Does Laser Hair Removal Cause Cancer?

Any time a new treatment becomes widespread, it’s reasonable to wonder what sort of harmful side effects might become apparent over time. And when that treatment involves radiating the skin, the first harmful side effects that comes to mind is the big one – cancer. Of all the questions on this site, Does Laser Hair Removal Cause Cancer? is the most serious and frightening.

Fortunately, it’s also a question with a pretty clear-cut answer. No, laser hair removal does not cause cancer. We know this not only because there have been no confirmed cases since the treatment became widely available in mid 90s, but because the science suggests it isn’t possible to cause cancer by laser hair removal.

Why the Answer is No

Laser hair removal involves radiating an area of the body so that the hair follicles under the skin are burned and become inactive. You may have heard that laser hair removal is more effective on fair skin. That’s because darker skin absorbs more heat from the laser, making it harder to reach the follicles beneath the surface without burning the skin.

While the radiation is strong enough to damage hair follicles, it doesn’t carry the same amount of energy as cancer-causing radiation. In scientific terms, the radiation is non-ionizing. If you want the complete explanation, you can look it up on Wikipedia, but the bottom line is that the radiation from laser hair removal isn’t strong enough to damage your DNA.

In fact, if non-ionizing radiation did cause cancer, we’d all be in trouble because we’re surrounded by the stuff. Examples include visible light, radio waves, and ultraviolet light.

But I know few Who Says They Got Cancer From Laser Hair Removal

There are a lot of different reasons people get cancer, and many of them are beyond anyone’s control. Sometimes when people get sick, they look for something concrete to blame. Pointing at a relatively new treatment is a natural reaction, especially when you hear about so many products and medications that turn out to have nasty side effects.

But in the case of laser hair technology, the workings of the procedure are pretty well known to science. There haven’t been any confirmed cases of cancer caused by laser hair removal, and based on everything we know about non-ionizing radiation, there’s no reason to think it will cause cancer.