Polluted bodies - pollution as contributor to disease - Brief Article

Vegetarian Times, Dec, 2000 by Abigail Chipley

researchers have made great strides toward understanding the genetic risks associated with breast cancer, but not enough attention is being paid to the potential role of environmental pollutants in this disease. This may be due in part to the fact that most of the money for breast cancer research is provided by large pharmaceutical companies, which have a vested interested in developing drugs to combat this deadly disease.

That may be about to change, however. A bill introduced by a bipartisan group of senators and House members last March seeks to allocate $30 million a year for five years to study environmental risk factors for breast cancer at eight medical centers across the country.

Designing trials to investigate the link between individual chemicals and breast cancer is a tall order, since we are exposed to a mix of hundreds, if not thousands, of chemicals on a daily basis. We use plastics and harmful cleaning agents, take pharmaceutical drugs and eat food laced with pesticide residues--as well as breathe air and water that's probably contaminated with industrial pollutants.

And breast cancer may be just the tip of the iceberg, according to Andrea Martin, president of the Breast Cancer Fund, a nonprofit organization located in San Francisco. "Developmental disorders in children, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and other cancers have been linked to environmental toxins," she says.

Scientists believe that the link between cancer and the chemicals we are exposed to in our daily lives has to do with how these substances mimic our own hormones. They theorize that just as estrogen produced by the body causes breast cells to reproduce, certain synthetic chemicals can have estrogenic effects, causing cells to replicate out-of-control, eventually leading to tumors. One of the top culprits is dioxin, millions of pounds of which is produced each year by garbage incinerators and the pulp and paper industry. Last May, this chemical made headlines when the Environmental Protection Agency released a report warning that individuals who eat hefty amounts of dioxin-containing fatty meats and dairy products could have a much higher risk of developing cancer.

Martin hopes that the breast cancer bill, which she predicts will be signed sometime in early 2001, will draw attention to the issue of environmental health in general. But she doesn't want to wait any longer to take action. "It's absolutely unnecessary to continue exposing people to chemicals that are known carcinogens when we have the know-how and resources to replace or eliminate them," she says. "For starters, we'd like to see the most dangerous pesticides eliminated."