013-101960

 

 

Last Updated on October 24, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD