Breast Cancer Fund Works to Save Lives

By Jan Tucker, MBA

Search the Internet for breast cancer information and associations and you will be overwhelmed by the amount of information. This is a welcome phenomenon, resulting from the prevalence of breast cancer in the United States and throughout the world. We spoke with a representative from the Breast Cancer Fund (BCF) to shed light on the significant contributions this organization is making to rid our culture and the world of breast cancer.

The Mission
For those of us who might feel complacent because our families have not experienced breast cancer, a major statistic sited by the BCF is that no more than one in 10 women who have breast cancer have a genetic history of the disease. This comes as a surprise to most people.

BCF’s stated mission is as follows: “In response to the public health crisis of breast cancer, the Breast Cancer Fund identifies—and advocates for the elimination of—the environmental and other preventable causes of the disease.” They are the only national breast cancer organization focused solely on prevention.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence linking toxic chemicals and radiation to breast cancer risk. BCF serves to identify, publicize, and eliminate these links to breast cancer through many avenues, including reports, fact sheets, and high profile advocacy work to educate the public on how to reduce their exposure to cancer-causing and other toxic substances.
Every two years since 1998, BCF has produced a landmark report, State of the Evidence: The Connection Between Breast Cancer and the Environment. The 2008 edition is available for free download at http://www.breastcancerfund.org/evidence. The report explains that in the decades since World War II, our use of synthetic chemicals has proliferated; at the same time, breast cancer rates have increased alarmingly. It further explores the link between radiation—both ionizing and non-ionizing—and increased breast cancer risk.
Today, an estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals are used in the United States, and 1,000 new ones are added every year. Only seven percent of these have been studied for their effects on human health. According to the report, a survey by the Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts revealed that “216 chemicals and radiation sources have been recognized by national and international regulatory agencies as being implicated in breast cancer causation.” And these 216 do not include the endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which increasingly are being linked to breast cancer risk.
Many of these chemicals accumulate in our body fat and may remain in breast tissue for long periods of time, causing cancer and other health problems.

The 2008 report reveals that the causes of breast cancer are a complex web. Not only are many chemicals involved, but the timing of our exposure to environmental threats, the mix of chemicals we encounter each day, and the doses we are exposed to interact with genetic and lifestyle factors to affect our health. It’s important to know that low doses over time can be harmful.

Pinpointing the causation is not a simple matter. But Jeanne Rizzo, RN, BCF’s executive director, sheds light on the significant effect we can have on breast cancer by removing a single cause. Statistics show that one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime—an epidemic number. Just a few years ago, the number was closer to one in seven. Rizzo explains, “What caused this improvement is that we reduced our exposure to hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Seventy million women came off of HRT after the Women’s Initiative Study of 2002.” The study was conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to address the most common causes of death, disability, and impaired quality of life in postmenopausal women. Rizzo continues, “That shows us that when you remove an agent like that…any chemical exposure…in this case it was hormones, you actually see a reduction.”

The bottom line is, there’s going to have to be a foremost shift in the way we do things in order to protect our health. Rizzo says, “We still have close to a quarter of a million women a year who will hear that they have either invasive breast cancer [which has spread to the surrounding tissues] or ductile carcinoma cancer in-situ [cancer located within the milk duct and classified as stage 0 or ‘pre-cancer’].”

“To eliminate environmental or other preventable causes of the disease,” says Rizzo, “we first have to get a sense of what is showing us evidence of harm.” For example, laboratory studies have provided evidence that EDCs act like estrogen and cause mammary gland tumors in animals. They cause wildlife all sorts of problems. Rizzo says, “There’s enough for us to say there’s evidence of harm.”

The answer is simple—we need to look for safer alternatives. But implementing the answer is complex because of the number of chemical threats involved. In addition, industry uses certain chemicals and chemical compounds because they are cheaper. Rizzo says we need to “really focus on the kind of innovation and technology that will provide the things we need and also understand that we’re going to have to sacrifice a little. Plastics are a major culprit for us…and there are a lot of chemicals used in personal care products that really are discretionary.”

She continues, “[The answer lies in] a combination of what action the individual can take to reduce their own exposure and influence the economy by the purchasing choices they make, and what our government needs to do in terms of a paradigm shift to look at evidence of harm as being a strong enough trigger to take public health policy action, whether it’s regulatory or legislative or deciding on what gets subsidized and what doesn’t.”

There’s Hope for the Future

Rizzo is optimistic. She explains, “I envision a future where we’re not talking about regulating chemicals one at a time, when we’re thinking about health not illness, when our focus is on all the things we’re doing to stay healthy and protect ourselves and not worry about assaults, when I can send my granddaughter down the beauty aisle and not even have to think about what she takes off the shelf, when the values we hold are that the health of the planet and the people living on it are vital and interconnected, and that our decisions come from that place.”

She believes this could happen in the next decade or so, in the same way our attention has been quickly turned to the issue of global warming. The government has already responded to some extent. BCF’s home town of San Francisco adopted the “precautionary principle” for its purchasing policy. If a chemical or compound is being cited as potentially harmful, they will purchase alternative products that do not contain those chemicals.

Rizzo says, “We are seeing responses in some states to issues like removing the most egregious chemicals from personal care products marketed for children. And on the national level, Senator Feinstein (D-CA) just introduced an amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act which was passed by the Senate, to eliminate phthalates, a plasticizer, from children’s soft plastic toys and other products.”

Rizzo says the U.S. government isn’t broadly saying we have to change our chemicals policy yet, but Congress and various state legislatures are looking at it. She says, “We’ve been successful in California in advancing a number of these issues through the Legislature. There are probably a dozen states actively working on some element of this. It’s a big start.”

Although science doesn’t have the absolute answers yet, Rizzo suggests that we need to implement change which leads to safety and protection rather than ill health and disease while we are waiting for those answers. She explains, “The precautionary principle says, ‘Think ahead, take action in advance.’ The reactionary principle says, ‘Wait until everybody is sick and dying and then we’ll make a decision.’” Rizzo sees our shift toward the precautionary. “I do feel optimistic because there are so many more people interested in and aware of this. [BCF] can’t keep up with the download of information and shipping out the reports. That tells me there’s real public interest in this.”