Breast Cancer and the Environment
As Featured in SCNM Spotlight by: Chris Spooner N.D.

After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Rates of breast cancer have nearly tripled in the United States in the past 50 years. Since 1980, the incidence of breast cancer among North American women has increased by 32 percent. As many as 2 million women in North America were diagnosed with breast cancer during the 1990’s.

More American women have died of breast cancer in the past two decades than all the Americans killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The average woman killed by breast cancer loses 20 years of her life. The rates are rising. Since 1940 there has been a continual rise of one percent each year. Since 1940, a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer has doubled. The lifetime risk of a woman developing breast cancer in the 1940’s was 1 in 22. In 2002 it was 1 in 8. This relentless increase cannot be explained by an aging population or by better detections such as mammography screening.

This increase is visible in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Denmark, the Nordic countries and elsewhere in the “developed” world. The reasons for this steady increase are not understood. On the other hand, the death rate from breast cancer is dropping slightly because tumors are now being found earlier.

Combinations of factors are contributing to the gradual increase. Between 30 and 50 percent of breast cancer can be explained by genetic inheritance or by factors in a woman’s life that increase her exposure to natural estrogens in the blood stream. That leaves 50 to 70% of breast cancers remain unexplained. In theory, the current generation of women in their 50’s should be benefiting from the protective effects of having children earlier. Yet this generation’s incidence of breast cancer has been steadily increasing. Clearly something else is overwhelming these protective reproduction-related “risk factors”.

The “something else” is no doubt a combination of lifestyle and environmental conditions. Consider the following: Breast cancer incidence is five times as high in some countries as others. When women migrate from a country with low incidence of breast cancer to a country with high incidence, their daughters acquire the breast-cancer risk prevailing in the high-incidence country. Clearly, something in the environment is at work here. Research has shown definite links between increased cancer rates and exposure to factors such as medical irradiation, exposures to certain chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and food additives. These exposures combined with lack of exercise, and weight gain are most likely contributing to increases in breast cancer.

When the National Health Service was asked about Breast Cancer over the next 30 years they stated that it will still be incurable but it will be more of a disease that women live with rather than die from.

While much progress has been made of early screening and detection with mammograms and awareness, the objective of primary prevention should ultimately be to prevent the disease process from starting.

The role of estrogen like compounds (xenoestrogens) in the environment and their ability to increase the total estrogen load in a woman’s body cannot be overstated. Total estrogen exposure is the single most important risk factor for breast cancer, estrogenic chemicals, which would add to their lifelong exposure, are an obvious suspect when searching for the cause of rising rates of breast cancer over the past half century. A study of breast cancer risk based on estrogen levels in 15,000 women found that women with higher estrogen levels were more likely to go on to develop breast cancer.

Studies show that hormone disrupting chemicals can act together and that small, seemingly insignificant quantities of individual chemicals can have a major cumulative effect and that multiple estrogenic chemicals can act together to produce an effect even when each individual component of the mixture is below a threshold for effect.

Examples include:

1) In one-study women who breathed vinyl chloride fumes on the job showed a 36% increase in breast cancer deaths.

2) A study of 501,536 women who received the pharmaceutical diethylstilbestrol (DES) showed a 34% increase in developing breast cancer.

3) Reportedly, 85% of pharmaceutical drugs involve chlorinated chemicals in the manufacturing process. A 1979 study by the National Cancer Institute revealed excessive breast cancer among 1,075 Caucasian women employed in pharmaceutical manufacture.

4) A New Jersey Study revealed excessive breast cancer among African American female pharmaceutical workers, chemical workers, electrical equipment workers, and printing plant workers.

5) A New York study of Caucasian women in the electrical equipment and printing industries exposed to chlorinated solvents showed elevated rates of breast cancer.

6) Women employed as beauticians for more than five years have a three-fold increased likelihood of getting breast cancer.

7) Breast cancer has increased in 339 U.S. counties that have hazardous waste sites and groundwater contamination compared to counties without such sites. In this study of waste dumps and cancers between 1970-1979, breast cancer was the most elevated among women.

8) Fisherman’s wives who ate organochlorine contaminated fish from the Baltic Sea (east coast of Sweden), have an elevated incidence of breast cancer compared to women eating less-contaminated fish from the west coast FO Sweden.

9) Women occupationally exposed to 2,4,5 Trichlorophenol the herbicide involved with Agent Orange and Dioxin had an elevated incidence of breast cancer.

The list of substances that demonstrate estrogen like properties continues to rise. Part of the problem is that the majority of the 80,000 plus compounds in our environment have not been tested for chronic-low dose toxicity. Chemicals of particular concern include organochlorine compounds, dioxins, cadmium, pthalates (found in plastics, specifically heating of plastics), bisphenol A, PCB’s and PBB’s (found in bottom dwellers such as shellfish).

DR. PURCELL’S COMMENTS:

It is clear from this article that breast cancer has an environmental component. As with many disease states one component usually isn’t enough to tip the apple cart.

In the afore mentioned studies perhaps the occupational exposure to those women was enough to cause cancer since the dose makes the poison. But in many cases today the dose of one single event may not be the cause but the chronic low dose toxicity over time. Breast Cancer is a complex disease, which means that the approach weather in prevention or in treatment must be multi-factorial.

In terms of prevention we must limit our known environmental exposure as much as possible:
*Simple things such as filtering water instead of drink it bottled.
*Refusing to microwave in plastic containers.
*Eating organic produce and at the very least avoiding produce from Mexico.
(Many of the toxic compounds at risk to humans have been banned in the US but not in other countries that our produce is imported from.)
*Eliminating toxic household cleaning products for safer ones.
*Reducing consumption of salmon, tuna, and swordfish to no more than once a week.
*Avoiding the consumption of shellfish or bottom dwellers.
*Using a “green” exterminator. Remember if it was made to kill a live organism it can also kill you.
*Refrain from putting anything on your body that you wouldn’t put in your mouth.
*Check skin care products and make-up for toxic compounds and xenoestrogens. (Methyl and Propyl parabins that are found in many body products and make-up as a preservative have been found inside breast cancer cells.
*Eating organic dairy and meats. These products have hormones that mimic estrogen in our systems when not organic.