Growing up on apple farms after World War II where pesticides were sprayed liberally on everything, I began to wonder at an early age about the dangers of the wide use of chemicals.
As a consumer journalist, I’ve interviewed Devra Lee Davis, Ph.D.,M.P.H., director of the Center for Environmental Oncology and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, several times about the link between chemicals and breast cancer.
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
When I was doing research for yesterday’s post on the Obama administration’s plans to revamp the nation’s chemical management program, I found information on the Breast Cancer Prevention Partner’s website. It works to identify – and advocate for elimination of – the environmental and other preventable causes of breast cancer.
The group’s latest report on breast cancer and chemicals, the 2008 edition of the “State of Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment,” is must reading for every woman.
The report states that a woman’s lifetime risk of getting breast cancer in the United States has increased rapidly since the 1900s. More specifically:
Between 1973 and 1998, breast cancer incidence rates in the United States increased by more than 40 percent. Today, a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is one in eight.
Information is offered in the report on the latest research on the breast cancer-chemicals link:
A recent survey conducted at the Massachusetts-based Silent Spring Institute indicated that 216 chemicals and radiation sources have been recognized by national and international regulatory agencies as being implicated in breast cancer causation.
Many other chemicals, especially those classified as endocrine-disrupting compounds or EDCs, are not listed by the regulatory agencies, the researchers said; yet the scientific evidence linking EDCs to breast cancer risk is substantial and growing.
An important body of scientific evidence demonstrates that exposure to common chemicals and radiation may contribute to the staggering incidence of breast cancer. In our daily lives, we are rarely exposed to these substances in isolation; the pervasiveness of many of these substances means we likely have multiple, low-level exposures over the course of weeks, months, even years.
The 2008 “State of Evidence” describes how different kinds of exposures may increase cancer risk:
There are several examples in recent scientific literature demonstrating that mixtures of environmental chemicals, chemicals and radiation, or complex combinations of chemicals and particular genetic or hormonal profiles may alter biological processes and possibly lead to increases in breast cancer risk.
These new data show that we need to begin to think of breast cancer causation as a complex web of often interconnected factors, each exerting direct and interactive effects on cellular processes in mammary tissue.
The report calls for action:
Together, we must move forward to identify and eliminate the environmental causes of breast cancer. The Moving Forward section [of the report] provides a call to action for advocates and policy makers. It offers a menu of different ways, from crafting state and federal policy to research initiatives, that supporters can be active in breast cancer prevention.
The evidence is clear and growing. There are actions we can take today to reduce the public’s exposures to toxic chemicals and radiation.
Be sure to take a look at this important report.
Tomorrow’s post will be on 20 ways women can prevent breast cancer.
