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.

Market shift: hundreds of cosmetics companies fulfill safe-products pledge

Good news! The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a project of the Breast Cancer Fund, announced today that 321 cosmetics companies have met the goals of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics, the Campaign's voluntary pledge to avoid chemicals banned by health agencies outside the U.S. and to fully disclose product ingredients—a pioneering practice in the cosmetics industry. An additional 111 companies made significant progress toward those goals. Read all about it and see the list of companies in the new report, Market Shift: The story of the Compact for Safe Cosmetics and the growth in demand for safe cosmetics.

This is great news for consumers, who can vote with our dollars this holiday season to support companies that are doing the right thing. It's also great news for all of us who are working to pass the Safe Cosmetics Act because these companies are proving that it's possible to make quality products without using the hazardous chemicals that are all too common in conventional personal care products. You can show your support for this legislation by asking your Representative to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Safe Cosmetics Act.

Prevention Is Power this October and beyond

What does breast cancer prevention mean to you?

Maybe it means choosing fresh foods over canned because you want to avoid BPA in cans.

It could mean selecting shampoo, lotion and makeup that doesn't contain parabens, synthetic fragrance or a host of other chemicals linked to cancer.

It might also mean advocating for clean air and water in your neighborhood or city, free of toxic contaminants and pollutants.

Whatever the action you take in your daily life, at the Breast Cancer Fund we know that your act is a powerful statement in support of better health for you, your family and the people in your community.

This October, we're launching our new Prevention Is Power campaign to celebrate your powerful acts and to inspire thousands more women and men to learn what prevention means—and how it can be part of their daily lives.

Prevention is a major conceptual shift from the widely promoted—but no longer very useful—awareness framework around breast cancer. Who isn't already aware of breast cancer? It's time we move beyond awareness and start focusing on why so many women—an alarming 1 in 8—are being diagnosed with this disease.

One thing is clear: mounting scientific evidence shows that our risk of breast cancer is increased by exposures to chemicals in our everyday environment—chemicals in our food, our products, our air and our water.

The good news is you have the power to help prevent breast cancer! Join the Prevention Is Power campaign to learn how to protect yourself, your family and your friends.

Our Prevention Is Power campaign will also empower you and thousands of others to contribute to the big-picture changes we need to reduce the risk for ALL women. Together, we'll demand non-toxic products from companies and smarter laws that protect our health from elected officials.

This message of prevention is needed now more than ever. But we need your support to ensure that message is echoed throughout the country. Join with us now in the movement to transform awareness into action this Breast Cancer Prevention Month. Prevention Is Power!

How to order pizza while kicking the can

After a long week my husband and I sometimes skip making our own dinner and call for a pizza. Our favorite is a salty-sweet combo of pepperoni and pineapple.

Just as I was picking up the phone to call for the pizza last week, I started to think about all of the cans that could likely be used on our pizza—canned tomato sauce, canned tomato paste, canned pineapple—and realized that we might have to change our pizza order if we wanted to steer clear of BPA, a chemical linked to breast cancer that's used in the lining of food cans.

What a bummer! We love ordering pizza. It's such a treat and after wrangling our 8-month-old into bed on a Friday night, the last thing I want to do is cook. But I wanted to make sure we stayed true to our pledge to kick the can this month, so I geared myself up to ask the order-taker if any canned goods go into my pies.

As I placed the call, I crossed my fingers and hoped that our local pizza place only used fresh ingredients.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. While the pineapple was fresh, canned tomatoes do go into the sauce. I called around to a couple of other places. Either they used cans or couldn't say for sure if they did or not.

It looked like we were out of luck.

Then my husband had an idea…what if we just ask for olive oil and fresh tomatoes on the pizza instead of sauce? Brilliant!

It was good (and can-free!), though I still missed my usual pizza.

Fortunately, you can find tomatoes in Tetra Paks instead of cans so I'm hoping my pizza parlor will make the switch soon—and I'll encourage it! Until then, I might try my hand at making pizza at home.

The thing is, I shouldn't have to make these calls in the first place and small businesses shouldn't have to worry about losing business because their suppliers use a toxic liner in their cans. It's time for canned food manufacturers to wake up and stop using BPA in their products. Join us in pledging to kick the can and sending a message to these companies!

Kick the can, spare the enchiladas

Summer in my house means one of my favorite seasonal dishes: fresh veggie enchiladas.

Every year, my husband and I plant zucchini and bell peppers and wait anxiously for them to ripen so that we can use them in my enchiladas. The recipe calls for refried beans which I usually buy in a can. I also tend to use canned enchilada sauce to save time since I have an 8-month-old daughter and time is at a premium these days.

But this month, I’m kicking the can—and the BPA in canned food—so making my enchiladas was going to take more planning than usual. I considered buying beans from Eden Foods, which uses BPA-free packaging for their canned beans, and enchilada sauce in a pouch but I thought it would be a fun challenge to make these items from scratch.

I began the night before by soaking black beans overnight. So far, pretty easy. I then cooked the beans on the stove and threw in some onion, salt and other spices for good measure. Piece of cake! Why did I ever buy beans from a can, I thought.

I then went to work on the enchilada sauce. I mixed my spices, made a paste as my recipe indicated and set the paste and some veggie stock on the stove to simmer and thicken. What a snap!

I was about 10 minutes into stirring the enchilada sauce and wondering about how I would do as a contestant on Top Chef when I noticed that my sauce wasn’t thickening. In fact, the paste hadn't dissolved into the stock at all! I spent 15 minutes mashing the paste and stirring trying to get it to dissolve in the liquid and thicken.

Meanwhile, the beans looked like they were finished so I drained them and mashed them in a frying pan and oil to get refried beans. But they looked dry so I tried the process over again. The second time was a little better but nowhere near as smooth as the beans from the cans.

Already I'd spent two hours in the kitchen and hadn’t even started my normal prep for the enchiladas. I chopped and sautéed the vegetables, shredded the cheese and assembled the enchiladas as fast as I could so that we could have dinner at a reasonable hour.

The result: quite good but I did notice a few things. First, I am shocked by how much salt is actually in our canned food! I added what I thought was a normal amount of salt to my beans and sauce and both were lacking in seasoning. Second, kicking the can is not something I can do every day.

The fact is, I love using canned food. It's convenient, economical and tastes good. I don’t eat much of it but whenever I buy canned food, it's because I don’t have the time or inclination to start from scratch. But I'm just not willing to expose myself and my family to unnecessary BPA for convenience or cost. After this experience, I am more convinced than ever that the market needs to change! We need cans that are safe and free of BPA.

Will I continue with this pledge? Absolutely! I may even try to make enchiladas again this month. But I know that kicking the can for the month won’t be the end of my actions. We cannot shop our way out of this problem. We need real change in the market and I plan to keep the pressure on all canned food manufacturers until they get BPA out of their products.

Join me and the Breast Cancer Fund in our campaign for BPA-free food!

A month of trying to kick the can

As the mom of a 10-month old, I've begun introducing solid foods over the past three months by encouraging my kid to eat anything from squash to black beans. I'll admit that, as a working mom, cutting corners is sometimes my lifeline to sanity and one of those cuts is to use canned foods instead of starting from scratch every meal.

The problem is most canned foods contain BPA, the estrogenic chemical I've been trying avoid since the birth of my son by purchasing BPA-free baby bottles, sippy cups and just about everything else. I thought I was doing so well just by ridding my house of the clear plastic containers and only purchasing glass or stainless steel bottles and cups.

My concern for my son comes from the fact that BPA has been linked to prostate cancer, obesity, cardiac disease and lowered sperm counts. On top of that, I am also concerned about the links between BPA and increased breast cancer risk for myself, my young nieces, my friends' baby girls and the little girls in my neighborhood.

I've decided to kick the can for the month of July to tell canned food companies that until they get the BPA out of their products, I’m willing to take a pass on purchasing their foods.

I’m committing to reworking the recipes and adding a little additional time to the nightly food preparation to see how easy (and hard!) it is to try to go BPA-free for the next month. Luckily, I've got an abundance of fresh produce at my fingertips to help me in this journey, but I admit I'm nervous that the amount of time this could add to my nightly schedule might make kicking the can harder than I'd like to think. How am I going to re-work that chili recipe, what about the baked beans that I always bring to our neighborhood cookout?

I know avoiding canned food for a month will impact my family's BPA levels. A study from the Breast Cancer Fund and Silent Spring Institute published this spring found that when families ate fresh food—not canned or packaged in plastic—for three days, their BPA levels dropped an average of 60 percent.

More than anything, I'm committed to kicking the can in July because I want to send a strong message to canned food manufacturers that we shouldn't have to worry about chemicals in our food when we serve dinner to our families. In the long run, we can't shop our way out of this problem. We all deserve a safe and healthy future no matter where we shop, how much time we have to cook and whether we happen to know about BPA in canned foods.

I hope that you’ll follow my lead and join me in the coming month by kicking the can yourself.

P.S. Need tips on how to kick the can this month? Visit our website, which will give you simple ideas on how to replace canned foods with BPA-free alternatives.

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.)

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.

Breast Cancer Fund chief's balanced wisdom (Practically Green, 11/30/2010)

Practically Green interviewed Breast Cancer Fund President and CEO Jeanne Rizzo for practical prevention advice:

It’s easy to get alarmed and overwhelmed about all the possible toxins that might lurk in supposedly safe products these days, from shampoo to bed mattresses, from berries to wall paint. We found a seriously experienced public-health advocate for advice on how a normal person gets a handle on this.

Jeanne Rizzo is the President and CEO of the Breast Cancer Fund, a leader in disease prevention and strategic policy initiatives....

Read the whole post and pass it on!