Cancer groups ignore chemicals, food additives as culprits in disease
October 6, 2010 October is breast cancer awareness month, which means pink ribbons and literature about getting mammograms litter the landscape even more than they normally do during the rest of the year. But many women who have survived the disease are questioning the role environmental chemicals play in contributing to breast cancer, and wondering why groups like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the American Cancer Society (ACS) -- groups that claim to be doing everything possible to find a cure -- have nothing to say about it.
According to a recent USA Today article, ACS estimates that roughly six percent of all cancer deaths -- or 34,000 of those who die every year -- are caused by environmental pollutants. Yet these same groups never inform women about what these pollutants are and how they can avoid them, and most doctors do not share this information with their patients, either.
For instance, a 2006 study in the journal Chemistry & Biology found a link between the plastic chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) and breast cancer -- and many studies since then have linked BPA to cancer and other diseases -- but federal regulators continue to drag their feet on the issue, insisting that the chemical is safe.
Fluoridated water, food additives, chemical pesticides and even mammograms themselves -- just to name a few -- are all linked to causing cancer, and yet none of this information is provided to women.
The President's Cancer Panel (PCP) issued a report back in May that highlighted a whole slew of cancer-causing and endocrine-disrupting chemicals in many consumer products, urging officials to protect the public from the "grievous harm" caused by them. You can read the entire report here:
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/annualReports/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf
According to Julia Brody of the Silent Spring Institute, an advocacy group that studies breast cancer and the environment, there are at least 200 known chemicals that studies have shown are linked to breast cancer, and women can be proactive in avoiding them right now. You can view the list of chemicals at: http://sciencereview.silentspring.org/mamm_browse.cfm
