Inside Prevention

Breast Cancer and the Environment (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences podcast, 3/15/2013)

Our fearless leader, Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo, was featured in a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences podcast about breast cancer and the environment. She talked about why translating breast cancer research is critical for the decisions we make in our everyday lives.

"We deal with what personal actions individuals can take to reduce their exposure to known or suspected carcinogens or endocrine disrupting chemicals. We also talk about corporate accountability and responsibility, the businesses that manufacture and sell those products, and how can we engage you, the public, in helping us drive industry to make better decisions." 

Have a listen and let us know what you think.

Will Your Canned Soup Carry a Warning Label? (Rodale, 4/12/2013)

A Rodale article about California’s declaration that BPA would be added to the state’s list of Prop 65 chemicals quotes our policy manager, Gretchen Lee Salter:

“The Prop 65 listing is yet another indictment of this toxic chemical that industry continues to argue is safe, despite waves of peer-reviewed scientific studies finding that BPA harms reproduction and is linked to breast cancer," says Gretchen Lee Salter, policy manager at the Breast Cancer Fund. "And the listing is happening the same week that the French government began warning pregnant women to avoid BPA because fetal exposure has been linked to later-life breast cancer. This is a seriously toxic chemical that none of us should be exposed to." Read the full article here.

Proposition 65 requires the governor of California to publish, at least annually, a list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity. The law also requires labeling of  products that contain high levels of these chemicals, but because BPA can exert negative effects at extremely low levels, environmental health advocates and state officials are still hashing out acceptable levels for labeling.  For more information on the health effects of BPA, check out our recently updated State of the Evidence on BPA.

California says BPA is toxic, France warns pregnant women

Gretchen Lee Salter, the Breast Cancer Fund's senior policy manager, reacts to this week's big BPA news.

There were two big strikes against BPA this week. Yesterday California added BPA to the state's Proposition 65 list of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects. 

On Monday, the French government warned pregnant women to stay away from BPA. In their warning, French authorities point to the numerous studies linking prenatal exposure to BPA with increased risk for later breast cancer. This warning comes on the heels of a new French law that will ban BPA from all food packaging, including food cans by 2015. 

The Prop 65 listing and French government's warning are powerful indictments of this toxic chemical that the industry has argued is safe, despite waves of peer-reviewed scientific studies finding that BPA harms reproduction, and is linked to infertility and breast cancer.

While I'm heartened by these steps, we need our governments and industry to take even more decisive action to protect the public health. We’ve known for years about the dangers of BPA, especially to pregnant women, who should not have to worry whether or not their canned food is toxic. When I was pregnant three years ago, I did everything I could to stay away from BPA in canned food. But I was lucky. I had access to fresh fruits and vegetables and alternatives to canned soups and meals.

The Breast Cancer Fund's Cans Not Cancer campaign is working to make sure everyone is protected from BPA. We're pressuring canned food manufacturers to stop using BPA and to ensure the safety of any alternative chemical used in its place. We're also working with states around the country and with members of Congress to pass legislation to require the labeling of canned food containing BPA.

So while we applaud California and France, we all need to call on governments and industry to get this toxic chemical out of our products.

 

Big day for safer chemicals initiatives

If we want to transform how our society thinks about and uses chemicals, we need to shift markets and shift policy.

Today two initiatives were launched that will take us in the right direction:

• The reintroduction of the Safe Chemicals Act in the U.S. Senate by Frank Lautenberg and Kirsten Gillibrand
• The launch of Mind The Store, a campaign  targeting retailers headed by our partners at the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families Coalition

The Safe Chemicals Act  would overhaul the archaic Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. A Philadelphia Inquirer article mentions our involvement in this issue and notes that TSCA is the only major environmental law passed in the 1970s that hasn’t been updated:

“When it was passed, TSCA grandfathered in about 60,000 chemicals. Now, more than 80,000 chemicals are in common use. The EPA can call for safety testing only after evidence of potential danger. The EPA has been able to require testing on only about 200 chemicals, and has regulated or banned five.”

The bill would give the EPA the necessary tools to oversee safety testing of toxic chemicals. It would put the burden on industry to prove that chemicals are safe before being put in products we use in our homes and schools.

We were also mentioned in a USA Today article about Mind the Store, a campaign headed by the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families coalition asking the top 10 retailers in the country to determine whether or not hazardous chemicals are present in the products they sell. If these retailers do sell products containing chemicals from the Hazardous 100+ List, we're asking them to develop a public action plan within the next 12 months to address these chemicals, including reducing, eliminating or safely substituting the chemicals as appropriate.

In the end, we need both market and legislative initiatives to change the landscape of chemical use in our country. Take action by telling your senator to support the Safe Chemicals Act. Its passage will reduce breast cancer incidence in our country and lead to a healthier world for future generations.

Media Roundup: Groundbreaking report on breast cancer and the environment (2/11/13- 3/7/13)

A congressionally mandated federal advisory committee of leading breast cancer experts, co-chaired by Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo, released a report on Feb. 12 entitled "Breast Cancer and the Environment: Prioritizing Prevention." The report could mark a turning point in how our government acts on breast cancer, and it generated the attention of more than 80 media outlets across the country including:

Courier Journal

The Philadelphia Inquirer

The China Post

WTOP-FM

HealthyCal

Los Angeles Daily News

Breast cancer ties to environment probed (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/27/2013)

News stories exploring the links between breast cancer and the environment are popping up all over the place. A great trend piece in the San Francisco Chronicle highlights some of the recent research and reports, and tells the story of Breast Cancer Fund Strong Voice Marika Holmgren who was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 37 and started to ask questions that spurred her into activism: 

Could it have been the chemicals in the blush and lipstick she once wore daily? Did it matter that she lives in Half Moon Bay, where breast cancer rates exceed the state average?

"When I got diagnosed, I really started to understand how many women were out there with very few risk factors, including myself," she said. "It makes us start to wonder, what can we be doing to lower those numbers and increase prevention and eradicate environmental risk factors?"

The San Francisco Chronicle also re-printed an Environmental Health News series that poses the question: 

"How can we begin to find a cure if we don’t first know the cause?"

The series features a longitudinal study of the environmental causes of breast cancer, which uses data from 15,000 Bay Area women.

U.S. report urges deeper look into breast cancer's environmental links (Center for Public Integrity, 2/12/2013)

More coverage of this week's major report release, this from the Center for Public Integrity:

Compiled by the congressionally mandated Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee, the report notes that most cases of breast cancer “occur in people with no family history,” suggesting that “environmental factors — broadly defined — must play a major role in the etiology of the disease.”

Yet only a fraction of federal research funding has gone toward examining links between breast cancer and ubiquitous chemicals such as the plastic hardening agent bisphenol A; the herbicide atrazine; and dioxin, a byproduct of plastics manufacturing and burning, says the report, prepared for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and released today.

“Prevention needs to be as important as other investments that are made in screening, treatment and access to care,” Jeanne Rizzo, co-chair of the committee and president of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund, said in an interview. (Read complete article.)

Emphasizing breast cancer prevention (San Francisco Chronicle, 2/11/2013)

The San Francisco Chronicle weighed in on yesterday's game-changing report in an editorial that urges lawmakers to take action:

"So now it will be up to the Obama administration and Congress to act on this compelling case to prioritize prevention on a disease that is costing 40,000 lives and more than $17 billion a year...This report should give Washington the political will it needs to put the nation's health interest first."

The editorial echoes (and quotes) the voice of Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo:

"We are all exposed to a cocktail of carcinogens and endocrine disrupters every day that puts us at greater risk for breast cancer, and we need to prioritize and invest in identifying and preventing exposures to these chemicals."(Read complete article.)

Welcome to the breast cancer prevention era? (Huffington Post, 2/13/2013)

Read and share this new Huffington Post blog by Jeanne Rizzo, President and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, as well as co-chair of the federal advisory committee that yesterday released a report concluding that preventing environmental exposures is the most promising path to decrease incidence of the disease.

Is this indeed the start of a new era in breast cancer awareness, research and -- yes -- prevention? We hope so.

If you're under 50, you can't remember the dark days when the tobacco industry was winning the PR war, insisting that smoking wasn't linked to cancer. That all changed in 1964 when the Surgeon General's report on smoking and health created a seismic shift, alerting the nation to the health risks of tobacco and, notably, moving the focus from individual behavior to the public-health impacts of smoking. The report ushered in an anti-smoking era, complete with a national strategy that reshaped the research agenda and inspired policies and public education initiatives that greatly reduced smoking across the nation.

With the release of a groundbreaking federal report today, there's hope that we're entering a breast cancer prevention era -- one in which my young granddaughters won't remember a time when the chemical industry got away with its story that breast cancer isn't linked to chemical exposures, and when the only focus on prevention was on personal behavior. (Read complete article.)

Report faults priorities in studying breast cancer (New York Times, 2/12/2013)

The New York Times spoke with Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo about yesterday's groundbreaking report, "Breast Cancer and the Environment: Prioritizing Prevention." Jeanne served as co-chair of the federal advisory committee that produced the report.

Jeanne Rizzo, another member of the committee and a member of the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group, said there was an urgent need to study and regulate chemical exposures and inform the public about potential risks. "We’re extending life with breast cancer, making it a chronic disease, but we’re not preventing it," she said.

"We have to look at early life exposures, in utero, childhood, puberty, pregnancy and lactation," Ms. Rizzo said. "Those are the periods when you get set up for breast cancer. How does a pregnant woman protect her child? How do we create policy so that she doesn't have to be a toxicologist when she goes shopping?" (Read complete article.)