Inside Prevention

Beyond the Headlines: Breast cancer (ABC-7 San Francisco, 5/8/2011)

BPA was the hot topic as our President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo sat down with ABC-7 news anchor Cheryl Jennings to talk about breast cancer and the environment. Watch the whole interview here, then visit ABC-7's website for additional links and information:

How to reduce BPA exposure from food (San Francisco Chronicle, 4/17/2011)

A useful article in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle gives practical tips for reducing BPA exposure in the kitchen (many of which echo our own) and talks about the study of BPA in food packaging that we co-released just a few weeks ago:

Reading about the study in The Chronicle prompted Gary Kelly of Orinda to consider ridding his kitchen of plastic containers.

"I never microwave in plastic, and now, I think, perhaps the next step is to get rid of plastics," says Kelly. He says his only doubt about switching to glass containers is whether they will break or take up too much storage space.

BPA is also found in the epoxy resins used to line metal food cans. In 2009, Consumer Reports tested 19 name-brand canned foods and found almost all contained some level of BPA. The levels varied wildly, with the highest found in canned green beans and soup. It didn't matter whether the food was certified organic or not. (Read complete article.)

Time for a food makeover (ABC World News, 3/30/2011)

This great piece on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer educated millions (the program averages 8 million viewers) about our study on BPA in food packaging, the dangers of BPA and how to lower exposure.

After you watch the video, check out the written story for more information about the study and tips for avoiding BPA in food packaging.

How to reduce BPA levels by 60 percent in 3 days

We know BPA is all around us, and the CDC tells us the chemical is in almost 95 percent of us. And we know that laboratory studies have linked BPA to breast cancer, along with a whole host of other serious health problems. But what is the leading source of the BPA that contaminates our bodies? If we removed that source, how much would our BPA levels drop?

The Breast Cancer Fund and Silent Spring Institute conducted a study, published today in Environmental Health Perspectives, to find out. We enlisted five families for a week-long investigation. First, the families ate their normal diets. Then, we provided them with three days’ worth of freshly prepared organic meals that avoided contact with BPA-containing food packaging, such as canned food and polycarbonate plastic. Finally, the families returned to their normal diets. We measured their BPA levels at each stage.

While the families were eating the fresh-food diet, their BPA levels dropped on average by 60 percent. Those with the highest exposure levels saw even greater reductions: 75 percent.

These groundbreaking results tell us that removing BPA from food packaging will eliminate our number one source of BPA exposure.

Here’s a summary of the kinds of changes we made to the family’s diets and how you can replicate them in your own kitchen:

- Switch to stainless steel and glass food storage and beverage containers.
- Move foods to ceramic or glass food containers for microwaving.
- Consider a French press for coffee – home coffee makers may have polycarbonate-based water tanks and phthalate-based tubing.
- Eat out less, especially at restaurants that do not use fresh ingredients.
- Limit canned food consumption. Download our 10 Canned Foods to Avoid wallet card for your next shopping trip. And share it with people you care about.
- Choose fresh fruits and vegetables when possible, and frozen if not.
- Soak dried beans for cooking (you can make extra and freeze them).

While we can take steps to reduce our BPA exposure, we need big-picture solutions to ensure that everyone is protected from this chemical. That's why we're telling industry and government that we want safe, non-toxic food packaging now. We’re urging our elected officials to pass laws that will eliminate harmful chemicals from food packaging. We’re demanding reform of the broken system that allows these chemicals to be in our food packaging in the first place. Thanks for lending your voice to this critical work.

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.)

A disappointing result for California

After two years of hard work by countless nonprofits and leadership from the Breast Cancer Fund, today we unfortunately had to oppose regulations set forth by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) outlining what was supposed to be a groundbreaking Green Chemistry Initiative in California.

No one is more disappointed than us. We had hoped that our work with government officials would ensure that the Green Chemistry Initiative in California would be one of the best consumer protection programs in the nation against toxic chemicals in our products. But these just-announced regulations are anything but protective.

From cleaning products to food cans, from cosmetics to furniture, we are surrounded by chemicals—including those linked to breast cancer—that have been virtually unregulated. That's why environmental, health and consumer groups joined together in 2008 to pass two laws (collectively known as the Green Chemistry Initiative) that promised to minimize or eliminate the use of cancer-causing and other toxic chemicals in our everyday products and to promote green businesses and green alternatives.

The initiative held the promise of a day when individuals could go to the store and have confidence that the products they bought would be safe and healthy for their families.

But after fierce lobbying from the chemical and manufacturing industries, the final set of regulations do exactly the opposite of protecting consumers and promoting green business. These regulations are fundamentally flawed because they:

1. do not meet the intent of the original green chemistry law (AB 1879), which calls for the development of safer alternatives based on inherent hazard rather than how much of a chemical is "OK";
2. force government to compile evidence of harm rather than requiring industry to prove safety; and
3. introduce a number of potential loopholes that industry can use to prevent the government from taking action on harmful products and chemicals.

Luckily, there’s still hope. A new administration lands in Sacramento on January 3, 2011, led by Governor-elect Jerry Brown, and you can bet we'll be asking him to protect California consumers by implementing an innovative and comprehensive Green Chemistry Initiative—as it was meant to be.

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!

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!