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Women need to stop blaming themselves for getting breast cancer.
A new report released by the Breast Cancer Fund - www.breastcancerfund.org - makes it clear that environmental causes beyond a woman's control may be responsible for up to half of breast cancer cases.
That's astounding, particularly when most of us already have known that genetic causes are found to be involved in only a small percentage of diagnosed cases.
The report - "State of the Evidence 2006: What Is the Connection Between the Environment and Breast Cancer?" - calls for more money to find out what's in the environment that is making women sick with this insidious disease.
"Considerable resources are spent each year to encourage women to make changes in their personal lives that might reduce the risk of breast cancer," said Jeanne Rizzo, executive director of the Breast Cancer Fund, one of two organizations publishing the report.
"But many factors that contribute to the disease lie far beyond a woman's personal control and can only be addressed by a revolution in thinking on the parts of government and the private sector."
Of the nearly $7 billion of federal money invested since 1991 in breast cancer research, only "a small percentage" has gone toward studying environmental links, the report states.
And the few environmental studies that have been done mostly defined nutrition, exercise, tobacco and alcohol use as "environmental" issues, the report's authors say.
How many times have we heard those lectures? Not that giving up smoking or losing weight is bad for protecting against cancers. It's just that if the chemicals called phthalates, which are included in many personal care products, are shown to "significantly increase cell proliferation in human breast cancer cells," as the report points out, we should know that.
We should expect lively and loud discussion about all chemicals linked to breast cancer that are pervasive and that we can be protected from.
And if "women need a more effective method for breast cancer screening" than mammograms, which involve radiation - "the longest- established environmental cause of breast cancer and other cancers" - as the authors of this report stress, then let's start making noise about this issue, as well.
The Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action, the co- publishers of the report, are national nonprofit organizations. This doesn't mean we take their words and swallow them whole. It means that we give what they say a respectable credence and begin to look at more than how much wine we drink and whether we eat our veggies when we consider why U.S. women now have a one in seven chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetimes.
The good news is there is at least one study attempting to isolate these factors. Known as The Sister Study, this is a multi- year look at women of sisters who have breast cancer to evaluate environmental and other possible causes.
To learn more about the Sister Study, go to www.sisterstudy.org or call toll free 877-4SISTER (877-474-7837).
On Health is a weekly column on health issues. If you have questions or comments, write Carolyn Susman at The Palm Beach Post, P.O. Box 24700, West Palm Beach, Fla. 33416, call 820-4433 or e- mail
(C) 2006 The Palm Beach Post. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
