Inside Prevention

Five Things You Should Know About Environmental Links to Breast Cancer (Forbes, 12/7/2011)

Amy Westervelt's article on Forbes.com does a great job of parsing through the intricacies of the Institute of Medicine's new report, Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Life Course Approach. Here's an excerpt, including a quote from our president and CEO, Jeanne Rizzo:

In the absence of clear advice from the IOM, consumers might want to consider reducing their exposure to these chemicals. “The failure to take a precautionary approach may leave the public confused and even misinformed, as is evidenced by some of the initial media headlines about the report that say that chemicals are unproven to raise breast cancer risk, when the report itself indicated there are plausible reasons for concern,” Rizzo says.

Read the full article and share it with your networks or submit a comment.

New (yet not so new) report on breast cancer and the environment

Today the Institute of Medicine released a report, funded by Komen for the Cure, entitled Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Life Course Approach. Our President and CEO, Jeanne Rizzo, responded to the report:

The Breast Cancer Fund has reviewed the Institute of Medicine’s new report Breast Cancer and the Environment, and our takeaway is that while it offers a useful review of some of the existing data on the disease’s links to environmental factors, it relies on an antiquated model of weighing the evidence and, therefore, does not go far enough to protect public health.(Read Jeanne's full statemet.)

Unfortunately, the report did not go far enough in its warning about the potential harm of chemical exposure. For example, the report finds that the chemical BPA is a ‘biologically plausible hazard,’ but says that the evidence does not necessarily warrant individual action to avoid the chemical. 

But that doesn't make sense to us. If BPA were, say, a potential pharmaceutical drug, it is highly doubtful that, given the adverse effects seen lab studies, the chemical would ever be allowed into clinical trials in humans. Yet, when you think about it, we are all currently part of an uncontrolled human experiment on the effects of BPA exposure. Are you concerned about BPA? Want to help get BPA out of canned foods--one of our biggest expousure sources to the chemical? Join our Cans Not Cancer campaign!