Without even thinking, you encounter dye on a day to day basis. From the foods you eat, to the soap you wash your hands with to the detergent you use to wash your clothes… it is everywhere. There are different types of dye that I will analyze that people have linked to various cancers, one is food dyes and the other is hair dye.

Food dye

Vibrant colors have been come the norm to food, especially candy. Sweets like fruit roll ups and kid cuisine frozen foods are just two examples of foods with artificial coloring. It has been found that food coloring has not only been linked to cancer, but it develop ADHD in children. Many tests have been done on animals, such as mice and rats, which caused cancer among them, an idea that resonated with me in a article was “A chemicals ability to cause mutations or damage to chromosomes in bacterial or eukaryotic cells is an indication that the chemical might cause cancer in humans”. A lot of people say that because studies were done to animals, that it does not pertain to humans, but that is not always true as testing on animals is a way to figure out and solve humans, without unethically experimenting on humans. The different types of colors and its effect on the animals follows:

Blue 1: kidney tumors in mice and a possible effect on nerve cells

Blue 2: tumors and brain gliomas

Citrus red 2: toxic to rodents and tumors in urinary bladder

Green 3: increases bladder cancer and testes tumor in rats

Red 3: thyroid carcinogen in animals

Red 40: (most popular) tumors in mice

Yellow 5: cancer-causing chemicals

Yellow 6: adrenal tumors, cancer-causing chemicals

People want all food dyes to be banned, as Red 40, yellow 5 and yellow 6 make up 90% of all dyes used and a mixture of dyes is a drastic combination as it has been linked to organ damage, cancer, and birth defects. Even with people constantly writing to the FDA, they still have not addressed the issue. Some studies have been done to prove the relationship between dye and cancer, but most of the studies were done by dye manufactures introducing bias conclusions and possibly falsification of the information. People want to ban the food dye for these reasons:

1. The Delaney Amendment (1960 law) – bans use of coloring that cause cancer in animals/humans
2. FDA runs experiments on 1990 dye usage
3. They don’t identify the risk for children
4. Canadian government shows proof carcinogen contaminant in yellow 5 and yellow 6
5. Food dyes like Red 2 and Red 32 have already been banned for ill effect on health

While people are trying to get America to ban food coloring and shift to natural food coloring, places likes Britain have already taken that initiative. The British government forced businesses to stop using food dyes because they feared the health risks. For orange soda Britain uses pumpkin and carrot extract versus Red 40 and Yellow 6. For McDonald strawberry sundae, Britain uses strawberries versus Red 40. Other natural food coloring that can be used is beet juice, paprika, turmeric, and beta-carotene. While most of America is behind in the innovative thinking, companies like Starbucks are ahead of the game as they eliminated all artificial dyes in their products.

The side effects for children have been linked to developing ADHD. Many doctors link food dye to hyperactivity, but the studies very between showing significant differences that would ultimately prove that the dye causes ADHD. Some doctors also believe it could be genetic because when some kids have candy they are fine and other are not, and genetics can play as a third variable of figuring out the relationship between the two.

This dilemma not only can contain fraud, but it can obtain the texas sharp shooter problem because scientists could have given the animals the food dye and looked at everything and connect the food dye to that. Though that quote resonated with me, I will continue to take the risk of eating foods with dye in it because they fail discuss how dangerous it is despite the drastic consequences, and if this problem has never been closely looked at in humans as it was in the humans then I do not see it as a problem to continue to eat food with dye in it as everything we encounter has some amount of food dye in it.

Hair dye

Along with food dye, many people grew an interest into whether or not hair dye causes cancer. Not only for the people who regularly dye their hair, but also for the people that are exposed and do the dying. 1/3 of women over 18 dye their hair and 1/10 of men over 40 dye theirs. Hair dye is regulated by the FDA, but some ingredients are excluding from the FDA access since those ingredients were there before the FDA was created. With over 5,000 different chemicals used in the dyes some have carcinogenic effects in animals. When dyes were first created aromatic amines causes cancer in animals, but many ingredients in the product have been changed, but it is not known if any of those products removed or the new ingredients and the absolute cause for the link to cancer. Many studies were done, but since the studies were too small they failed to accurately detect the relationship. To reduce risk:

1. Wear gloves
2. Follow directions
3. Read caution
4. Patch test
5. Do not mix dyes
6. Do not use on eyelashes or eyebrows