Inside Prevention

Kaiser Permanente detoxes AND saves money

Great news! Yesterday, health-care giant Kaiser Permanente announced it would stop using IV medical equipment made with the toxic chemicals PVC and DEHP.

 

When PVC is made, vinyl chloride—a known human carcinogen— is released, so any move to reduce the use of PVC plastic decreases our exposure to these toxic pollutants linked to cancer. DEHP is one of a group of endocrine-disrupting chemicals called phthalates that have complex effects on several hormonal systems. DEHP has been shown in lab studies to increase breast cancer cell proliferation and to interfere with breast cancer treatment.

 A Washington Post story notes that this switchover affects nearly 100 tons of medical equipment — 4.9 million IV tubing sets and 9.2 million solution bags — each year. Great, right? But it gets better: the change is also expected to save Kaiser almost $5 million a year.

Way to go, Kaiser, for showing that you can do the right thing to reduce toxic exposures and even save money along the way.

Quit the pesticide man (Huffington Post, 1/5/2011)

The "Dirt Diva" herself, Annie Spiegelman, has a great recommendation for your new year: ditch the pesticides. That includes household weed killers, chemical fertilizers, rat poison, ant traps, cockroach killer...all that stuff designed to kill other living things is likely not so good for you.

She wrote a piece on the Huffington Post this week featuring our Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) colleague Kristin Schafer, and together they do a great job weaving strawberry pesticides, breast cancer (and our State of the Evidence report), the problem with the EPA, safe cosmetics and being a Debbie Downer into something that you really do want to read:

Annie: Recent scientific studies show that the weedkiller atrazine changes the sex of male frogs. The pesticide methyl iodide, which is a known neurotoxin (nerve poison), will now be legal to fumigate onto California strawberry fields. American beekeepers believe the pesticide clothianidin, with a soil half-life of up to 19 years in heavy soils, is taking away their livelihoods. The latest President's Cancer Panel report on carcinogens in our environment is especially gloomy. Should we all just go hide under the covers?

Kristin: No. The more we know, the smarter choices we can all make. For the first time ever, the President's Cancer Panel analyzed the contribution carcinogens in our environment play in causing cancer. The Bush-appointed cancer scientists on the Panel found that the importance of these chemicals has been dramatically underestimated. They were so concerned that they actually recommended President Obama do something: get toxic chemicals that cause cancer out of our food, water and air. (Read complete article.)

TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch ... and breast cancer

Untold tons of plastic swirling in the ocean is plenty sobering as an environmental concern. But what affect does all that plastic have on our health?

Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo was invited to tell that very side of the story in November at TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch, an independently organized offshoot of the TED conference:

With thousands of people watching around the world, scientists, activists, environmentalists and health experts gathered to tell the many-sided story of plastic and what we can—and must—do about plastic pollution.

Big thanks to the Plastic Pollution Coalition for organizing this inspiring event! For more TEDx talks from around the world, drop in on the TEDx YouTube Channel.

Jeanne Rizzo to speak at TEDx - watch live this Saturday!

On Saturday, November 6, Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo will speak at a very special TEDx event on plastic pollution. Jeanne, who will talk about plastic and its connections to breast cancer, will be among other prominent thought leaders, innovators and artists who will share what they know, explore solutions and present plans for action.

The event will be broadcast live on the TEDx Web site from 8:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. Pacific Time. Jeanne's talk will occur during the Plastic Pollution and Public Health segment from 11:10 to 11:55 a.m., along with talks by Arlene Blum, Ken Cook and Stacy Malkan. Bring friends together and join in this historic event by hosting a watch party!

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!

President's Cancer Panel, NYT's Kristof call out BPA (New York Times, 5/6/2010)

It's here: the much-anticipated President's Cancer Panel report Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, and it's not good news for BPA or any of the other cancer-causing and hormone-disrupting chemicals the Breast Cancer Fund is working to restrict. We’ll blog more about this in the coming hours, but, to kick it off, check out Thursday's New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof. Here's an excerpt:

[The report] calls on America to rethink the way we confront cancer, including much more rigorous regulation of chemicals…

The report blames weak laws, lax enforcement and fragmented authority, as well as the existing regulatory presumption that chemicals are safe unless strong evidence emerges to the contrary.
 
Industry may howl. The food industry has already been fighting legislation in the Senate backed by Dianne Feinstein of California that would ban bisphenol-A, commonly found in plastics and better known as BPA, from food and beverage containers.

Studies of BPA have raised alarm bells for decades, and the evidence is still complex and open to debate. That’s life: In the real world, regulatory decisions usually must be made with ambiguous and conflicting data. The panel's point is that we should be prudent in such situations, rather than recklessly approving chemicals of uncertain effect.

The President's Cancer Panel report will give a boost to Senator Feinstein's efforts. It may also help the prospects of the Safe Chemicals Act, backed by Senator Frank Lautenberg and several colleagues, to improve the safety of chemicals on the market.

Measuring pollution in people

In recent years, biomonitoring - tracking and measuring the pollution in our bodies - has revolutionized our thinking about toxic chemicals. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state health departments, academic researchers and public interest groups have found hundreds of industrial chemicals used to manufacture consumer goods in the blood and urine of Americans, from seniors to fetuses in the womb.

Now, as the United States is poised to undertake a major reform of the outdated and inadequate federal toxics law, it's important that the CDC's biomonitoring programs get the funding they need. Good news: Thanks in part to the Breast Cancer Fund's efforts, the CDC recently entered into cooperative agreements with three state biomonitoring programs

in California, New York and Washington State. Unfortunately, the $5 million in available funding fell far short of the money needed to fund proposals the CDC received from 21 other states. The Breast Cancer Fund and our allies are working to increase federal funding for biomonitoring activities so the CDC can fund more state programs.

We recently sent a letter to key members of Congress urging them to provide more funding. You can also make your voice heard, by writing to your Representatives and Senators and asking them to increase funding for the biomonitoring program. In a time of tight budgets, we believe strongly that funding research that can help us understand the environmental factors of healthy is a necessary investment.

Kick the bottled-water habit!

Annie Leonard, creator of the wildly popular online video The Story of Stuff, not only has a new book out by the same name, but has partnered with some of North America's leading environmental groups on a new video: The Story of Bottled Water.

Like her earlier work, it uses simple, entertaining animation to explain a complicated issue: How "designer water" became a multi-billion dollar industry by putting a product we all have in our homes for almost free into a bottle that leaches toxic chemicals into our bodies and the environment, produces mountains of plastic waste, and costs up to 2,000 times more than water from the tap. (As Annie says, how about a $10,000 sandwich?)

Annie makes a pretty convincing case to kick the bottled-water habit, showing us that in many cases it is just filtered tap water and isn't any cleaner than what's in your kitchen. And in tests across the country, people say it doesn't even taste better.

On April 27, Annie Leonard will be honored as a Breast Cancer Fund Hero at the Heroes Celebration in San Francisco.

Other honorees are Dr. Sarah Janssen, staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Jeff Cresswell and Michelle Kalberer, co-owners of the stainless steel bottle company Klean Kanteen.

If you're in the Bay Area, please join us!

EPA to investigate BPA's environmental impact

In December, when the Environmental Protection Agency released a new list of “chemicals of concern” that would come under increased regulatory scrutiny, we were disappointed by a conspicuous omission. Bisphenol A, the synthetic hormone EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had repeatedly singled out as an example of a chemical the agency should be more aggressive in regulating, was not on the list.

At that time, the EPA said BPA would be added to the list in two years, leaving advocates baffled in light of the flood of studies linking the compound to breast and prostate cancer, developmental disorders, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that just before BPA was left off the list, chemical industry lobbyists met with the Obama Administration, raising suspicions that they had influenced the delay.

But now the EPA has reversed itself, announcing Monday that BPA would be designated a chemical of concern after all. The agency did not explain the unexpected turnaround, just as it hadn’t explained the earlier omission.

Whatever the reason, it’s welcome news. The Food and Drug Administration has authority over BPA in food containers, but the EPA deals with other exposures, such as factory emissions or BPA on electronic receipts. The EPA will take a closer look at BPA in drinking water, require tests by manufacturers to gauge its effects on wildlife, and continue to evaluate its disproportionate effects on children through non-food exposures. (More on EPA’s plans.)

But the news is also a little frustrating – another baby step by the federal government, leaving it to states to take more aggressive action to protect consumers. Minnesota, Connecticut and Wisconsin have enacted laws to ban or restrict some uses of BPA, and similar bills are expected to be signed soon by the governors of Washington and Maryland.

While this state action is promising, what we really need is federal action that will protect everyone in every state. That’s why it’s more urgent than ever that Congress vote on the bill before it that would ban BPA from all food and beverage containers. Ask your senators to sponsor this important bill.

Ask Janet!

On the next few Fridays (and perhaps beyond), Breast Cancer Fund Science Advisor Janet Gray, Ph.D., of Vassar College, will lend her scientific expertise in environmental health to answering burning questions around the link between breast cancer and environmental exposures. Dr. Gray’s Tips for Breast Cancer Prevention were featured on The Daily Green during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. She is also the editor of the Breast Cancer Fund’s State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment.

Question from Emilie, California:
I know that dry cleaning has harmful chemicals and is known for being an insidious pollutant of the environment as it’s difficult to contain the solvents. My dry cleaner recently changed ownership and is promoting that they are “earth friendly” cleaners. However, I’ve heard that some of the new methods of dry cleaning are better at being contained (and thus less polluting) but are still using the same or similar solvents.  What guidance can you give those of us with wardrobes full of professional clothing that require dry cleaning to ensure we are not unknowingly being exposed to toxic dry cleaning solvents.

Dear Emilie,
Thank you for your question. Dry cleaning is both hazardous for the environment and human health because of the use of perchloroethylene (also called PCE or PERC) to prevent water from penetrating the fabric’s threads. PERC has been found to be a water contaminant linked to increased breast cancer rates. Breast cancer clusters in Cape Cod, Mass., and recently Camp Lejeune, N.C., have shown a strong connection between incidences of the disease and high levels of the chemical found in their water supplies.

There has been some concern that cleaners will claim that they’re “organic” but continue to use PERC because it’s an organic solvent or volatile organic compound (VOC). In my October tips, I suggest that the best way to avoid exposure is to examine the fabric to determine if it’s necessary to dry clean. Manufacturers often put “dry clean only” on the label to prevent liability, but gentle wet washing and air drying may be sufficient.  

Along the same lines, a developing alternative in professional dry cleaning is wet cleaning and liquid carbon dioxide cleaning that uses water as a solvent rather than PERC.

The most environmentally-friendly method remains the do-it-yourself option where you can control the amount of water and type of detergent that you use. You also avoid unnecessary plastic bags!

Have questions about breast cancer and environmental exposures? Ask Janet! askjanet@breastcancerfund.org.