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Are we using the best available science to prevent breast cancer?
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and as we pause to think about the consequences of breast cancer for ourselves and our families, a question presents itself - how can we best use the scientific knowledge collected over decades of research to treat breast cancer and reduce its incidence? Based on all that we have learned in recent years, have we as a society taken all possible steps to prevent breast cancer?
Breast cancer is now the second most common cancer among American women. It is outranked only by skin cancer. According the National Cancer Institute an estimated 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers arise from inherited gene mutations. The vast majority of women diagnosed with the disease are not thought to have significant family histories of the disease. Increasingly, lifetime exposures to toxic chemicals in our food, water, the environment and even in cosmetics are thought to play a role in the development of breast cancer.
In 2007, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Silent Spring Institute released the most comprehensive review to date of scientific research on environmental factors that may increase breast cancer risk. This research revealed that that among the 216 compounds that cause breast tumors in animals:
- 73 have been present in consumer products or as contaminants in food;
- 35 are air pollutants;
- 25 have been associated with occupational exposures affecting more than 5,000 women a year;
- 29 are produced in the United States in large amounts, often exceeding 1 million pounds per year.
Although the discussion of the scientific evidence linking cancer to environmental chemical exposures has been an area of contention for the past three decades, we do know that preventing exposure to carcinogens prevents the disease. Moreover, known and suspected chemical carcinogens are only a part of the story. Hormone-mimicking or endocrine disrupting compounds are suspected of contributing to increased breast cancer incidence as well as precocious puberty in the United States. Early-life exposure to these noxious chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, may increase the risk of breast cancer later in life. Many pesticides, industrial chemicals, plastics ingredients and food packaging materials are known to have endocrine-disrupting properties.
Bisphenol A, which has been in the news lately as an especially serious health hazard for babies fed canned infant formula, is also suspected to play a role in breast cancer because of BPA's structural similarities to the cancer-promoting compound DES (diethylstilbestrol). A search of the U.S. National Library of Medicine database reveals more than a hundred peer-reviewed publications linking BPA to an increased risk of developing breast cancer or to forms of the disease that are particularly difficult to treat. For example, BPA induces a profile of tumor aggressiveness in high-risk cells from breast cancer patients. Fetal exposure to BPA induces mammary gland ductal hyperplasias and carcinoma in situ in animal studies.
BPA may also reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy treatments, scientists with the Department of Cancer and Cell Biology at University of Cincinnati reported in the latest issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
Time has come to adopt a new cancer prevention paradigm so as to limit exposures to avoidable environmental and occupational carcinogens. Many cancer patients, their families, advocates, physicians and researchers have been pointing to this unparalleled opportunity for reducing the incidence of breast cancer. By ridding our environment of chemical contaminants, decreasing the use of pesticides to the extent possible and ensuring that foods, cosmetics, personal care products and children's toys are free of endocrine disruptors such as phthalates and BPA, we can improve the health of our nation and decrease the burden of all cancers.
We know enough about the health effects of synthetic chemicals and persistent environmental pollutants. We know enough about the ravages of cancer. Time has come to act on this knowledge.
Note added November 3, 2008. As many Enviroblog readers already know, last Friday, October 31st, the FDA advisory board accepted critical report on agency's handling of BPA. To read the news story from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, click here. To read EWG statement to the FDA's Science Board, click here.
Photo by Gare and Kitty
It's unfortunate that the American Cancer Society is not spending its money or time researching and trying to eliminate the causes of cancer. Instead, they concentrate only on finding a cure. We need to be able to prevent cancer in the first place.
Thank you for writing on this very important topic. I believe the breast cancer research focus needs to be shifted away from CURE and put more on CAUSE, and the very first place researchers must look is to the links between the flood of synthetic chemicals in our daily lives and the rise in breast cancer. And I would really like to see the commercial pink ribbon campaign, which is often promoted by the very companies who are manufacturing products that contain cancer-causing ingredients, be relieved of their strangle hold on the public dialogue on this issue. This is not a pretty pink ribbon issue about which we hope to "survive," this is a public health crisis and should be researched as such.