Inside Prevention

Focus on preventing cancer (San Francisco Chronicle, 5/15/2013)

Thousands of women each year face decisions like Angelina Jolie's bold choice to undergo a preventative double mastectomy. But in her San Francisco chronicle op-ed Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo asks: what if fewer women had to?

Most women who develop breast cancer do not have a family history of, or genetic predisposition to, the disease. In fact, the majority of cases can be attributed to environmental causes including toxic chemicals and radiation:

"Decades of scientific evidence points to modern living as a major culprit. In our daily lives we are exposed to toxic chemicals and radiation from a wide range of sources, including cleaning and personal-care products, plastics, food, air, water, medical treatments, our workplaces and our neighborhoods."

We have the power to stop breast cancer before it starts, and reduce risks for the vast majority of women who have no genetic predisposition to the disease:

"We need to develop a federal research agenda that prioritizes investment in the study of chemical agents that contribute to the disease, and public health measures to reduce exposures."

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle , join us in creating a breast cancer prevention strategy and learn about a groundbreaking report, which concludes that identifying and eliminating the environmental causes of breast cancer presents the greatest opportunity to prevent the disease.

American Chemistry Council blocks state scientists from doing their jobs

Just as BPA disrupts our hormones, Big Chem is doing everything it can to disrupt the democratic process, using its money, power and influence to block government action that would protect pregnant women and children.

On Friday, shortly after California’s Environmental Protection Agency had announced its decision to add BPA to its list of Prop 65 reproductive toxicants, a judge ordered BPA off the same list.  The judge granted an injunction in the American Chemistry Council's case against California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. The chemical industry is trying to argue in court that BPA does not cause birth defects.

Prop 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 and, in some instances, requires labeling of products containing those chemicals.

If BPA is safe, as the chemical industry asserts, why would the FDA have banned it from baby bottles and children’s drinking cups in 2012? Why would 12 states have introduced legislation either banning or requiring the labeling of BPA in food packaging? Why would France have banned it all together from food packaging? Why would countless studies have demonstrated a clear link between BPA and a long list of health problems including infertility and breast cancer?

Stay tuned. We will be following this issue as it progresses. In the meantime, please share your thoughts and comments below!

 

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.

 

Does ExxonMobil have your senator's ear?

If you live in Louisiana, the answer is yes. But even if you don't, you might want to chat with the public officials you voted into office.

We see a lot of chemical industry shenanigans in our legislative efforts to protect people from toxic chemicals, both in Washington and in statehouses. But this is too much:

Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, last year opposed the Safe Chemicals Act, and pledged to write his own bill on chemical regulations. Based on reports of who he's been meeting with—Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil—and who he's not—no health or environmental groups, to our knowledge—this bill promises to be less about protecting people from toxic chemicals than about protecting chemical companies from regulation. 

Now Sen. Vitter is trying to drum up bipartisan support for his "Pro-Chemicals Act." If you're not sure where your senators stand on chemicals policy reform, now's the time to ask.

We suspect Sen. Vitter's bill will be introduced around the same time as Sen. Lautenberg reintroduces the Safe Chemicals Act—a classic case of strategic confusion. But make no mistake: the Lautenberg bill is the one that protects our health.

In fact, a recent federal advisory committee report on breast cancer points to key elements of the Safe Chemicals Act—safety standards that protect human health (and follow recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics), required safety reviews of new chemicals by manufacturers, action on chemicals found to be toxic—in its recommendations for breast cancer prevention.

By contrast, Sen. Vitter has gone on record opposing both the safety standard proposed in the Safe Chemicals Act and safety reviews for new chemicals.

Email or call your senator's office now and ask him or her to steer clear of Sen. Vitter's bad bill and instead support Sen. Lautenberg's Safe Chemicals Act. ExxonMobil and Sen. Vitter don't speak for us.

Phthalates and BPA make an unexpected appearance

A new dietary intervention study suggests that an individual may not be able to avoid food packaging chemicals like phthalates (plastic softeners) and BPA (found in canned foods and older hard plastic containers) by cutting out canned and plastic-wrapped foods because these chemicals can—and do—enter the food during processing.

Researchers from the University of Washington replicated the 2011 Breast Cancer Fund and Silent Spring Institute dietary intervention study and found DEHP (a phthalate used in food packaging) levels increased 24-fold during the intervention.

The researchers were puzzled by this finding—our study found phthalate and BPA levels declined during the intervention diet—so they followed up by testing spices and dairy used in the intervention diet. They found high levels of DEHP in spices like coriander, cinnamon and cayenne pepper, as well as in dairy products.

The researchers also found modest increases in BPA during the intervention. This finding may be due to a study population who already ate mostly fresh foods—in fact, only three of the 10 families who participated indicated eating canned foods.

These findings underscore the need for federal reform of food contact laws that can ensure chemicals linked to hormone disruption don't end up in our food supply. The FDA has the authority to regulate chemicals our food touches at all points in the process from field to table: from the type of plastic tubing used in milking equipment, to the containers spices are held in before being divvied up in store-shelf sizes, to the plastic wrap on supermarket cheese.

Our role is to see that the FDA actually uses this power to protect our health.

For more on this study, check out Fast Company (You’re Eating Toxic Chemicals, Even If You Eat Organic And Avoid Plastic) and the NRDC blog (What's for lunch? Likely a few hormone-disrupting chemicals - phthalates and BPA).

We're making history today

"Evidence suggests that breast cancer can be prevented."

While these words might not seem revolutionary to those of us who have been working to prevent the disease for years, they will make big news today because of who is saying them: a federal committee of leading breast cancer experts, co-chaired by Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo. The committee’s report calls for a shift in the multi-billion dollar breast cancer research agenda toward prevention. That’s groundbreaking! 

This congressionally mandated Interagency Breast Cancer and Environmental Research Coordinating Committee concludes that preventing exposure to environmental risk factors is the most promising path to decrease incidence of the disease, and is the "key to reducing the burden" on individuals, families and society. 

Sound familiar? That’s because this report builds on work the Breast Cancer Fund has been doing for more than a decade. We were honored to be part of developing this important report, and will continue to work to bring about its vision of a sea change in the way our society views and understands breast cancer.

Read our press release, take action and stay tuned for more information about this paradigm-shifting report.

Eat like a Mennonite (New York Times, 1/18/2013)

What does it take for a modern American family to lower its BPA levels? Author Florence Williams offers a peek into her stint in the nearly-plastic-free world in an opinion piece for the New York Times:

On the second day of my chemical-detox diet, I was very hungry. I’d been eating like a rabbit, all carrots and greens that I’d gathered, barehanded, from the baskets of the farmer’s market, no gloves or plastic bags allowed. I cooked up some quinoa that I bought packaged in paper from the supermarket sometimes known as Whole Paycheck. I was effectively a vegan because I couldn’t find meat or cheese that wasn’t wrapped in plastic, and I didn’t have access to accommodating livestock.

My 7-year-old daughter and I were participating in a pilot study conducted in 2011 by the Silent Spring Institute and the Breast Cancer Fund (a follow-up study was published later that year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives). We had urinated into some glass containers a few weeks earlier, back when we were "normal" Americans, and now we were spending three days trying to reduce our exposure to plastics before supplying our urine again.

As Williams notes, the "normal" phase of the study, which allowed for painted toenails and canned beans, was more fun. Yet it's possible to create modern conveniences that don't leave toxic traces in their human consumers.

Says Williams, "It's why we need the government to require testing of commercial chemicals for hormonal effects, and to regulate them in a meaningful way. And it's why we need manufacturers to design products with safer substances in the first place." (Read complete article.)

Prevention Is Power: Why it matters so much

As we wind down our October Prevention Is Power campaign, we're reminded of how important our work to prevent breast cancer is for our community, their loved ones and our collective future. Thank you, Liz, for sharing your powerful story. This blog post was also featured on Care2.com.

By Liz Jones, Guest Blogger

When something big and unexpected happens to you, when you get your socks knocked off and aren’t sure you’ll be able to find them any time soon, when you find yourself overwhelmed in a way you’ve never experienced before, what do you do? Sit still or pace around in circles? Get very quiet or talk to everyone? Pull the covers over your head or develop a game plan? Decide you have enough information or research, research, research?  In 1993 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 48, I did all of the above.
 
Ten years later, after making many changes in my life and saying “yes” to several paths I would never have entertained during my prior-to-breast-cancer life, I was diagnosed with a second primary breast cancer. It was 2003 and I was 58. I was aware I was at risk for developing metastatic breast cancer, but it never entered my mind that my body might develop two unrelated breast cancer tumors. The nerve of it! I mean, after all!

This time around I made decisions more quickly and surely, and I became more convinced than ever that the causes of my two breast cancer tumors were related to my past. I now know I had been inadvertently exposed to carcinogens as a child. I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in Niagara Falls, New York, home to inexpensive hydroelectric power and many chemical manufacturing plants. It was a time when the effects of chemical pollutants on our bodies were not well understood. I remember taking in the chemical smells and looking at the gray clouds of pollutants hanging over the city and telling myself they were my “bread and butter.” Hard to fathom now, but I actually viewed the pollutants positively. Well, now is very different from then, when I had completely bought into the popular marketing line, “Better living through chemistry.” The only downside I remember is our frequently wiping the accumulated layers of soot from our lawn furniture every summer.

The statistics tell us that 1 woman in 8 will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Last month I was in Niagara Falls attending my 50th high school reunion. One evening as I sat around a table with six of my female classmates, the subject turned to breast cancer. We discovered that four of us have had breast cancer. I know this sample is small, but I believe our tally at the table that evening might well be telling us something.

In the fall of 1997 the Breast Cancer Fund entered my life. I began to learn about the effect of under-studied and unregulated chemicals on our bodies and our lives. Now I know that endocrine-disrupting chemicals and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives lurk in the products we use every day. I know that even very low doses of bisphenol A (BPA), found in the lining of food cans, can cause harm to babies and young children. I know that the beauty industry, whose products we slather all over our skin, manufactures products containing substances toxic to humans. I know that biomonitoring (measuring the levels of chemical pollutants in people’s bodies) and health-tracking programs (examining regional disease rates) are critical to larger efforts to reduce chemical exposures linked to disease.

And so I became a fundraiser and strong voice for the Breast Cancer Fund. To spread the word, I ask my community, year after year, to contribute to my hiking effort in the Breast Cancer Fund’s Peak Hike for Prevention. My loyal following of 50 appreciates both learning from me and making a financial contribution to this important work.

I also choose my personal care and household cleaning products carefully, bypassing the advertising and going straight to an examination of their contents. I buy locally grown, pesticide-free produce as much as possible, minimize my use of canned foods, choose wild fish over farmed, and free range chickens over those confined to crowded quarters in too-small cages. I try to “live lightly” on this earth, respecting its land, water, air and living things. And I model my behaviors and choices for my children and grandchildren – my most precious legacy. I see myself as one of the many human faces of people living with the effects of diseases linked to chemical exposure. Do you see yourself this way too?

Two-time breast cancer survivor Liz Jones is a mother of two and grandmother of six who lives in San Jose, California.

Prevention Is Power: Moving beyond breast cancer awareness (blog roundup, 10/2012)

Prevention Is Power! This October blogs have been buzzing about preventing breast cancer, not just putting a pink ribbon on it. Spread the word about our Prevention Is Power campaign, and check out what others are saying:

Glamour, 4 Easy Ways You Can Reduce Your Breast Cancer Risk in Your 20s and 30s

Mommy Greenest, Fight Breast Cancer, Carcinogen-Free. Also reposted at EcoStiletto, Cancer Kick and Yoga Blog. Plus, check out the accompanying video!

AlterNet, Corporations Cashing in Big Time on Breast Cancer -- 5 Shocking Hypocrisies

Living Green Magazine, Prevention is Power: A Better Goal for Breast Cancer

Everything's Abuzz, Breast Cancer Prevention Is Power

MommaWords, Why I’m detoxifying our life

Mommybites, Breast Cancer Awareness: Power in Prevention

Non-Toxic Kids, Protect Women, Prevent Breast Cancer

Celebrate Green, Let’s put focus on ​preventing cancer

Motherhood Moment, Healthy Habits: Prevention is Power

The Life Atlas, Prevention Is Power

Retro Housewife Goes Green, Toxic Chemicals and Pink Ribbons

The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Breast Cancer Fund offers tips for cancer prevention

Watch Jeanne Rizzo in conversation with Deepak Chopra and Seventh Generation CEO

We have really exciting news: On Wednesday, September 19 at 10:30 a.m. EDT/7:30 a.m. PDT, Breast Cancer Fund president and CEO Jeanne Rizzo will join Deepak Chopra and John Replogle, CEO of Seventh Generation, for a panel discussion on the findings of a new study on Americans' concerns about harmful chemicals and what we can do to ensure safer products. The discussion will be moderated by Sara Snow, green-living expert and TV host.

Watch it live right here! The video will continue to be available after the live webcast.

Watch live streaming video from seventhgeneration at livestream.com