Inside Prevention

Young survivors: Meet us in Orlando

The Breast Cancer Fund will be headed east to Orlando, Fla., next week for the annual Conference for Young Women Affected by Breast Cancer. We love going every year, but we'd be lying if we didn't say it's an emotional time for us because of the sheer numbers of young women who attend.

Almost everyone there was diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 45. Imagine: a conference of 8,000 800 to 1,000* women who are barely out of their 20s, 30s and 40s, who have kids, some who have no family history of breast cancer, many asking why them.

What's so amazing to us is how so many women there just GET what we do, get the connections between their breast cancer diagnosis and toxic chemicals in the areas they grew up in. We often hear "we had a tainted water supply" or "I remember them spraying DDT close to my childhood home." It's staggering. But enlightening and invigorating for us, seeing these walking reminders of why the Breast Cancer Fund needs to keep doing what we do.

And those who come by our booth are so thankful and almost relieved to know that there is someone working to ensure that tomorrow's young women will face a lower risk of breast cancer because of our efforts to expose and root out the environmental causes of the disease.

We'll be in booth #22, represented by our outreach expert Genevieve Roja, resident science geek Connie Engel and public policy expert Nancy Buermeyer. Come say hi, sign a petition to support safe cosmetics for all, play around on our Web site, ask lots of questions…we'd love to talk!

We're also moderating the workshop we helped organize, "The Case for a Greener World: Breast Cancer and the Environment," with one of our biggest advocates out there, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, author of the Breast Cancer Fund-commissioned report, The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What We Know, What We Need to Know. We're so excited to have our message reach this audience, and hope you will be too!

See you in Orlando!

*Apologies for reporting the wrong number of attendees in our original post! Corrected number posted above.

A national cancer prevention plan? Only with your voice

How will we get a national cancer prevention plan in the United States? Only by demanding one.

That was Dr. Margaret Kripke's take-home message last night at a San Francisco event co-sponsored by the Breast Cancer Fund. Dr. Kripke is a member of the President's Cancer Panel and co-author of the Panel's groundbreaking report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now.

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times said the report "calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals." In a Huffington Post piece, Breast Cancer Fund President Jeanne Rizzo wrote that the report offers "a historic opportunity to change the course of the war on cancer so that, in the face of the large and growing body of scientific evidence that already exists linking environmental exposures to cancer, our nation acts rather than waits for more evidence of harm."

And last night, we heard from Dr. Kripke herself. She said that existing chemical regulations do not protect public health. She pointed out that many known cancer-causing chemicals are still unregulated. She lamented the fact that less than 2 percent of the 80,000 chemicals in commercial use have even been tested for their cancer-causing abilities. And she said that the estimates of environmentally-induced cancers are grossly underestimated.

What do we do about this bleak situation? Dr. Kripke said the United States needs to move from a reactionary approach to chemical management—one in which a chemical in commerce is assumed safe until proven harmful—to a precautionary approach, where industry must prove a chemical is safe before it hits the marketplace. She called for a comprehensive cancer prevention plan, and said that the best—perhaps the only—way we will get this national commitment to cancer prevention is by demanding it.

Dr. Kripke has challenged us. What will we do to tell our elected officials to prioritize cancer prevention? What will we do to demand more research into the environmental causes of cancer? What will we do to demand that our government protects us and ensures that the products we use, the air we breathe, the water we drink are free of toxic chemicals?

As Jeanne Rizzo told the audience after Dr. Kripke's remarks, each of us should find the place that stirs our passion, that is meaningful to us, our family, our community, and get involved.  One obvious place to start: Subscribe to the Breast Cancer Fund's e-mail list and join us on Facebook.