The claim: Aluminium in antiperspirants which clog up lymph nodes and lead to breast cancer.
The facts: breast cancer starts in the breast and spreads to the lymph nodes, not the other way around. There is no evidence that aluminium can lead to cancer. Some reports occasionally claim to have found aluminium, or other deodorant chemicals, in samples taken from breast tumours. But they usually involve a very small number of women, and they never compare levels of aluminium in the tumours to levels in other parts of the body, or to women who don't have breast cancer. On the other hand, one study looked at 1,600 women and found that those who use deodorant are no more likely to develop cancer than women who don't.