If you are taking chemotherapy to treat your cancer, perhaps you should lay off those vitamin C tablets.

The antioxidant vitamin C is a class of molecule that is known to help prevent cancer by removing oxygen-free radicals from the body, but researchers in the United States have recently found that taking vitamin C supplements while receiving chemotherapy may reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs.

The study was carried out by Dr Mark Heaney and colleagues of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and was recently published in Cancer Research. In the study, the researchers took human cancer cells and grew them in vitro with vitamin C, and chemotherapy drugs were added to see if they had effects on the vitamin C. The study found that with the addition of vitamin C, chemotherapy drugs killed between 30 and 70 percent fewer cancer cells than when vitamin C was not added. The researchers implanted mice with human cancer cells and gave the mice vitamin C before giving them chemotherapy treatments. The tumors grew at a more rapid pace in the mice given the vitamin C.

The chemotherapy drugs used in the experiments were Cisplatin, doxorubicin, methotrexate, vincristine, and gleevec. In response to the results, Dr Mark Heaney said, “The vitamin C didn’t neutralize the effects of the chemotherapy drugs, but it blunted their effects. Vitamin C is something everyone needs to have in their diet or you can develop scurvy. But I don’t recommend taking supplemental vitamin C during that period of time that my patients are receiving chemotherapy.”

According to lawmakers and public health experts, the Bush White House is trying to relax the regulation of toxic substances in the workplace. The Labor Department has made a proposal to alter the way it measures the risk of asbestos, silica dust, beryllium, and other harmful chemical substances. This proposal would force regulators to alter the methods used to determine on-the-job risks.

Big businesses have continually complained about these regulations that cost them money but protect the health and safety of their workers by saying that the government overestimates worker exposures to chemicals and toxins.

A former Department of Labor appointee, Diana Furchgott-Roth, has said, “These days workers frequently don’t work in the same job for 40 hours a week for a 45-year career.”

Many experts and critics of the proposal say that Furchgott-Roth’s statements exist only to get businesses off the hook, and that many exposure levels are already unsafe. Even though many experts have spoken against the proposal, the Environmental Protection Agency can still make the change.

This EPA proposal has come “out of nowhere” and is another effort for the Bush administration to end workers’ ability to rightfully sue their employers. However, there may be hope. David Michaels, an epidemiologist from George Washington University, has said “The next administration will essentially either have to roll back or accept it [the reform], which would mean that any new rule would take a year or two longer to get out.”

If you or a loved one has been hurt and is suffering from the effects of hazardous substances in the workplace, call the experienced attorneys at Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP today at 1-888-MESO-FIRM (1-888-637-6347).