Inside Prevention

Values. Trust. Power. Rizzo reflects on Komen controversy

Our president and CEO Jeanne Rizzo shares with the Breast Cancer Fund community her reflections on the controversy unleashed on Tuesday when Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced it would end its funding of Planned Parenthood's breast-health programs. Your comments are welcome!

Over the last few days, we’ve all watched as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure story broke and exploded. It has consumed my attention and dominated my conversations, as perhaps it has yours too.

I was disappointed by Komen's decision to de-fund Planned Parenthood's breast-health services, as I am whenever women's health and wellness programs are cut. I was concerned about the implications for the breast-cancer-prevention initiatives that Planned Parenthood and the Breast Cancer Fund partner on. My heart went out to the women who rely on Planned Parenthood's breast-health services, to the frustrated Komen supporters, and to those who unleashed their outrage online and in conversations everywhere. And I’m heartened that the outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood's breast-health services is forcing Komen to reconsider its decision.

As the president of the Breast Cancer Fund, this incident has made me think deeply about those who support our work and what they expect from us in return. I believe you expect us to have clear and unwavering values that guide all of our decision-making. I believe you need to trust us to hold true to these values, to be good stewards of your support and to do the most effective work we can to prevent breast cancer. And I believe that you need to have power—you need to know that your voice counts and that you can meaningfully contribute to stopping this disease before it starts.

Values. Trust. Power.

The Breast Cancer Fund’s values are clear and unwavering. We value working for a world in which we live without fear of losing our breasts or our lives as a result of what we’ve eaten, touched or breathed. That’s why we are single-focused in our work to identify and eliminate the environmental causes of breast cancer.

The Breast Cancer Fund works every day to earn your trust. Our work stays true to our mission. We use every dollar donated responsibly. And we value you, our supporters, and invite you to engage with and help shape our work through our events, online communities, volunteer opportunities and more.

The Breast Cancer Fund is committed to giving you the power to prevent breast cancer. In fact, our work is fueled by your power. With your power, we’re making sure that everyone has access to the tools they need to help reduce their risk and protect their families. With your power, we're convincing elected officials and corporations to protect our health and reduce breast cancer risk. With your power, we’re leading the breast cancer movement to move beyond awareness to prevention.

The Breast Cancer Fund is an organization you can count on.

If you know people who are looking for a breast cancer organization they can count on too, please introduce your family, friends and networks to the Breast Cancer Fund. They can visit our website and sign up to receive our emails, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

And if you're looking for a way to show your continued support for our work, please make a donation today.

Warm Regards,
Jeanne Rizzo, R.N.
President and CEO

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.

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! 

Industry spin zone of bad science on BPA

Last week, the Atlantic published a great piece outlining how industry lobbyists and trade groups are using bad science to make consumers question the toxicity of BPA. The day after the Breast Cancer Fund released our report, BPA in Kids' Canned Food, the lobbying arm of the canned food industry was spinning science in their own press release touting the safety of BPA in consumer goods. These lobbyists claim that BPA is flushed through our bodies so fast that it can't do any harm.

Don't we wish it were that simple! Independent, academic scientists are furious over this "spin zone" of bad science. It turns out that a single study is prompting canned food lobbyists to claim a slam-dunk victory on the safety of BPA, while leading researchers in the field say the study design is fatally flawed for a litany of reasons.

Here's the bottom line, though: we shouldn’t have to be scientists or toxicologists to go to the grocery store and be confident that the food we are buying doesn't contain toxic chemicals that have been shown in over 250 laboratory studies to cause harm. As a consumer, I want to know that companies are protecting my health before their bottom line and I also want to know that my concerns as a purchaser of products are being heard by companies.

After we released our report last week, we watched social networking sites, blogs and media stories light up with canned food manufacturers responding to consumer outrage. While some companies responded openly and honestly, others continue to stand behind old science and outdated regulations to argue the safety of BPA in canned foods.

In reality, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of more than 3,000 chemicals and other substances that are approved for use in food packaging. More than two-thirds of them were approved under a process that began in 1958, including known or suspected reproductive toxins and carcinogens like BPA and formaldehyde. That's why countries including France, China, Denmark, Sweden and 10 states in the U.S. aren't basing their decisions to regulate BPA on current regulations, but instead are using the 200-plus independent lab studies that have come out in the past 10 years showing the negative health consequences of BPA exposure.

It's time for corporations to stop hiding behind legal speak and own up to the fact that the way our regulatory system allows chemicals to get into consumer goods is broken. That's why on top of consumer actions to tell companies that we think BPA needs to be out of their products, we need to support legislation like Rep. Edward Markey's (D, Mass.) bill, the Ban Poisonous Additives Act, which would overhaul the way the FDA approves chemicals used in food containers.

As we say at the Breast Cancer Fund, we need to stop this disease before it starts. Changing the way we regulate toxic chemicals in our food supply is a great step in achieving that goal.

Convenience at what cost: The connection between chemicals and breast cancer (Environmental Health Policy Institute, 6/16/2011)

Our colleagues at Physicians for Social Responsibility posed to top researchers, physicians and advocates the question, "What are we learning about the relationship between environmental toxicants and cancer? How should our regulatory system respond to this information?"

Of course this is a topic the Breast Cancer Fund is keenly interested—and deeply involved—in. Our staff Nancy Buermeyer and Connie Engel responded with a piece that focuses on breast cancer, of course, but also hones in on endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs):

One of the most disconcerting set of chemicals linked to diseases, including breast cancer, are those termed endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs), including BPA, phthalates and other chemicals found in our everyday products. EDCs disrupt the body’s hormone systems, which regulate nearly every aspect of the intricate and exquisite process of life—from the awe-inspiring process of fetal development to the dramatic changes in puberty to the everyday processes of turning food into energy. Since one of the known risk factors for breast cancer is increased exposure to estrogen, it stands to reason, and the research bears out, that exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that look like estrogen to our cells would increase the risk of developing the disease.

EDCs are a perfect example of why the “dose makes the poison” logic is flawed. EDCs can sometimes exert their most significant effects at exquisitely small doses. This is no surprise, since the hormones normally affect physical processes at very low doses. (Read complete article.)

Their essay stands alongside essays from top experts in environmental health, which we highly recommend reading. You can view them all on PSR's website.

Breast Cancer Fund president in Fairbanks to discuss environmental risks (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 5/27/2011)

Our president and CEO, Jeanne Rizzo, R.N., is in Alaska this week to discuss the environmental links to breast cancer, as reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. If you're in the area, please stop by Thursday (event details in the article).

Rizzo advocates for the elimination of the environmental and other preventable causes of the disease. She said breast cancer is being seen more and more as a chronic disease, despite the fact that younger women in their 20s and 30s are contracting it.

"This is not the period of one’s life when you expect cancer to develop," Rizzo said.

Her talk will focus on what people can do to avoid the chemicals suspected of causing the disease and how they can encourage lawmakers to better regulate the chemicals. (Read complete article.)

TSCA reform advocates meet with White House officials (Greenwire, 5/19/2011)

Breast Cancer Fund staff member Nancy Buermeyer handed 73,000 petition signatures to the Obama White House this morning, all asking the President to act on last year's President's Cancer Panel report and make prevention a key component of our national cancer strategy.

Nancy wasn't alone in her errand: she was joined by our colleagues in the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition, including the American Nurses Association, Greenpeace, Health Care Without Harm, League of Conservation Voters, MomsRising, Pesticide Action Network North America and the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network. Here they all are outside the White House before their meeting (Nancy is holding the bundle of petitions).

Later, Nancy had a chance to talk with Greenwire:

After the meeting, Nancy Buermeyer of the Breast Cancer Fund said it was clear the Obama administration recognized the problems posed by the way chemicals are currently regulated.

"They were very open about their support for chemical policy reform," she said.

Buermeyer said Sen. Frank Lautenberg's (D-N.J.) "Safe Chemicals Act of 2011" has provided a strong starting point for discussions on TSCA reform this year. (Read complete article; subscription required.)

Thank you, Nancy, for representing breast cancer survivors and all of us concerned about the disease! And thanks, too, to the thousands of Breast Cancer Fund supporters who signed the petition.

New bill will overhaul federal chemical policy

Aren't you tired of having to worry about which products in your home are safe and which ones may contain toxic chemicals? So are we. That's why we're thrilled to support legislation introduced today by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.

The Safe Chemicals Act of 2011 would require chemical makers to prove their chemicals are safe before they are allowed in our homes, schools and workplaces.

Check out Sen. Lautenberg's video, in which he lists the Breast Cancer Fund as a supporter of the bill.

Then ask your Senators to co-sponsor this important piece of legislation.

An interview with Dr. Kripke of the President's Cancer Panel (2/7/2011)

Did you miss Dr. Margaret Kripke's visit to San Francisco? A few weeks ago, the Breast Cancer Fund and Commonweal hosted this extraordinary cancer researcher and member of the President's Cancer Panel for an inspiring night in our hometown.

Before Dr. Kripke's lecture, our president and CEO Jeanne Rizzo had the opportunity to interview her, along with Michael Lerner and Susan Braun of Commonweal.

Listen to this stunning conversation right now:

Listen to Dr. Kripke's interview

NEW: A transcript of the audio interview is also available.