Inside Prevention

An Island of Green at the California Women's Conference

This week the Breast Cancer Fund traveled to Long Beach, Calif., to introduce breast cancer prevention to a crowd of over 14,000 California women during the 2010 Women’s Conference, a star-studded two-day forum seeking to inspire and empower.

With the theme “It’s Time”, the Breast Cancer Fund was approached to help organize an innovative space that would bring together socially responsible and environmentally friendly companies who are leading the way in making products free of chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive harm. Together 10 sustainable companies -– along with the Breast Cancer Fund and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics -– made up Eco Island.

And at times it felt like a green oasis in an exhibit hall that played host to large corporations and elaborate displays from companies like Safeway and Chevron. Our efforts to educate women on choosing safe cosmetics while offering five-minute makeovers was a direct contrast to Target’s car-wash themed hair and face makeover center.

While some of the celebrity forum discussions and breakout sessions also talked about creating social change through leading responsibly, Eco Island companies represented some of the current leaders in this movement, including Seventh Generation, Ahnu, and Campaign for Safe Cosmetic compact signers Acquarella, Juice Beauty, Keys, Jonathan Product, Golden Path Alchemy, Marie Veronique Organics, Jane Iredale and California Baby.

We were also joined by Dr. Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream, and Stacy Malkan, author of Not Just a Pretty Face, both colleagues and nationally recognized experts in environmental health who spoke on the link between cancer and chemicals often found in our everyday products.

It was an engaging conference with opportunities to see a host of celebrities, including First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah, and influential business leaders address thousands of women on being “architects of change”. And we’re hopeful that in the years to come that the conversation around sustainability and social responsibility will continue, growing our island into a sea of green and prevention purple.

See our photos from the 2010 Women’s Conference. Also, learn more about the conference and watch videos of the speeches.

Chemical reform in the next Congress?

During the 2010 legislative session, Congress was poised to give real teeth to the broken Toxic Substances Control Act. But the chemical industry pulled out all the stops to block reform of business-as-usual, and both bills appear stalled for this year.

Despite rhetoric about being supportive of chemical policy reform, the $674 billion chemical industry invested millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat any chance of TSCA reform legislation passing this year. A Politics Daily article reports that in the first six months of 2010 the industry spent more than $40 million on lobbying.Their combined campaign contributions so far in the current election cycle come to more than $10 million.

Despite industry's money advantage, we have the American people on our side.The Breast Cancer Fund is a founding member of Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families, a coalition of more than 250 organizations representing major green groups, state and grassroots organizations, health-professional and health-affected groups, environmental justice leaders, progressive businesses, parents, scientists, young people and more. The total membership of these groups exceeds 11 million. And recent polling shows overwhelming support for reform of our broken chemical management system.

The Breast Cancer Fund and our allies will be back in 2011 to ensure that, when it's reintroduced, the legislation supports quick action on the chemicals we already know are bad for human health and the environment; basic safety information on ALL chemicals in commerce, with industry bearing the burden of proof to show that chemicals are safe; and a health standard that will truly protect the public, including the most vulnerable: our children.

Ask your Congressional representatives to support chemical reform when it comes back in front of Congress in 2011.

Week Three: Breast Cancer Prevention Month

The release of our latest edition of State of the Evidence launched a month-long campaign to move the breast cancer conversation in October beyond awareness and to prevention. Through our online communities on Facebook and Twitter, we’re posting the latest themes in the emerging science linking breast cancer and environmental exposures, tips for reducing your risk, action opportunities and things you can share with family and friends to spread the word.

This week we hoped to spark a discussion on the right to know what’s in the products we buy. Currently, manufacturers of cleaning products are not required to disclose ingredients on their labels, and yet there’s a host of chemicals linked to cancer in many of these everyday brands. How clean is it, really, if cleaning products contain carcinogenic or hormone-disrupting chemicals?

Science Monday
Having a “clean” home is often associated with name-brand cleaning products, and while they might take away the dirt, what they leave behind can be a multi-syllable tongue twister – alkylphenols, nonylphenol ethoxylate, dichlorvos. Here’s a list of the chemicals in our cleaning products that we’re most concerned about, and where you’ll find them.

Tip Tuesday
You can create a cleaner home -- free of chemicals linked to cancer -- by either choosing products from companies transparent about their ingredients or by replacing the store-bought brands with homemade cleaners based on essentials you’re likely to already have in your cabinets.

Action Wednesday
Join us in taking action to require companies to disclose ingredients on the labels of their cleaning products. As you now know, this is crucial to helping us avoid those chemicals of concern linked to breast cancer. Support the Household Product Labeling Act!

Share Thursday
Now that you're informed on the hidden dangers -– and you've got your DIY recipes on-hand -– share some easy tips with your family and friends for creating a healthy home.

Please join us on Facebook and Twitter for another week of science and tips. And before October is over, check out our other Breast Cancer Prevention Month activities!

Study: HRT increases breast cancer mortality

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and reported in today's New York Times found that women with breast cancer who took hormone replacement therapy more than a decade ago have a greater risk of dying than breast cancer patients who never took HRT.

In 2002, the medical world and thousands of women were rocked by the discovery that HRT increased the risk of breast cancer and other diseases. The study that produced that data, the government-funded Women's Health Initiative, was halted immediately.

Now with 11 years of follow-up to study on the original participants, the authors of this new study conclude: "Estrogen plus progestin was associated with greater breast cancer incidence, and the cancers are more commonly node-positive. Breast cancer mortality also appears to be increased with combined use of estrogen plus progestin."

This disproves the suggestion made early on that HRT increased non-aggressive breast tumors and wouldn't affect mortality rates. Not so, according to the new study. In fact, postmenopausal HRT use appeared to be associated with greater spread to lymph nodes. And ultimately, those taking combined E+P HRT had a doubled risk of death from breast cancer alone, as well as an increased death from all causes.

And while far fewer women are taking HRT today than 10 years ago, we're all being exposed to environmental chemicals that mimic estrogens and otherwise disrupt our hormone systems.

We don't have the data -- yet -- to say whether postmenopausal exposure to BPA, for example, increases breast cancer incidence and mortality in the same way as HRT. But it does give us pause, and inspires us to keep pushing for limits on chemicals that we know are hormonally active.

Read our tips for making safer healthcare choices.

Documentary Puts Moral Imperative on Banning Cancer-Causing Chemicals (Huffington Post, 10/17/2010)

Living Downstream. It's an arresting concept, especially in the hands of Sandra Steingraber, an ecologist and cancer survivor who penned a book under that title, which has now been made into a documentary.

For Sandra, it means looking at the practices upstream—factories polluting waterways with carcinogenic chemicals is one example—and connecting them with the health of those living at the other end.

Fellow author Annie Spiegelman wrote a piece on the Huffington Post yesterday that puts the documentary in the context of new developments and new thinking on environmental health, including the President's Cancer Panel report from earlier this year. We co-hosted a special screening of the film for Annie and others:

When I was invited to a private screening of Living Downstream, the new documentary about biologist, author and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, I was a bit hesitant. The showing was sponsored by the Breast Cancer Fund and Pesticide Action Network North America, two organizations that like to scare me out of my complacency. Both groups are determined to make us aware of the latest medical and scientific studies linked to cancer, our environment and our collective health. They want us to wake up, pay attention and be an educated, clued-up society. SAY WHAT? But that would mean turning off Dancing with the Stars and Jersey Shore. ...

Living Downstream is a poignant, enlightening and visually graceful documentary that was released earlier this year. ...The film weaves in scientific research and interviews with several experts in the fields of toxicology and medicine along with the personal story of Steingraber's struggle with bladder cancer. Watching her attend periodic cancer check-ups shows the harsh reality of what a cancer patient and their family must endure, always wondering if the next phone call is going to bring them bad news from the pathology lab. (Read complete article.)

Now Living Downstream is coming to a city near you (check upcoming dates).

Sandra will also be speaking at two events in California this month: October 25 at the Women's Conference in Long Beach and October 28 in San Francisco. The Breast Cancer Fund will be at both and we hope you'll join us!

Taking stock of toxic beauty products (Montreal Gazette, 10/18/2010)

One woman sets out to clear the toxic chemicals from her bathroom on the occasion of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and armed with our new State of the Evidence report. From today's Montreal Gazette:

For years I've been reading studies about this or that ingredient being linked to breast cancer, and it's been a growing worry.

But I've just read a report by The Breast Cancer Fund that has shaken me up enough to prompt this showdown, and inspired me to turn over a new leaf when it comes to choosing cosmetics for myself, and especially for my kids.

The report, called State of the Evidence: The Connection between Breast Cancer and the Environment, is the sixth edition of an increasingly alarming annual roundup of research on environmental causes of breast cancer. (Read complete article.)

Week Two: Breast Cancer Prevention Month

The release of our latest edition of State of the Evidence launched a month-long campaign to move the breast cancer conversation in October beyond awareness and to prevention. Through our online communities on Facebook and Twitter, we’re posting the latest themes in the emerging science linking breast cancer and exposures, tips for reducing your risk, action opportunities and things you can share with family and friends to spread the word.

In week two of Breast Cancer Prevention Month, we focused on the reality that the chemicals in our everyday products are not just affecting our health-–they’re also making their way, by way of us, into the environment. It gives the phrase, "what we put in and on our body matters," new meaning.

Science Monday
Without realizing it, we're often exposing ourselves and our planet to hormone-disrupting chemicals found in our pharmaceuticals and other everyday products, including cosmetics. After making their way through us, or down the drain, these chemicals are not fully removed in the water treatment process and can end up back in our tap water.

Tips Tuesday
Because what you put in and on your body matters, check out our tips for choosing safe cosmetics that reduce the risk of breast cancer and the impact on our planet.

Action Wednesday
Jeanne Rizzo, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, wrote a blog post featured on Huffington Post this week, calling for national attention toward stopping breast cancer before it starts. After reading the post, please take action by adding your comments and sharing with friends on Facebook and Twitter. 

Share Thursday
Educate your family and friends on the risk of chemicals to our bodies and environment by sharing the The Story of Cosmetics: The Ugly Truth of 'Toxics In. Toxics Out' from our friends at The Story of Stuff Project! It’s a fun video with a very important message.

If you'd like to continue your support for the Breast Cancer Fund, please check out ways you can contribute to prevention, including donating to our State of the Evidence Fund to support its distribution or shopping with one of our many prevention partners.

Thank you again for helping us keep the momentum to move beyond awareness this October!

Canada Declares BPA Toxic. Is the U.S. Next? (Time, 10/14/2010)

Canada just made it official: BPA is toxic.

In 2008, Canada was the first country in the world to propose taking action against BPA. In April of that year, the government released a draft risk assessment concluding that the chemical was toxic because of its reproductive and developmental toxicity, and its environmental effects. Then Canada banned BPA in baby bottles in March of this year. This week, Canada formally added the chemical to its Toxic Substances List.

Canada's leadership on BPA has had a ripple effect around the world. In the United States, the Senate is considering legislation that would ban BPA in infant food containers, championed by Dianne Feinstein. Seven states have passed similar statutes. France and Denmark have also taken action on its use in baby bottles, and bills have been introduced in Belgium and the United Kingdom.

We applaud our colleagues at Environmental Defence Canada for their great work on this. Now, it's our turn. Tell your senator you support Feinstein's legislation to ban BPA in infant food containers.

Here's an excerpt from Time's blog post about Canada's move:

It's used almost everywhere. It's in almost all of us. It does weird things to rodents and it may be doing weird things to us—but it's tough to be certain. Bisphenol-A (BPA) has become a litmus test for how people view environmental health and the risks of common household chemicals—as I wrote in a long story for TIME earlier this year. The chemical has countless industrial uses, most often in the epoxy liner of cans and in plastic bottles. But BPA is also an endocrine disruptor, meaning that it has the capacity to mess with our hormones and potentially impact health—especially in developing fetuses—even at relatively low doses. (Because they can mimic hormones—which cause enormous changes in our bodies even at relatively low amounts—the dose-response relationship used to evaluate traditional toxins like lead may not work with BPA.)

(Read full post.)

How much pink turns into green? (Chicago Tribune, 10/4/2010)

While the Breast Cancer Fund is not a "pink" organization, we are recognized as one of the most trusted breast cancer charities. Here's an excerpt from an article in last week's Chicago Tribune:

The American Institute of Philanthropy gives grades to charities so that donors can see which ones will use their money most efficiently. The highest grades are awarded to organizations that spend most of their revenue on their mission — not on fundraising itself.

The top breast cancer charities include...the Breast Cancer Fund.

(Read full article.)

It's Time for Breast Cancer Prevention Month (Huffington Post, 10/12/2010)

Read Breast Cancer Fund President Jeanne Rizzo's opinion piece on the Huffington Post about why it’s time to move beyond breast cancer awareness to prevention—very timely as we’re all awash in pink this month. Here's an excerpt:

It's that pink time of year again, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But when virtually every American has been touched by the disease, who among us is not aware of breast cancer? What we need is Breast Cancer PREVENTION Month, and a focus on identifying and eliminating the preventable causes of the disease so fewer people ever have to receive that life-changing diagnosis. What we need is a national breast cancer prevention plan.

We know that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and that no more than 1 in 10 of them has a genetic history of the disease. We know that breast cancer rates have increased dramatically since the 1930s, when the first reliable cancer incidence data were established, and that, strikingly, the increase parallels the proliferation of synthetic chemicals. Today, approximately 85,000 synthetic chemicals are registered for use in the United States, more than 90 percent of which have never been tested for their effects on human health.

(Read the full article.)