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That sucks for the millions of people who use BPO to control their acne. From what the article says, more benzene is released at higher temperatures. I wonder if storing the BPO in a cool environment can reduce the release of benzene. It might be beneficial to store your acne meds in the fridge between uses.
This is not a risk at all. This article is a bunch of nonsense. Benzene already exists in the air and the amount you'd in inhale is tiny compared to just living your daily life. Valisure is a scaremongering company designed to put out these releasing funded by companies wellness type brands who claim their products don't have ingredients in them that don't actually matter.
If you read the study, they put in quite a bit of work just to reach some sort of levels that would scare people by heating it up for days at a time. Stupid articles like these and the sunscreen ones need to stop being posted on this subreddit.
It looks like the [president ](https://www.valisure.com/team/david-light)of Valisure holds a [patent](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023177625A1/en?inventor=%22david+light%22&oq=inventor:+%22david+light%22&sort=new) regarding a supposed method of stabilizing Benzoyl Peroxide and preventing it's decomposition. Seems like a conflict of interest to me. Regardless of what I think; if they wanted to shine a light on this issue; if it is an issue; then they should have published a research paper first. Releasing a press statement and a petition *before* showing their actual research does not fill me with confidence regarding the quality of their study or the honesty of their intentions.
I *do* think that this is a field that *may* warrant investigation and study; but that's not what we're getting here.
Agreed. Some people may end up deciding not to put benzene on their face instead though. BPO acts primarily as a topical anti-bacterial and if you are fighting bacteria there are plenty of other perfectly safe ways to get the same result.
Agree, Differin (adapalene) is OTC now yay. But still not _cheap_. So I would always use it for spot treatment after pimple started, preemptively only in the common areas
That and Salicylic acid face wash every day was what worked well for me
My other tip that I believe actually works is to change your pillow case every night during the peak of puberty (use tshirts as pillow cases for a cheaper option), and develop the habit to be weekly pillow case changes at least through your 20s
Yeah, it's not bad. Back in my day I got a prescription and it was around $140 for the 1oz tube (iirc). I made those tubes last a year or two
It's now like $15 for .5 oz?
It really depends on your skin. BP worked for me at about 60%. Retinoids are said to be more effective for most people, but the topical application is irritating, difficult, and takes months to start working. Accutane is the harsh but easier route to nuke it all.
Yes, gasoline contains benzene. If you smell gasoline, you’ve just inhaled some benzene. As does smoke from things like campfires and cigarettes. Automobile exhaust can also have some.
To expand, benzene is just one volatile organic compound (VOC). Most of the "new car smells", tennis ball odors, paint smells, etc. are typically caused by off-gassing of VOCs. And benzene is just one of many VOC and SVOC compounds that you smell when you're pumping your gas.
As in the case of any poison, the concern is about dosage, and getting a whiff from your car at the pump probably won't hurt you as long as you aren't huffing it.
Edit: minor grammar that would have bugged me
Benzene concentration in gasoline is very low and strictly controlled by the EPA, at least here in the US. Some companies will get tax breaks for keeping the concentration well below the maximum at the end of the year. Same goes with other harmful chemicals existing in small amounts in gasoline like sulfur. I worked in a fuel lab for a couple years and it was usually 1% by volume or lower. Even at the max which I think was around 3%, there's a very low risk of inhaling enough benzene to cause you harm simply by filling up your car. Even over your lifetime.
I’d expect the washes to be much less of an exposure risk, since it’s being washed away after 30 seconds or so. The off gassing could still be a risk, so best to store out of the shower and reach for it.
Welp. I used benzoyl peroxide cream for 10+ years daily to control acne. Only stopped a few years back.
Wonder if there's even anything precautionary I can do, in regards to lymphoma.
Seriously. Do people even read the articles? The tested creams were incubated at 120°F+ for 18 days. That speeds up the reaction while they test the stability. At room temperature it may take years for these products to produce enough benzene to be a risk.
Just use fresh products for the time being until more research and testing is done, you will be fine.
How do we know if it's fresh is the only issue. You buy something off Amazon for example or store that has merchandise in warehouse and you may get something that was stored in such high heat over prolonged periods.
Also these conditions simply accelerate breakdown, there's no statement in article on whether room temp or non elevated temp has breakdown just at slower rate.
Don’t buy *any* cosmetic product from Amazon at all.
They have a *massive* [counterfeit product problem.](https://money.com/fake-amazon-makeup-skincare/)
I’ve personally had reactions to a lotion bought from Amazon, but not from the *same product* from the store.
“Enough benzene to be a risk” is a bit incorrect though, since there’s no agreed upon threshold for an acceptable level of benzene in a product like this. The Wikipedia page for benzene is one of the good ones, and notes “ The American Petroleum Institute (API) stated as early as 1948 that "it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero".[77] There is no safe exposure level; even tiny amounts can cause harm.”
There is no “absolutely safe concentration for benzene” because any amount increases your risk for cancer in the same way that driving another inch increases your risk for a car accident. You breathe in benzene every single time you get your car filled up.
Respectfully, you may have read the article, but I do not think you understood it. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (shortened to GC-MS) was used to measure the initial presence of benzene in the BPO products as a baseline for testing. The GC-MS was incubated for the 16.7 hours you mention. Later in the results of this section, they state the following (page 15)
>An initial stability study of 5 products using 37°C, 50°C and 70°C revealed that dozens of ppm of benzene can form in just a few weeks at 37°C, hundreds of ppm at 50°C, and 70°C often would lead BPO product packaging to burst. Therefore, 50°C was chosen as a stability temperature for a broader study of 66 BPO products detailed below.
The amount tested at 16.7 hours isn't enough to draw conclusions from alone, only as a guide for the research to continue. Immediately following the previously quoted block reads this (page 15)
>66 different BPO containing drug products, both prescription and OTC, were acquired by Valisure and incubated at 50°C for 18 days
and (page 19)
>A selection of BPO formulations displaying relatively high stability compared to other BPO containing products and that formed less than 2 ppm in 50°C for 18 days, were subsequently placed in 70°C (158°F) incubation for 18 days.
This is why figures Figures 4(A-I) and 5(A-B) are all depictions of the amount of benzene over the course of 18 days. This is the meat of their research and where they are drawing their conclusions about the level of danger of the BPO products.
I mean we drive cars around every day that spew carcinogens out onto each other and every other surface outdoors like a full time job. Half the food we eat is in single use plastics that leech BPAs and phthalates and whatever other breakdown products into them. Don’t even get me started on processed foods, nitrates and all that. Sadly the small amount of benzene in your acne cream is probably not going to be that great of a factor in the grand scheme of things.
If you read the report Valisure did, it seems like some companies don't degrade nearly as much. Clean and Clear 10% is the lowest degrading 10%, it seems to sneak right in below the government limit.
>when kept at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the temperature of a hot shower, for approximately 17 hours.
What the heck is this article, even? Just don't store your topical creams in full sunlight during heatwaves. Of course they will separate and become gross.
Just for clarity, I work in topical formulation development. I know people who designed some of these formulations.
This is accelerated stability, a standard GMP assay for drug formulation stability. We do this all the time with new formulations.
Increasing the temperature to 50C accelerates any breakdown chemistry that might be going on with the API, and is often used as a pilot to see if there's a safety or efficacy flag. There will have to be long term stability assays done as well (and they are probably already underway), but those take much longer, for obvious reasons.
Also, what you are describing is *formulation* instability; when it splits and you get the different phases coming apart. This is API instability, in which the formulation doesn't look different, but you get API breakdown. Furthermore, this is breakdown into a toxic product.
What is the point of publishing this, if the scenario would never occur in regular use? There are people in this thread discussing alternatives to BPO already. This is like when that one guy overfed mice with insane amounts of salt and America became the capital of bland food. You researchers need to think how your publications get received.
Lead with "when heated for a long time, x does y" instead of burying it in a wall of technical terms. And don't say that this wasn't meant for laymen because "a hot shower" is not a scientific means of measurement.
>What is the point of publishing this, if the scenario would never occur in regular use?
It's not about regular use, it's about failing current FDA requirements for stability (specifically accelerated stability & degradation product testing). These are done for every formulation out there, and it is part of safety & efficacy testing. It's done for topicals, tablets, injectables, everything. If they fail, there is a safety flag and they go for more detailed long term stability.
For context, this is a problem with a lot of older APIs that were approved under older standards. As new drug approval standards are made, already approved drugs, especially drugs that have gone generic, are not required to go back and do the studies to meet these new standards. So you have watchdog orgs like Valisure that take it upon themselves to do the studies.
BPO, for example, was approved in the 80s. This was before API degradation product testing became standard (degradation product testing looks for potential safety signals in formulation breakdown products). Degradation product testing and accelerated stability testing have proven extremely useful over the years. Degradation has identified many formulations that could have become toxic, had their formulations altered, and were made safe. Accelerated stability has saved TONS of time for product testing by allowing us to identify potential problems like these in a fraction of the time.
This article is step 1 in a long process of finding out what's really going on and how to fix it.
And yeah, I agree the article is in a weird middle ground of technical and nontechnical. Not going to defend that.
We do this kind of testing where I work. We usually use 50. It can vary, though. There's not a specific temperature that is required, you just have to be able to justify the temp you use.
Are you kidding? It's a peroxide of benzene. I'll eat my hat if it doesn't say right on the container not to expose it to heat or to put it on mucus membranes.
I guess they could add 'use in a ventilated area', but this is just one study with conditions not all that representative of real world usage.
The way these studies were performed are not too relevant to real world usage of benzoyl peroxide. If you usually leave your benzoyl peroxide in a hot car when it’s 90+ degrees and the sun doesn’t set for 18 days straight, then you should be worried. Otherwise, this company is just fear mongering once again.
Also, apparently the president of Valisure has a patent on stabilizing benzoyl peroxide. Isn’t that interesting?
>The way these studies were performed are not too relevant to real world usage of benzoyl peroxide.
See [my comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1b88qws/benzene_has_been_found_in_multiple_topical_acne/ktt5dyq/) above about why this is relevant. This is my field; I work in topical formulation development.
>Also, apparently the president of Valisure has a patent on stabilizing benzoyl peroxide. Isn’t that interesting?
He does? [I don't see it](https://patents.justia.com/inventor/david-light). Where did you find that? Because that would be interesting. I know people that would love to skewer this study.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not completely familiar with the science of this. I am however a follower of lab muffin and she explained why this is not too relevant in real world scenarios and how it would still be considered safe even if those conditions were met in real world usage. I’m not a scientist myself, but I believe in not fear mongering medications or products based on studies that have a lot of limitations.
So...he doesn't have a patent on something that stabilizes BPO?
I was curious to see arguments against DPT and AS testing, so I looked up lab muffin. It looks like she hasn't commented on this article at all (last post was a week before this came out). Did she have an older article that talks about why this kind of testing is bad? I searched & couldn't find anything.
And I don't see why people think this is fearmongering. It's a safety signal. This is how phase 4 testing works. It's why we do it.
>So...he doesn't have a patent on something that stabilizes BPO?
[He does.](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023177625A1/en?inventor=%22david+light%22&oq=inventor:+%22david+light%22&sort=new) Either that- or it's one hell of a coincidence.
It’s her most recent TikTok! She commented about the patent on her Instagram.
I agree to a certain extent, but this has been leading a bunch of people to tell others to throw out all of their benzoyl peroxide products, which isn’t necessary.
Ok, I'll wait for something referenced. I love tiktok, it's just not the right format for something like this. That's basically telling the FDA, and most of the pharma industry, "Nope, I know better than all of you." You need a few dozen pages to make that point. At least.
And does she give any support to the patent claim? A link? A number? Anything? If not, that's kind of reckless. Rumors like that can sink whole organizations, even if proven untrue.
As for the study, people who just toss their stuff based on this are overreacting. This is scientifically and professionally interesting from the drug development industry perspective.
It's an article about a letter suggesting that the FDA to look into something. It's the start of the start of a potentially interesting story. That's it. It is by no means clinical advice.
The FDA? Also, she said that she was going to make a video, but just wanted to reassure people in that TikTok and did provide some evidence that they potentially misinterpreted and mentioned how it’s still a safe product. I get it though, but she will be making a video on this soon.
Yeah, the FDA. These tests are standard procedure for drug products. They require this stuff with exceptional rigor.
Again, I'll wait for the written stuff to actually look into it. It's hard to take a video that seriously, it's like marketing stuff.
And that's just for me. Like I said, this is my field. I've been developing and testing formulations for 12 years.
Also, it's bad to just throw everything out in response to this, but I also wouldn't just dismiss it. It's a valid argument for the need of reassessment.
Yikes! Used BPO for decades. What makes my case way worse is, I bought multiple years worth of my favorite face wash when they discontinued it back in 2015 when they banned microbead products. I've been using years old bottles. Just dumped the remaining 2 unused bottles. Pretty scary stuff...thanks for the heads up!
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/klenow Permalink: https://www.dermatologytimes.com/view/breaking-news-benzene-found-in-various-acne-products-valisure-files-petition-with-fda-to-recall-treatments --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That sucks for the millions of people who use BPO to control their acne. From what the article says, more benzene is released at higher temperatures. I wonder if storing the BPO in a cool environment can reduce the release of benzene. It might be beneficial to store your acne meds in the fridge between uses.
This is not a risk at all. This article is a bunch of nonsense. Benzene already exists in the air and the amount you'd in inhale is tiny compared to just living your daily life. Valisure is a scaremongering company designed to put out these releasing funded by companies wellness type brands who claim their products don't have ingredients in them that don't actually matter. If you read the study, they put in quite a bit of work just to reach some sort of levels that would scare people by heating it up for days at a time. Stupid articles like these and the sunscreen ones need to stop being posted on this subreddit.
It looks like the [president ](https://www.valisure.com/team/david-light)of Valisure holds a [patent](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023177625A1/en?inventor=%22david+light%22&oq=inventor:+%22david+light%22&sort=new) regarding a supposed method of stabilizing Benzoyl Peroxide and preventing it's decomposition. Seems like a conflict of interest to me. Regardless of what I think; if they wanted to shine a light on this issue; if it is an issue; then they should have published a research paper first. Releasing a press statement and a petition *before* showing their actual research does not fill me with confidence regarding the quality of their study or the honesty of their intentions. I *do* think that this is a field that *may* warrant investigation and study; but that's not what we're getting here.
Agreed. Some people may end up deciding not to put benzene on their face instead though. BPO acts primarily as a topical anti-bacterial and if you are fighting bacteria there are plenty of other perfectly safe ways to get the same result.
Used to suffer acne and tried everything. BPO was the best OTC option for me by far.
Same here. Nothing else worked. Still use BP every day and it is the only thing that stops breakouts.
What are the alternatives?
I have found great success in 0.1% adapalene
Agree, Differin (adapalene) is OTC now yay. But still not _cheap_. So I would always use it for spot treatment after pimple started, preemptively only in the common areas That and Salicylic acid face wash every day was what worked well for me My other tip that I believe actually works is to change your pillow case every night during the peak of puberty (use tshirts as pillow cases for a cheaper option), and develop the habit to be weekly pillow case changes at least through your 20s
It’s pretty cheap. There’s also generic brands from stores and panoxyl makes one too that’s affordable.
Yeah, it's not bad. Back in my day I got a prescription and it was around $140 for the 1oz tube (iirc). I made those tubes last a year or two It's now like $15 for .5 oz?
That’s crazy. That’s the usual for tretinoin and other retinoids tho. Thank god for GoodRx.
It really depends on your skin. BP worked for me at about 60%. Retinoids are said to be more effective for most people, but the topical application is irritating, difficult, and takes months to start working. Accutane is the harsh but easier route to nuke it all.
Accutane worked for me, but it also kind of changed my mood I think
Salicylic acid
Tried it and was completely ineffective. YMMV.
i alternate nightly between adapalene and azelaic acid.
Blue light is having good results.
Question, for someone who might know better: Isn't there a "significant inhalation risk" of benzene every time someone fills up at the gas station?
Yes, gasoline contains benzene. If you smell gasoline, you’ve just inhaled some benzene. As does smoke from things like campfires and cigarettes. Automobile exhaust can also have some.
To expand, benzene is just one volatile organic compound (VOC). Most of the "new car smells", tennis ball odors, paint smells, etc. are typically caused by off-gassing of VOCs. And benzene is just one of many VOC and SVOC compounds that you smell when you're pumping your gas. As in the case of any poison, the concern is about dosage, and getting a whiff from your car at the pump probably won't hurt you as long as you aren't huffing it. Edit: minor grammar that would have bugged me
but.. gas smell good :(
So do tennis balls :(
If I don’t huff the gas’s I can’t hear the bells ringing, and if I don’t hear the bells ringing how am I supposed to have any fun?
Benzene concentration in gasoline is very low and strictly controlled by the EPA, at least here in the US. Some companies will get tax breaks for keeping the concentration well below the maximum at the end of the year. Same goes with other harmful chemicals existing in small amounts in gasoline like sulfur. I worked in a fuel lab for a couple years and it was usually 1% by volume or lower. Even at the max which I think was around 3%, there's a very low risk of inhaling enough benzene to cause you harm simply by filling up your car. Even over your lifetime.
I’d expect the washes to be much less of an exposure risk, since it’s being washed away after 30 seconds or so. The off gassing could still be a risk, so best to store out of the shower and reach for it.
Welp. I used benzoyl peroxide cream for 10+ years daily to control acne. Only stopped a few years back. Wonder if there's even anything precautionary I can do, in regards to lymphoma.
Nothing. Your risk is still going to be exceptionally low.
Seriously. Do people even read the articles? The tested creams were incubated at 120°F+ for 18 days. That speeds up the reaction while they test the stability. At room temperature it may take years for these products to produce enough benzene to be a risk. Just use fresh products for the time being until more research and testing is done, you will be fine.
Exactly, accelerated conditions play havoc with certain API’s.
How do we know if it's fresh is the only issue. You buy something off Amazon for example or store that has merchandise in warehouse and you may get something that was stored in such high heat over prolonged periods. Also these conditions simply accelerate breakdown, there's no statement in article on whether room temp or non elevated temp has breakdown just at slower rate.
Don’t buy *any* cosmetic product from Amazon at all. They have a *massive* [counterfeit product problem.](https://money.com/fake-amazon-makeup-skincare/) I’ve personally had reactions to a lotion bought from Amazon, but not from the *same product* from the store.
“Enough benzene to be a risk” is a bit incorrect though, since there’s no agreed upon threshold for an acceptable level of benzene in a product like this. The Wikipedia page for benzene is one of the good ones, and notes “ The American Petroleum Institute (API) stated as early as 1948 that "it is generally considered that the only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero".[77] There is no safe exposure level; even tiny amounts can cause harm.”
There is no “absolutely safe concentration for benzene” because any amount increases your risk for cancer in the same way that driving another inch increases your risk for a car accident. You breathe in benzene every single time you get your car filled up.
I just red through the entire article, where are you getting 18 days at 120 degrees? The article sys 17 hours at 104.
I just red through the entire article, where are you getting 18 days at 120 degrees? The article sys 17 hours at 104.
Respectfully, you may have read the article, but I do not think you understood it. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (shortened to GC-MS) was used to measure the initial presence of benzene in the BPO products as a baseline for testing. The GC-MS was incubated for the 16.7 hours you mention. Later in the results of this section, they state the following (page 15) >An initial stability study of 5 products using 37°C, 50°C and 70°C revealed that dozens of ppm of benzene can form in just a few weeks at 37°C, hundreds of ppm at 50°C, and 70°C often would lead BPO product packaging to burst. Therefore, 50°C was chosen as a stability temperature for a broader study of 66 BPO products detailed below. The amount tested at 16.7 hours isn't enough to draw conclusions from alone, only as a guide for the research to continue. Immediately following the previously quoted block reads this (page 15) >66 different BPO containing drug products, both prescription and OTC, were acquired by Valisure and incubated at 50°C for 18 days and (page 19) >A selection of BPO formulations displaying relatively high stability compared to other BPO containing products and that formed less than 2 ppm in 50°C for 18 days, were subsequently placed in 70°C (158°F) incubation for 18 days. This is why figures Figures 4(A-I) and 5(A-B) are all depictions of the amount of benzene over the course of 18 days. This is the meat of their research and where they are drawing their conclusions about the level of danger of the BPO products.
Do you think it’d be an issue with hot water to rinse it off?
I mean we drive cars around every day that spew carcinogens out onto each other and every other surface outdoors like a full time job. Half the food we eat is in single use plastics that leech BPAs and phthalates and whatever other breakdown products into them. Don’t even get me started on processed foods, nitrates and all that. Sadly the small amount of benzene in your acne cream is probably not going to be that great of a factor in the grand scheme of things.
To quote the youtuber explosions and fire/ire, "remember benzene? it's back!"
If you read the report Valisure did, it seems like some companies don't degrade nearly as much. Clean and Clear 10% is the lowest degrading 10%, it seems to sneak right in below the government limit.
>when kept at 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the temperature of a hot shower, for approximately 17 hours. What the heck is this article, even? Just don't store your topical creams in full sunlight during heatwaves. Of course they will separate and become gross.
Just for clarity, I work in topical formulation development. I know people who designed some of these formulations. This is accelerated stability, a standard GMP assay for drug formulation stability. We do this all the time with new formulations. Increasing the temperature to 50C accelerates any breakdown chemistry that might be going on with the API, and is often used as a pilot to see if there's a safety or efficacy flag. There will have to be long term stability assays done as well (and they are probably already underway), but those take much longer, for obvious reasons. Also, what you are describing is *formulation* instability; when it splits and you get the different phases coming apart. This is API instability, in which the formulation doesn't look different, but you get API breakdown. Furthermore, this is breakdown into a toxic product.
What is the point of publishing this, if the scenario would never occur in regular use? There are people in this thread discussing alternatives to BPO already. This is like when that one guy overfed mice with insane amounts of salt and America became the capital of bland food. You researchers need to think how your publications get received. Lead with "when heated for a long time, x does y" instead of burying it in a wall of technical terms. And don't say that this wasn't meant for laymen because "a hot shower" is not a scientific means of measurement.
>What is the point of publishing this, if the scenario would never occur in regular use? It's not about regular use, it's about failing current FDA requirements for stability (specifically accelerated stability & degradation product testing). These are done for every formulation out there, and it is part of safety & efficacy testing. It's done for topicals, tablets, injectables, everything. If they fail, there is a safety flag and they go for more detailed long term stability. For context, this is a problem with a lot of older APIs that were approved under older standards. As new drug approval standards are made, already approved drugs, especially drugs that have gone generic, are not required to go back and do the studies to meet these new standards. So you have watchdog orgs like Valisure that take it upon themselves to do the studies. BPO, for example, was approved in the 80s. This was before API degradation product testing became standard (degradation product testing looks for potential safety signals in formulation breakdown products). Degradation product testing and accelerated stability testing have proven extremely useful over the years. Degradation has identified many formulations that could have become toxic, had their formulations altered, and were made safe. Accelerated stability has saved TONS of time for product testing by allowing us to identify potential problems like these in a fraction of the time. This article is step 1 in a long process of finding out what's really going on and how to fix it. And yeah, I agree the article is in a weird middle ground of technical and nontechnical. Not going to defend that.
I heard that the standard temps for testing in this way isn’t 50c but lower like 40c.
We do this kind of testing where I work. We usually use 50. It can vary, though. There's not a specific temperature that is required, you just have to be able to justify the temp you use.
Gotcha thanks. I’m going to stop using BP for now but will be curious to see any peer reviewed studies that help add to this data.
Bro is anything safe anymore? Ffs All These companies should be sued to kingdom come
Picking your nose will give you dementia, acne cream will give you cancer. At this point I don’t care, the sooner something kills me the better.
It’s pretty scary. Seems like just existing brings you in contact with stuff that’s going to slowly kill you.
I blame people saying "everything kills you/gives you cancer" to excuse highly dangerous materials being used and discarded irresponsibly.
Are you kidding? It's a peroxide of benzene. I'll eat my hat if it doesn't say right on the container not to expose it to heat or to put it on mucus membranes. I guess they could add 'use in a ventilated area', but this is just one study with conditions not all that representative of real world usage.
Is the peroxide of benzoic acid, not benzene.
*Sigh* as a person who suffers with cystic acne along with hormonal.. guess I'll die.
The way these studies were performed are not too relevant to real world usage of benzoyl peroxide. If you usually leave your benzoyl peroxide in a hot car when it’s 90+ degrees and the sun doesn’t set for 18 days straight, then you should be worried. Otherwise, this company is just fear mongering once again. Also, apparently the president of Valisure has a patent on stabilizing benzoyl peroxide. Isn’t that interesting?
>The way these studies were performed are not too relevant to real world usage of benzoyl peroxide. See [my comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1b88qws/benzene_has_been_found_in_multiple_topical_acne/ktt5dyq/) above about why this is relevant. This is my field; I work in topical formulation development. >Also, apparently the president of Valisure has a patent on stabilizing benzoyl peroxide. Isn’t that interesting? He does? [I don't see it](https://patents.justia.com/inventor/david-light). Where did you find that? Because that would be interesting. I know people that would love to skewer this study.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not completely familiar with the science of this. I am however a follower of lab muffin and she explained why this is not too relevant in real world scenarios and how it would still be considered safe even if those conditions were met in real world usage. I’m not a scientist myself, but I believe in not fear mongering medications or products based on studies that have a lot of limitations.
So...he doesn't have a patent on something that stabilizes BPO? I was curious to see arguments against DPT and AS testing, so I looked up lab muffin. It looks like she hasn't commented on this article at all (last post was a week before this came out). Did she have an older article that talks about why this kind of testing is bad? I searched & couldn't find anything. And I don't see why people think this is fearmongering. It's a safety signal. This is how phase 4 testing works. It's why we do it.
>So...he doesn't have a patent on something that stabilizes BPO? [He does.](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023177625A1/en?inventor=%22david+light%22&oq=inventor:+%22david+light%22&sort=new) Either that- or it's one hell of a coincidence.
Well.... This is going to be an interesting few months. That's one weird concept patent, too. Dissolved gasses. Thanks for finding that!
It’s her most recent TikTok! She commented about the patent on her Instagram. I agree to a certain extent, but this has been leading a bunch of people to tell others to throw out all of their benzoyl peroxide products, which isn’t necessary.
Ok, I'll wait for something referenced. I love tiktok, it's just not the right format for something like this. That's basically telling the FDA, and most of the pharma industry, "Nope, I know better than all of you." You need a few dozen pages to make that point. At least. And does she give any support to the patent claim? A link? A number? Anything? If not, that's kind of reckless. Rumors like that can sink whole organizations, even if proven untrue. As for the study, people who just toss their stuff based on this are overreacting. This is scientifically and professionally interesting from the drug development industry perspective. It's an article about a letter suggesting that the FDA to look into something. It's the start of the start of a potentially interesting story. That's it. It is by no means clinical advice.
The FDA? Also, she said that she was going to make a video, but just wanted to reassure people in that TikTok and did provide some evidence that they potentially misinterpreted and mentioned how it’s still a safe product. I get it though, but she will be making a video on this soon.
Yeah, the FDA. These tests are standard procedure for drug products. They require this stuff with exceptional rigor. Again, I'll wait for the written stuff to actually look into it. It's hard to take a video that seriously, it's like marketing stuff. And that's just for me. Like I said, this is my field. I've been developing and testing formulations for 12 years. Also, it's bad to just throw everything out in response to this, but I also wouldn't just dismiss it. It's a valid argument for the need of reassessment.
And like everything else it will continue to be sold in stores
If you have the right liver enzymes you will live, otherwise you are likely to develop leukemia from chronic benzene exposure.
Yikes! Used BPO for decades. What makes my case way worse is, I bought multiple years worth of my favorite face wash when they discontinued it back in 2015 when they banned microbead products. I've been using years old bottles. Just dumped the remaining 2 unused bottles. Pretty scary stuff...thanks for the heads up!
Thanks for sharing
what about a product that has benzalkonium chloride in it - is that similar enough to be concerned about
or what about benzoic acid