Inside Prevention

Prevention Is Power: A different road

We've known Ann Maechtlen since 2008, the first time she signed up for Climb Against the Odds. She's one of those people who immediately, intuitively understands the Breast Cancer Fund's environmental perspective on the disease, largely because of her own cancer diagnoses. Recently interviewed by the Sacramento Bee for an article about the proliferation of pink during October, Ann shares with us here her own perspective on prevention:

Greetings from Missoula, Montana! The fall colors are beautiful and the air is crisp. I get a little sad this time every year as I say goodbye to long warm days full of friends and fun adventures outdoors and spend more time indoors with shorter colder days. My sadness lifts when the snow starts falling and I can go nordic skiing or snowshoeing.

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, also the anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis (five years) and 29 1/2 years since my Hodgkin's diagnosis. At age 22 I had cancer—back when I didn't know anyone who had ever had cancer!

Hodgkin's was a very scary disease for me, and people were afraid it was contagious. In 1982 there was no Internet, no support groups and no cancer groups waiting to help, so I was on my own. The public library was my new best friend. The first book I picked up was called, “First You Cry”—how true!

I had a doctor who believed my cancer was caused by exposure to chemicals on my family’s ranch in Southern California. That doctor planted that seed, which took many years to germinate. I found myself reading labels more and avoiding products with ingredients I couldn’t pronounce in my quest for good health.

I also noticed more and more chemicals in cosmetics and cleaners and in trying to avoid them I have found it easier to make my own.

After my breast cancer diagnosis I realized I needed to make big changes to really get healthy and get past cancer. I quit drinking alcohol, changed some other habits and did a lot of emotional healing. After completing nine months of chemotherapy I was really happy just to be alive, and I needed to celebrate!

Then the Breast Cancer Fund came into my life and I learned about the Climb Against the Odds. I knew I had to climb the mountain! I climbed Mt. Shasta in 2008, nine months after I finished chemo. I climbed again this year, thinking maybe it would be easier. No, it was still hard!

I was—and still am—thrilled that the Breast Cancer Fund is looking at prevention rather than finding a cure. Cancer has become big business…too big. I have seen enough lives torn apart and cut short from this disease; I want to see it disappear, at least back to the levels found before the 1980s.

I would like to empower people with real information and real choices in their lives to stay healthy. I see cancer groups working to support cancer patients, which is good, but how about going down a different road of no cancer?

Breast cancer awareness should be a year-round event (Huffington Post, 10/27/2011)

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) champions breast cancer prevention and elimination of the environmental causes of this disease in a piece for the Huffington Post. In it she mentions some of our proudest achievements, including our State of the Evidence report on environmental exposures linked to breast cancer, as well as a ban on phthalates in children's toys that Sen. Feinstein authored and we supported through its passage in 2008.

Mounting scientific evidence links exposure to everyday chemicals -- in our food, our products, our air and our water -- to breast cancer. The President's Cancer Panel released a report in 2010 that highlighted how little we know about environmental links to cancer and the need for more research.

I could not agree more with the report's recommendation that "a precautionary, prevention-oriented approach should replace current reactionary approaches to environmental contaminants."

Similarly, the Breast Cancer Fund's 2010 report, the State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment, linked breast cancer to synthetic hormones in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and meat, pesticides in food, solvents in household cleaning products; bisphenol A (BPA) in food containers and flame retardants in furniture, to name a few.

In our daily lives, we can take steps to reduce exposure to some chemicals, such as buying BPA-free products. But we need more than personal action; we need policies that ensure the public is protected. And we need to understand the chemicals we interact with every day and what they are doing to our bodies. (Read complete article.)

Thank you, Sen. Feinstein, for standing up for environmental health. Human health depends on it.

Pink Inc. has many starting to see red (Sacramento Bee, 10/23/2011)

Pink is big in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this year is no exception. But some survivors, like two-time Climb Against the Odds team member Ann Maechtlen, are looking for something more, reports the Sacramento Bee:

Ann Maechtlen, formerly of Redding, is one who has lost faith in the bigger organizations. Years before she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she joined in walkathons like the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life to honor cancer survivors. "It was a great thing, especially in the days when people couldn't even talk about the disease," Maechtlen says.

Now, she avoids the parade of pink walkers and product promotions. She feels they trumpet a superficial notion of "awareness," even if some groups do good things with the money raised and promote great solidarity among survivors and families.

"It tugs at your heartstrings, but I can't get behind it anymore," she says. "For the most part, everyone is perpetuating the Big Business of cancer."

For survivors of breast cancer and their families, it can be very healing to contribute to group activities. After nine grueling months of chemotherapy, Maechtlen joined an organized hike to the summit of Mount Shasta, up 14,179 feet, which raised about $13,000 for the Breast Cancer Fund, a charity she believes in because of its focus on prevention and environmental-factor research. (Read complete article.)

Feinstein thanks the Breast Cancer Fund for BPA work

Last week, after the American Chemistry Council reversed its position on BPA in baby bottles, the Breast Cancer Fund received a very special thank-you letter from Sen. Dianne Feinstein for our hard work in the fight against BPA. In the letter, the Senator says:

Your efforts have paid off; the chemical industry is listening… At both the state and federal level, the chemical industry has spent millions lobbying against any restriction on the use of BPA. You helped lead the way in California, and now the chemical industry has realized that consumers, advocates, and legislators will not stand down against a chemical that could harm their health… My sincere thanks.

We're honored by the Senator's recognition, and we're thankful for her strong leadership in Congress on critical environmental health issues including BPA. Last November, after the chemical industry successfully blocked her amendment to the food safety bill that would have instituted a federal ban on BPA in baby bottles, Sen. Feinstein said so eloquently:

One day our children will look back and wonder why we willingly risked our health by exposing ourselves to harmful chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA)... Unfortunately, chemical industry lobbyists wish to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. Just as the tobacco industry once told us it was safe to smoke cigarettes, the chemical industry is trying to tell us it's OK to ingest harmful chemicals. It's not OK.

Thank you, Senator, for using your clear and compelling voice to amplify the message that BPA has no place in our food packaging.

Prevention Is Power: A new path

Breast cancer survivor Betsy Ogden climbed Mt. Shasta with the Breast Cancer Fund's Climb Against the Odds 2011 team, and in doing so found a journey of her own choosing post-cancer. Read her reflections on cancer, mountains and prevention in today's blog, part of our October Prevention Is Power campaign. Thank you, Betsy!

Knowledge. Power. Strength. Change. This is what prevention means to me.

On a September Sunday in 2009, I completed my first-ever solo summit of Mt. Moosilauke, one of New Hampshire’s 48 4,000-foot mountains. It was a beautiful, crisp fall day and I felt strong and proud, and excited about my new-found love of hiking.

Three days later, following a routine mammogram, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was a strong, healthy, active physical therapist and Pilates practitioner and had no family history of the disease.

And so began what I now call my “forced march,” a journey not of my choosing, into the world of breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and remission.

Over the next few months I often felt powerless, sometimes frightened. My choices in life revolved around treatment options, recurrence rates and outcome statistics. My business struggled as the fatigue of treatment took its toll. Finally treatment ended and I became a survivor, and started to figure out my new life, co-existing with the reality of cancer ever-present.

Through all of this I came to understand that my cancer’s origin was likely somewhere in the environment. And on a very personal level, I knew that I needed and wanted to do something to reclaim my life’s journey, the journey cancer had hijacked.

I needed a mountain to climb, literally, and in October 2010 I joined the Breast Cancer Fund’s Climb Against the Odds 2011 team. As I look back, I see how much personal strength I drew from the months of fundraising and training for the climb. I pushed myself to physical limits and raised thousands of dollars from supporters. Each step along the way, I was encouraged by the amazing staff of the Breast Cancer Fund.

And finally, I climbed Mt. Shasta in June 2011 along with 33 other survivors and supporters. I did not reclaim my life’s journey on Shasta. Rather, I started on a whole new path, where powerlessness and fear in the face of the disease have no place.

The Breast Cancer Fund has shown me that we can and must face the disease head-on. We work so that others never have to feel the powerlessness of diagnosis, the fear of treatment and the uncertainty of the future.

I believe that prevention is the only acceptable future for breast cancer. Using solid scientific inquiry to identify environmental causes of the disease, we have knowledge. And with that knowledge and the leadership of the Breast Cancer Fund, we have the power and strength to change the course of this disease. We will and must educate and advocate so that young women, women of color, all of us at risk of environmental exposure will not have to fear what we do not know or understand.
 
I have climbed mountains since the Breast Cancer Fund's Climb Against the Odds 2011, and I hope to climb many more. I take every opportunity I can to speak of the good work of the organization and I try to make my own small world safer and less toxic for my loved ones and me.

Each of us must do what we can, where we can. And, in the end, that will be enough. And I know that someday, in the not too distant future, our children and grandchildren will live in a world where breast cancer is, very simply, prevented. 

Chemical industry shifts on BPA after spending millions to fight legislation (New York Times, 10/12/2011)

Days after California passed a ban on BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, the American Chemistry Council—trade group for the chemical industry—declared that it was petitioning the FDA to ban the chemical from these products nationwide. It's an intriguing reversal in the ACC's history of lobbying against state and federal BPA bills (including the California ban) over the last several years.

Despite the move, the ACC still maintains that BPA is of no concern for health. We disagree.

As reported by the New York Times yesterday:

The trade group's announcement came after [Gretchen Lee] Salter, the policy manager of the Breast Cancer Fund, had spent the past six years on the frontlines of a major battle over California legislation to ban BPA from those products.

Salter's group and others were able to declare victory when Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed A.B. 1319 into law last week -- only to see ACC say three days later that the problem does not exist.

To Salter, something didn't ring true.

"The amount of resources they poured into states trying to regulate baby bottles and sippy cups and the amount of resources they poured into California," Salter said, then paused. "To all of the sudden say, 'Folks, there is no problem here, we don't use BPA anyway.' It's this weird, almost Orwellian double speak."

ACC had doggedly insisted that BPA is safe, and the group has fought fiercely against federal and state legislative proposals to ban the chemical, which public health advocates have linked to a hormonal disruption and other developmental problems in children.

Disclosure forms shows that ACC has invested heavily in lobbying in California since 2005, when the first bill limiting BPA was introduced in the state Legislature. (Read complete article.)

Neither the California law nor the ACC petition to the FDA include canned foods or other products known to contain BPA. The Breast Cancer Fund continues to push for safe alternatives to BPA in canned foods through our Cans Not Cancer campaign and support of Rep. Ed Markey's (D, Mass.) Ban Poisonous Additives Act, currently in the U.S. House.

BPA in Kids' Canned Food report media roundup (9/21/2011-9/24/2011)

The Breast Cancer Fund report, BPA in Kids' Canned Food, generated attention across the country when we released it on September 21. In addition to nearly 250 local television news stories, our finding that BPA is in canned food for kids was reported in the following print and online media outlets:

ABCNews.com

AFP

Associated Content

The Atlantic

BlameCancer.org

CafeMom

CBS.com

Chemical Watch

Discovery News

Examiner.com

FoodCt.com

FoxNews.com

France 24

GreenOptions.com

Greenwire

Growing a Green Family

Indiana Public Media

Inhabitots

International Business Times

KGO Radio San Francisco

MSNBC

Non-ToxicKids.net

Packaging Digest

Parenthood Blog

San Francisco Chronicle

SF Chronicle Editorial

Science News

Shape Magazine

ThirdAge.com

United Press International

Washington Post Blog

Washington Times

WebMD

WIBC radio Indianapolis

Prevention Is Power: Through treatment, up mountains and toward a healthy future

Shiera Brady Henderson climbed Mt. Shasta this June with the Breast Cancer Fund's 2011 Climb Against the Odds team. Shiera faced the mountain with immense strength, and today, as part of our October Prevention Is Power campaign, we're happy to share with you her reflections on the power of prevention:

The feeling of ultimate power swept over me as I took the final step to reach the 14,000-foot summit of Mt. Shasta. The thin air and grueling climb that began at 2 a.m. makes breathing difficult. Yet, as I stand roped together with my four fellow climbers on top of the world, I exhale with great pride and gratitude. On this 10th anniversary of being a breast cancer survivor, I celebrate not just a milestone, but also the return of once again being in charge of my life. 

That sense of power drains from your body when you are diagnosed with breast cancer—malignant cells destroying not only your breast tissue but also your confidence and self-esteem buried deep inside your heart. How does a 39-year-old healthy mom with no family history get breast cancer? What did I do wrong? Am I going to die?

I was diagnosed with aggressive invasive ductal carcinoma. No warning, no symptoms, just confirmation that this awful disease was already leaching into my lymphatic system. I had discovered a little bump during a self-exam and although that turned out to be a cyst, the mammogram showed those suspicious-looking spots on the other breast. Suddenly, a regimen of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation controlled my life. I was no longer in charge of potty-training my two-year-old; my only job was to win the cancer battle.

How does this happen? Why does our treatment for breast cancer include terms like toxins and radiation—the very things we believe cause cancer?  Why is everyone working on a cure? Don’t we want to know why more and more of us are getting breast cancer in the first place?

Although I realized the obvious value in finding the perfect cure, I knew in my heart that the real problem lied in the cause. I started paying more attention to what I ate, the ingredients in those foods, and most importantly, what I fed my children. I had an 8-year-old daughter who now had a family history of breast cancer. I needed to do all I could to prevent cancer from being a part of her life.

Desperate to find peace and healing and to restore my health, I developed a love for the outdoors and discovered the cathartic power of hiking. I started with day hikes in the hills behind my house; soon the trails became longer and the mountains higher. The physical accomplishment of climbing tall mountains slowly began rebuilding my self-confidence. 

Along the way, I discovered the work of the Breast Cancer Fund. I knew instantly I had found the perfect partner when I learned they advocate for the elimination of preventable causes of breast cancer and they build awareness by hiking and climbing tall mountains! Detection is critical—a self-exam and mammogram undoubtedly saved my life. Ultimately, however, I want to know what caused my breast cancer. I have learned so much from this great organization that works tirelessly to educate us and to demand better public policy.

That glorious day of rediscovering myself on the Breast Cancer Fund’s Climb Against the Odds lives vividly in my mind today. It is a constant reminder of the power we have to push forward on hard days during chemotherapy, up precipitous mountains, and in our unrelenting efforts to prevent breast cancer.

BPA-free baby bottles become California law

California babies have a better chance at being BPA-free, thanks to legislation signed into law yesterday by Gov. Jerry Brown. The law bans the estrogenic chemical BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups sold in the state.

California is the eleventh state to restrict BPA in baby products, adding to the mass of governmental, corporate and scientific concerns about the chemical's effect on health, even at low levels. BPA exposure is associated with a wide range of adverse health effects, including breast and prostate cancer, birth defects, infertility in men, early puberty in girls, diabetes and obesity.

Because of BPA's link to breast cancer in lab studies, the Breast Cancer Fund has been advocating to get it out of consumer products for the last six years: We've supported the new California law through previous iterations in 2008, 2009 and 2010; we're working with Congress on federal bills that take aim at BPA in kids' products as well as BPA in food-related products for all ages; we've done research that demonstrates the close link between our eating habits and our BPA exposure; and we recently launched a market-based effort to get BPA out of canned goods.

All to say, we're thrilled California has finally taken this important step to make sure ALL babies in the states are protected from BPA in their baby bottles. While the big bottle manufacturers have already moved away from BPA because of consumer concerns, only a law like this can guarantee that all stores, from health food stores to dollar stores—regardless of the brands they carry— stock only safe products.

Clearly, though, this new law isn't our endgame. We took aim at baby bottles and sippy cups first because babies are most vulnerable to the effects of chemicals like BPA. But there's still BPA in baby food jar lids and cans of ready-to-feed formula. And older children, pregnant women, and women and men of all ages are almost certain to be exposed to BPA on a daily basis, and susceptible to the chemical's effects, too.

Our aim: a BPA-free dinner table for all ages, all income levels, all degrees of BPA-savvy and all states. This is a start; help us get further.

Could BPA predispose girls to breast cancer? (California Watch, 10/4/2011)

An important new study published in Molecular Endocrinology demonstrates that BPA exposure in utero and through nursing appears to alter mammary tissue in such a way that predisposes the breast to later-life breast cancer.

In fact, the researchers tested BPA alongside DES, the notorious chemical prescribed to pregnant women from 1938 to 1971 that was later found to increase the risk of various cancers in "DES daughters," and found the two chemicals' effects on the mammary glands to be similar. That's serious cause for concern for pregnant and nursing women, as our president and CEO explained to California Watch:

"This is really an important piece of research," said Jeanne Rizzo, president and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates for the elimination of breast cancer. "It validates other work that has been done and brings the focus to the pregnant mother, the in utero exposure that’s so critical to our understanding of the influence on breast development."

She said that based on this research, she would advise all pregnant women to do all they can to avoid BPA exposure.

"Don’t eat canned foods, buy glass, avoid plastic," she said. "You can do a lot to cut back on your exposure." (Read complete article.)

In addition to Jeanne's advice, we recommend using glass or stainless steel bottles and food containers instead of plastic. You can find tips for replacing canned foods with safe alternatives on our website.